an oversized closet
Sep. 16th, 2009 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareina...but I think it will be "home". I went across the street this morning to look at the apartment for rent.
The apartment building is the brick one on the left side in this photo (which was taken from my office window). The one you can barely see due to the denseness of the foliage on the tree. I like the trees on this street, and, having just spent years in which my commute to work involved walking from the bedroom to the living room, I like the location of this apartment, where the commute will be down the stairs, across the street, and then up some more stairs. The apartment itself is very small. The good features include the high ceilings, which gives room for the sleeping loft. Right now it is set up with a row of moveable closets against the wall, and a small futon couch under the loft. My plan is to rotate the shelves to close the under-loft area into a storage closet, and bring the couch out into the space where the shelves are now. Other good features include a bidet (standard in all Italian apartments, from what I've seen) and a shower-massage. The down side is that the "kitchen" includes only a sink, a portable two-burner electric hot-plate, some cupboards, a bit of counter, and a tiny fridge. I was hoping for a better oven than the toaster oven I'm borrowing from my boss, but I will never find a better location, and a better kitchen would mean higher rent. I'm told I can ask the owner for additional furniture if I want it, so I'll ask for book shelves, at least a couple of them, because I'll need one to serve as a pantry.
I've got a meeting with the owner on Friday, and if he likes me, and I don't change my mind, we will do the paperwork then. It will be expensive, particularly the moving-in expenses. Unlike the US and Australia, where any fees paid to the agency are invisible to the tenant, in Italy they are seperate, and paid up front. Therefore, in addition to my first month's rent (€650/month), I'll need to also fork over two month's rent as a deposit, and an additional €720 for the agency fee. I'm told that in Italy they write the contract for a smaller number than is actually paid; typically a €650/month flat will have a contract which says €400/month, and the remaining €200/month are paid in cash directly to the owner, who is only liable for taxes on the amount in the contract, and therefore can afford to set the total price cheaper than they would if they were being taxed for all of it. I wondered aloud what would happen were one to pay only what the contract stipulated, and was assured by my colleagues that it would be better to pay the full amount, regardless of what the contract says. I'm also told that the contract should be for four years, and then I should give written notice of my intent to move six months in advance of my actual leaving date, and that it will be fine. This seems odd to me, I already know my leaving date--December 2010--that is how long my contract with the University lasts till, and I won't need a place here once that expires.
I could save *lots* of money if I chose to commute. One of my colleagues commutes from the town of Como, at the edge of the Alps. He pays less than €600/month for a three-bedroom apartment. However, he also has the one-hour each way train trip to make each day, followed by either then taking public transit from the train station, or a half an hour walk. I am simply not ready to do such a commute--I am too used to living at the place I work, I'm not interested in spending such a huge amount of time in transit, and if I lived in Como I wouldn't want to leave it to come to Milan! I've only got just over 15 months left here, the first three zipped by with lightening speed. I'm content to camp in an oversized closet for now, and hope that my next job is in a more desirable city (like say one with houses in the University district, as is typical of the US and Australia, and, I hope, is also to be found somewhere in Europe).
In other news, I won't be welding gold capsules today--the laboratory microscope we use for this task has been borrowed by the microprobe technicians, who are doing annual maintenance .
The apartment building is the brick one on the left side in this photo (which was taken from my office window). The one you can barely see due to the denseness of the foliage on the tree. I like the trees on this street, and, having just spent years in which my commute to work involved walking from the bedroom to the living room, I like the location of this apartment, where the commute will be down the stairs, across the street, and then up some more stairs. The apartment itself is very small. The good features include the high ceilings, which gives room for the sleeping loft. Right now it is set up with a row of moveable closets against the wall, and a small futon couch under the loft. My plan is to rotate the shelves to close the under-loft area into a storage closet, and bring the couch out into the space where the shelves are now. Other good features include a bidet (standard in all Italian apartments, from what I've seen) and a shower-massage. The down side is that the "kitchen" includes only a sink, a portable two-burner electric hot-plate, some cupboards, a bit of counter, and a tiny fridge. I was hoping for a better oven than the toaster oven I'm borrowing from my boss, but I will never find a better location, and a better kitchen would mean higher rent. I'm told I can ask the owner for additional furniture if I want it, so I'll ask for book shelves, at least a couple of them, because I'll need one to serve as a pantry.
I've got a meeting with the owner on Friday, and if he likes me, and I don't change my mind, we will do the paperwork then. It will be expensive, particularly the moving-in expenses. Unlike the US and Australia, where any fees paid to the agency are invisible to the tenant, in Italy they are seperate, and paid up front. Therefore, in addition to my first month's rent (€650/month), I'll need to also fork over two month's rent as a deposit, and an additional €720 for the agency fee. I'm told that in Italy they write the contract for a smaller number than is actually paid; typically a €650/month flat will have a contract which says €400/month, and the remaining €200/month are paid in cash directly to the owner, who is only liable for taxes on the amount in the contract, and therefore can afford to set the total price cheaper than they would if they were being taxed for all of it. I wondered aloud what would happen were one to pay only what the contract stipulated, and was assured by my colleagues that it would be better to pay the full amount, regardless of what the contract says. I'm also told that the contract should be for four years, and then I should give written notice of my intent to move six months in advance of my actual leaving date, and that it will be fine. This seems odd to me, I already know my leaving date--December 2010--that is how long my contract with the University lasts till, and I won't need a place here once that expires.
I could save *lots* of money if I chose to commute. One of my colleagues commutes from the town of Como, at the edge of the Alps. He pays less than €600/month for a three-bedroom apartment. However, he also has the one-hour each way train trip to make each day, followed by either then taking public transit from the train station, or a half an hour walk. I am simply not ready to do such a commute--I am too used to living at the place I work, I'm not interested in spending such a huge amount of time in transit, and if I lived in Como I wouldn't want to leave it to come to Milan! I've only got just over 15 months left here, the first three zipped by with lightening speed. I'm content to camp in an oversized closet for now, and hope that my next job is in a more desirable city (like say one with houses in the University district, as is typical of the US and Australia, and, I hope, is also to be found somewhere in Europe).
In other news, I won't be welding gold capsules today--the laboratory microscope we use for this task has been borrowed by the microprobe technicians, who are doing annual maintenance .