Step by step

•We finally managed to get a stove and a fridge, ending up with 3 weeks of restaurant and fast food… I guess it was time for it and I am somehow glad we left our scale back home.

We expect our car to be delivered beginning of next week and we’ll immediately drive to Austria to pick up our stuff and in particular our speakers (I am fed up listening to music on the crappy laptop).

A few days ago, our neighbour discovered we had a severe leak in one of the water pipes running through the floor of our condo. He naturally “came” to us to let know that the situation was kind of critical.  By coming, I mean that he stood below our window at 10 in the evening and started screaming, punching his metal door and  jumping around. I guess he would have tried to tear his hair off  if he had had some left. This very primal mean of communication was at least efficient since not only us but also the whole neighbourhood knew something was going wrong here.

I must say that none of us was feeling so comfortable at this point. I eventually opened our backyard door to inquire about the grievances of our angry man. I was warmly welcome by his hysterical wife that immediately seized my hand to lead me to the kitchen.

It was indeed a disaster: water was actually dropping from the ceiling (it took me while to notice it as the hysterical woman was pointing the ceiling repeating “FIRE! FIRE!”), forming a 10 cm puddle on their fridge. Critical.

A call to our beloved owner, who left her two under aged kids alone at home to rescue us, will solve the conflict. We heard later that the angry man was responsible for the leak (he fixed it a few days later).

Our conclusion is simple: our doorbell needs a night-light.

There are many of these little annoyances to cope with every day down here. Riding a bike will turn you into a mobile organ donor, begging for information in a shop is obviously an improper behaviour (don’t you dare disturbing the hot conversation of the sales crew!)… And now a few pics! Nice greetings to all of you!

We move in!

Hi everybody!

Just a few words to proudly announce that we gonna move in in a few hours! Well, the whole flat is not ready yet but at least we have a place to sleep. Happy Easter!

On a coupé les ponts

Après plus d’une semaine de recherche effrénée nous avons enfin trouvé un appart. Ledit appart me servira également de bureau dans un premier temps. Je poste quelques photos en vrac.

Une vue du salon/salle à manger que nous allons scinder pour en faire des bureaux et une salle de réunion . Beaucoup de boulot en perspective mais la très affable propriétaire va nous préparer le tout pour le 1er mai.

Le crépi extérieur n’est pas de première fraîcheur… La vue est également un peu gâchée par la présence un peu envahissante des câbles qui poussent sauvagement sur les poteaux électriques. Lorsque l’on demande à la proprio où sont les prises téléphone, celle-ci nous regarde un peu interdite puis désigne la fenêtre. Quelques secondes plus tard, je réalise que le branchement s’effectuera à la sauvage depuis le noeud qui flotte juste en face: la fibre optique installée par les opérateurs peu scrupuleux est en effet déroulée pratiquement à même la rue puis accrochée sommairement aux poteaux existants. J’ai hâte de voir le technicien nous raccorder…

Voilà sinon tout va bien, cette semaine est placée sous le signe du jeûne puisqu’il s’agit de la semaine sainte:la Roumanie, pays à majorité orthodoxe, s’apprête à célébrer Pâques le week-end prochain. Bref, je me sens comme à la maison!

Für unsere deutschsprachigen Leser: Uns geht’s ganz gut! Am Montag haben wir endlich für eine Wohnung unterschrieben (siehe Fotos oben). Das riesige Wohnzimmer wird noch geteilt (Büros und Besprechungszimmer) aber die Wohnung ist grundsätzlich groß genug, um die ganze Einwohnerschaft von Lebertsham  unterzubringen!

Ende dieser Woche werden wir einziehen (also wenn wir eine Matratze finden) und danach zusammen mit Catalin (mein Kollege) und seiner Freundin Ostern feiern. Liebe grüße an alle!

Buna ziua!!

We did well land in Bucharest last Wednesday the 1 st of April (for those who were thinking we were actually joking…). Since on, we’ve been looking for a decent flat where we could both live and work (at least me). We’ve also been tasting the Romanian way of life, being sometimes amazed, sometimes disconcerted.

Our time schedule is rather tight so I will just post a little pot-pourri of our pictures with a few comments in a first time. Once we’ll have settled a bit, we shall of course tell more about our new host nation!

Click on the pics to enlarge them and read the comments!