Piso Hunters: Pt. III

It’s final episode, folks. The piso hunt is officially over and our piso hunters are finally settled into their new home. Of course, like any new place it comes with plenty of new discoveries. It is day 5 and the piso hunters (aka me and my roommates) are hoping our streak of bad luck is over. Let’s take a look back on this whole experience…

We saw the apartment. Sure, it wasn’t our dream apartment but it would do while we were here. It had potential. We signed the reservation papers and paid the agency fee (which for us was equal to 1-month’s rent) the same day we saw the place. We were running out of time in the hotel accommodations CIEE provided us with, however, we had booked an Airbnb back in July just in case our housing hunt didn’t go as planned. We wanted to sell our spots in the Airbnb if we could get into the piso, so we asked how we should pay the first month’s *prorated* rent, security deposit, and eventually gastos. What we understood was that it had to be Spanish bank account to Spanish bank account—only the agency fee was accepted in cash. At that point in time, I was the only one who had received a text from the bank that my account was opened, so I became the primary account on the papers for gastos (utilities) and rent.

From there, my roommates all Venmo’d me their payments. Too bad we forgot it was Labor Day back in the states and the banks were closed. Therefore I didn’t receive the bank transfer deposits until Wednesday of that week, which also happened to be the day our hotel accommodations ended. Luckily we had that Airbnb for a whole week, so we all just took up residence in there (some people had sold their spots before we moved in there and some people moved out after only a few days because they were able to get into their pisos). Once the payments hit my American bank account, we had to transfer those funds into my Spanish bank account. Unfortunately, what I didn’t realize, like Venmo, TransferWise has to verify your account with two micro-deposits and micro-withdrawals. I set up the account on that Wednesday, verified it on Thursday, and began to transfer our money from my American account to my Spanish account.

Good thing it was close to the weekend, though!

Yeah, our money wasn’t going to go through until the following Tuesday…the day before our Airbnb was ending.

The weekend happens, life goes on. We found out over that weekend that another group of Americans from CIEE (hey, guys!) had paid their rent and deposit in cash, and were confused why we weren’t given that option because we could have already been moved into our piso. On Monday, we woke up to a pleasant surprise. Our money had gone through a day early and was in my Spanish bank account! We could FINALLY get the keys to our piso and slowly move in from the Airbnb (they were conveniently 2 blocks away from each other). We called the agency to tell them we had the money and they could take it out of our account!

If you thought it was going to be smooth sailing now simply because this post is getting long and it seems like a natural ending point, think again.

When we called the agency, we also asked for the rent to be prorated more because we had not been living in the apartment during the time the original prorated rent was set for. Because we were under the impression that we could not pay the rent and security deposit in cash, the process had taken significantly longer. However, the person at the agency we were talking with didn’t know the full situation, so naturally we asked our original agent who showed us the piso and was with us during the reservation signing. We assumed she was at work at the agency office. She was not. It was neither a happy nor calm conversation. However, we did learn a few things from this conversation:

1. Cultural barriers. When someone here gives you a number to contact them with, even if it’s their personal number, just use it. In the American culture it is not always appropriate to use someone’s personal contact when you are working with them on a professional level. It turns out when we called the agency and asked to speak to our agent, her boss called her to tell her we were “angry” and asking to speak with her, so it was rude that we had called her boss instead of her. TL;DR: just use whatever number someone gives you.
2. Language barriers. “Frustrated” is a fun word. When we explained to the person on the phone from the agency that we were frustrated we couldn’t pay in cash, that was taken as “angry.” Think about it. In English, there is clear difference between frustration and anger. Now think about this, how would describe the word “frustrated” if you were teaching it to someone whose first language was not English? You would most likely describe it as “like anger and annoyed,” right?
3. Language barrier part two. Turns out, gastos are what absolutely had to be paid Spanish bank account to Spanish bank account. However, the first month’s rent and the security deposit were able to be paid in cash. When explaining this to us in the meeting to sign the reservation papers, this got mixed up because of that good ole language barrier. It was truly no one’s fault, however, when it was explained (and verified multiple times in both languages) it was understood that the rent, the deposit, and gastos had to be paid Spanish account to Spanish account. If you are unclear about how to do the payment, just ask in different ways. Or, write out a checklist of everything that has to be paid with options of how the payment should be made (cash, bank transfer, TransferWise, etc), and have whomever you are working with check the boxes that apply to the payment.

So, after the unpleasant phone call, we tried to transfer the money from my account to the landlord’s account. It didn’t work because the banks were closed for the day. The next morning I went to the bank and took out all of the money we needed. Let me tell ya, I have NEVER walked around with that much cash and it was the most nerve-wracking experience.

Yay! We got our keys! With one day in the Airbnb to spare! We can move in over the next 2 days!

You’re seeing how well this is going for us, right? Do you think it was that easy?

We walk into the apartment and realize we don’t have an oven. Not a big deal, though. A lot of places here don’t. We have air conditioning, which was a pleasant surprise. We soon realize that the previous tenants didn’t clean anything…and I mean ANYTHING. I truly don’t think I have ever seen so many paper towels and sponges used in a small apartment. Pots and pans were greasy and sitting in the drawers of an entertainment center in the living room. The drying racks in the cabinet had mold on them. There were stickers all over the apartment on random doors. The bathrooms were puke-worthy. The refrigerator was not sanitary. The floor turns the bottoms of our shoes black.

We’re amazing, though, and got that place ready to be lived in by the next day (most of the work was done by 2 of my amazing roomies because my other roomie and I had appointments on cleaning day). We moved out of the Airbnb and into the piso on our last day in the Airbnb.

The piso is paid for. It’s clean. We’re moved in and didn’t have to get anymore temporary accommodations. What else could possibly happen?

Apparently a lot.

Since we don’t have an oven, one of the pieces of “furniture” we paid for and were provided with was a large toaster oven. It’s our first night, we didn't want to spend money on going out to eat, and we had a pizza. Pop it in the toaster oven, right? Yeah, the toaster oven didn’t work. We ended up being able to fit it in the microwave, though. It took a while with a lot of readjusting the pizza.

Not a big deal, right? Just pizza in a microwave. Well, since we hadn’t been able to fully unpack until then, we had some laundry to do and some new towels to wash before using. We were fortunate enough to have a washer in our piso, so my roommate went to put her towels in the washer. The door came off. Cool.

I guess as long as the door seals tightly it could still work. And it did! ...for about 10 minutes until it decided to go rogue and water started *unsurprisingly* leaking out of the washer.

Two things that can be fixed. It’s fine. Laughing so hard over our luck with this piso, I accidentally dropped and broke one of our plates. Not a big deal but just another broken thing.

One of the best parts of moving into a new place is decorating. So, on my way back to my room to hang up some pictures, I realize the air conditioner is dripping. Just a few drops. Not a big deal. Then I come out of my room, and our AC has decided to spread its wings and live out its dream of being Niagara Falls.

We had the AC flooding our living room and my roommate’s dripping wet towels from the washing machine fiasco in our living room. We should have charged for access to the man-made lake in our piso. After a conversation with my dad about why the AC would do that, it turns out the collection basin was full. The collection basin was an liter soda bottle shoved in the corner of my room between my wardrobe and wall.

Oh, and even though our former-favorite Orange employee told us we could get WiFi set up in our place this past Wednesday or Thursday, it is now Sunday and we still don’t have WiFi. Two of my roommates are out of data. We are all almost out of money because we’ve been going to cafés to use WiFi but we have to buy stuff there.

On the bright side, we are getting a new washer tomorrow because the mechanic who came to look at our broken one said it literally belonged in the trash.

This café WiFi is timing out so I guess I’m done with this blog post now.