Finding an Apartment in Dublin

Yes, this is something that anybody relocating to a new city or country will normally have to go through (although this assumption does not hold for quite a few friends back in Japan that were “put” into a comfy corporate-apartment).

In a way, there is something nice about searching for a new place, exploring the possibilities – if you will, but for me, the process of finding a new apt has always been painful more then anything else. This is especially true when you quickly find out that there is no way to find any apartment half-descent for less then 1,000 Euro here.

This kind of understanding takes away immediately the excitement part related to exploring “possibilities”, and it becomes more a matter of survival and prioritizing. After looking into a few apartments available for about 1,000-1,100 Euro that were rented-out on the first day that they were publicized, and that did not really look like something I wanted to live in, my prioritizing exercises where coming up with the main result of “spend more money”.

I got especially desperate after going to see an apt that was on offer for 1,200 Euro a month, in a spot-on location – no furniture, old and ugly, and smelling really bad, with a hole-in-wall-in-the-corridor that was supposed to be the wardrobe.

So relative to all of this, I guess I should be quite happy and satisfied with my lovely one-bedroom into which I moved last week. The living room IS quite big, and it has most of the basic things one should need (even some knives and forks that the former tenants left behind, and … mmm … a scale … was that a hint for me ?).

Once my things will finally arrive by sea, the next big challenge will start of how I manage to push all of them into this apartment, as relatively-big as it may be.

And here you go, a revealing picture of the living-room and balcony.

Just before all my things arrive, and the apartment becomes way-smaller, and actually just before I actually moved in, I thought it was the right timing to throw a little welcome-to-Dublin party for myself. Doing the party before actually moving in was probably not such a bad idea.

I have the impression it was a nice party all and all (from what I managed to recollect the following day), and the half-day that I spent picking up all the empty beer-bottles was supportive of this impression. And no worries, I found quite a few bottles/cans that were kindly left for my future use and/or parties J

To rap up on this story, here is another picture of the same porch, this time with a few party-guests, just before they found out that there is also a very nice garden-roof that they could smoke at.