the apartment

A break from the "On Paris" section for a bit, because we have good news!

You begin by boiling the duck. After it's boiled, you throw out the fat. You return it to boiling, and you throw out to fat. You boil the duck again. And you throw out the bones.

Joe told me this fatty duck joke while we were eating our dinner. Granted, it cost us only three euros, but something about this dinner finally made us snap. I am full; I'm thankful, but I am so bread-bloated that I don't know how I will walk to our first apartment rendez-vous tonight. Uphill. In an early cold.

We split the baguette between us & opened the all-natural Tartine de Canard (a French duck version of Fancy Feast for humans). The smell wasn't too bad. I remembered liking foie gras on my last visit & imagined the tartine the same. I even suggested it.

And it was good. I'm not bitching. I'm just saying that the layer of fat around it was almost more than I could take after a breakfast of cookies, a lunch of orange marmelade with crackers & an apple, and a snack of bread. We were both laughing so hard that we spit baguette crust at each other.

This was our break for the day. We'd made 15 phone calls, set up four apartment visits & been rejected 7 times. Most people tend to just not answer calls when the number is comprised only of 0s. At least the Skype calls only cost $3–not even half of our web credit.


By this time, we had three appointments set. We had walked ourselves past two & taken pictures of they to remind ourselves (which got some odd glances turned our way). Then, in a post-dinner stretch of ambition we made a final call. And we got a visit for that night at 20h30.

We walked through the rain to the apartment & found ourselves in front of a large, very French apartment building. We looked up & up to the small windows at the top with old shutters on a pulley system. We would be at the top.

I was trying hard not to love it already, just based on how authentic it felt. We had other appointments. We weren't deciding yet. But when Myriam came around the corner with her bags full of pots & plates for the très petit studio & led us up the sloping wooden stairs, my heart was beating faster.

Then we saw how small 182 square feet (basically average for what we were looking at in our "price range"). Then we saw the lack of chairs. Then we saw the view–southwest with rolling hills glowing orange in a sunset; gardens & roofs of our neighbors surrounding us.

All entertainment is a downhill walk. Work is only a few minutes away. We're on our own. We don't need a Realtor. We don't need another adult to sign off on us. We are ready.

Myriam was ready too. She brought the least & keys, giving them to us to make it easier if we decided to take the apartment. She invited us to her apartment in Luxembourg. She took our word that we would get back to her by Wednesday, when she'd scheduled another showing. How can you say no to someone that trusts you so much? To such an authentic-feeling experience?

So this is it: this is our economic decision, our first apartment, our first 17 square meters in which to make writing happen. Now, we're cheers-ing that with a veggie pizza & a three-euro bottle of wine.