Adventures in Apartment Shopping: Episode 2

*Read the previous post for the first episode of "Adventures in Apartment Shopping."*

Following the bird feather/poop apartment fiasco the same real estate company took us to see a beautiful, brand new apartment that was well within our price range. Since they delivered on at least one of their showings we didn't write them off completely. We continued to look for another week with other agents, all the while keeping the nice one in the back of our minds. By the end of the week we decided to go ahead and pursue the nice one they showed us...but wouldn't you know, they were up to their old tricks.

We arrived at the real estate office and were expecting to meet and talk with the landlord of the apartment we wanted. Afterall, that's what we were told would be happening when we scheduled the meeting several days in advance. When we arrived at the office, however, the landlord was no where to be found and we were told that they had ANOTHER apartment that just went on the market that we HAD to see. Now I know that many of you would have walked out right then and there. But, since we're working in our second language we always try to leave room for the possibility that we might have misunderstood, or we might have miscommunicated. We decided there was no harm in looking so we traveled over to the other apartment, hopped on the elevator and ....SCRRREEEECH.....the elevator stopped.  We pressed floor buttons and the door open button and NOTHING. The elevator was stuck. After several minutes of light jumping (and annoyed sighing on my part) the elevator started back up again. We walked into the apartment and were relieved to find that it was free of animal feces. It was actually quite beautiful. But as we toured the apartment we discovered that the owner had done some remodeling himself and obviously was not a watcher of HGTV.  Things were just laid out funny (like to get to the terrace where we would entertain guests we had to walk through the master bedroom, etc.). So we politely told them it was great but not appropriate for us. The real estate agent acted annoyed and tried arguing as to why it was a fine layout for our family. Umm...not a great way to win over a client. So we headed back to the real estate office and were told we would still wait for the landlord of the other building (this was 45 mins. after our scheduled meeting time). What then ensued was a rather heated and patronizing conversation with the agents and a "convenient" phone call saying that the landlord of our desired apartment was not actually going to show up as he was "far away in traffic."  Awesome. We postponed the meeting for the following day but decided to take a second look at the apartment to see if it was really worth all these shenanigans.

We looked at the apartment a second time and as we exited the building with the real estate agent we saw a street dog attacking a pigeon in the middle of the road. The agent, filled with concern, ran to the aid of the pigeon. He shooooed the dog away and picked up the awkwardly flopping, dying pigeon in his bare hands. He then, without consulting us, brought the dying animal into our car. Really. That's wierd, right? We went back to his office and he walked the pigeon over to the veterinarian next door. Needless to say, I didn't shake his hand as we left the office out of fear that I would contract some wierd pigeon disease.

In summary: On the way to the real estate office that day we prayed for the Lord to give us peace and favor if that apartment was the one that we were to rent. The Lord answered our prayers. We did not rent that apartment.