The main issue that we had been having before when we were just emailing people about apartments is that they didn't think it would work having two people living in one room. They like to keep it to one person per room, so that there's enough shared living space for everyone. This obviously makes sense, but it's also a pain on our side. We don't have anything with us except our computers and clothes. Even if we get a room to ourselves, it's going to be empty. We received lots of rejections to apartments because we were two people wanting to live in one room. Because of this, we started to look for studios, so it would be just us. In this case, we would really have nothing, because at least in a flat, someone living there already would have kitchen-ware and at least a place to sit down. There aren't many furnished areas in Luzern, at least ones we could afford... except that one we hiked to on Monday. Now it is Wednesday, and guess what... we lost that number. Ugh. We weren't really in the mood to walk all the way back just to get the number, so we decided to just keep looking online.
After a couple hours we had called a few places. Some didn't speak English at all, so that didn't really work. Most were not happy with the idea of having two people live in one room, and the rest, were too far away.
We finally got in touch with someone who seemed excited to speak with us. We told him right away that we were two people looking to live in one room. He had one room available, with one other guy living in the second bedroom. He said he would double check with his roommate about two people living in one room to see how he felt about it. In the mean time, he invited us over to meet him and to see the place. We were pumped that we at least had a potential apartment, we had the opportunity to meet someone and to see what a flat looked like.The appointment wasn't until 6:00pm, so we had several hours to bum around.
We walked around Old City Luzern, got some gelato, sat on some steps and people watched for a bit. Then we continued to walk around exploring parts of Old City that we had not seen before.
After a few hours, we started to get hungry for a little lunch. We stopped at the local Migros and picked up some goodies; chocolate milk, bread, and some delicious Swiss cheese. We sat along some water and enjoyed the view as we ate.
The chocolate milk was sooo good! That's my... don't take a picture of me while I'm enjoying my chocolate milk... face.
Now we were ready for our adventure to this potential apartment. Again, since we don't have internet with us and WiFi is only found at main eating areas and is usually password protected, we had to figure the map stuff out beforehand. We looked it up on the iPad and then took screenshots of how we could get there. Luckily, there was a bus that took us most of the way. We walked to the main train/bus station and hopped on the 1 bus. It was about 15-20 minutes away by bus. It was nice to see another part of Luzern other than just the main city.
We arrived at our stop. We had to walk maybe the equivalent of 3 blocks and we were there. We called the guy we spoke to early letting him know we were there. He let us in and greeted us. He was very nice. His name was Levente. He is from Budapest, Hungary and has lived in Switzerland for 3 years. He's an engineer and spoke English well. He told us to call him Leve because it was easier to pronounce. He showed us around and told us about the area. There's a medium sized kitchen, a medium sized eating area, a large living room, two balconies; one small, the other medium, three bedrooms, and one and half bathrooms. They also have lots of closet area, and storage in the basement for other stuff. They have washers in the basement and lines to dry the clothes on. There is also a room to store bicycles, a room to store winter sport equipment and two parking spaces if needed. I'm not really sure if there's a difference between a flat and an apartment, but I'm guessing that in Switzerland they just refer to apartments as flats.
We talked about the fact that the two of us wanted to stay in one room. Leve seemed fine with it, but wanted to be fair and make sure with the other roommate. We talked about rent and the other utilities that would have to be paid for. It was in our range that we had talked about paying for rent, however it was closer to the higher side. Either way, it was cheaper than staying in the hostel. Leve said he will make sure to contact the other roommate as soon as he could and get back to us.
Brett and I left hoping that it would work out, but were not building our hopes up too much. We went back to the hostel and watched some TV shows. It was a bit chilly that night, so we wanted to stay in. We were hoping that Leve would contact us soon so that at least we had some kind of sense of accomplishment about the apartment situation.
About 11:00pm that night, Leve texted us and told us Dani, the other roommate was fine with it. He said he loved Americans and the more would be better... Dani had just come back from Las Vegas, so he was still on an American high I think. Good for us! Leve had told us that once we heard back from him, we could tell him whether we wanted to accept the room or not. Since there were a few other people who had seen the apartment, we had to be the first ones to call him back. It was a good day. Tomorrow, we will call Leve and let him know we are in.
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