House Hunting

I've spent the weekend doing two things. No wait, three, of which two had to do with houses.

First on saturday morning, We (me and Marie) set off to Breda, to join my MI colleagues in the effort of bringing down the ceilings of Wendy's place. It was nice, I got to know the whole of her family, Henry (husband), Kirsten and Maren (daughters), Jasper (helpful son). Other colleagues were present as I said, Daniele, Pascal, Libuse, Theo, his wife keeping the little ladies entertained. Is that it? yes, that's it. Pretty heavy job a nice change for us, whose hardest work is pressing buttons, be them those of a keyboard, or at the most the coffee machine's.

At midday, I stopped that and started cooking my worldwide renowned pasta with bottarga (dried ovaries of cod-like fishes), who was very appreciated. I'd have called it a day, already, but it wasn't nearly done: whereas the other restarted to bring down the third room, Marie and me quickly changed and left for Mechelen, where we had six (!) houses/apartments to check.

Pretty good fun, if it hadn't been for some misunderstanding between me and various agents who messed up my carefully crafted timetable. But, (there's always a but) marie and me could not agree on any of the houses really. the stylish one which I liked (inhabited by a couple of (gay?) musicians had two very steep flight of stairs, which would make it very difficult to move stuff in and out. Another one, which I insisted for visiting, she liked but I absolutely hated. Old and badly mantained, with a nightmarish layout.

Luckily, we managed to intrude ourselves unexpected in a apartment which we both liked: no surprise, being it the most expensive of the bunch. here it is:



Click on it to go to the google map. I'd post the pictures, but hopefully the weblink will be broken once the house is taken off the market by ourselves. Anyway, as you can see from the pictures it's in a nice green area. the road it sits on is quite trafficked, there's a hypermarket just down the road, which is however a good thing for us - plus, over that wood in front there's a double rail-line, but nothing to fret about: the house is anyway new and quite well sound-proofed, so no troubles for sleeping at night (or at day, should we want to). The garden on the back is simply huge, and I can foresee many many barbecues in it. Of course me being me, I al;ready checked how far the nearest swimming pool is (2.8 Km):



The station is close enough for a bike ride every day, so hopefully i'll get rid of my car sometime in the near future. the idea is to move in the begin of june. Which incidentally means no africa trip, and I'm also going to forgo my training in perugia - substituted by a more useful one in Oxford anyway - end of June, so that I can move and settle down before leaving.

On Sunday morning, we took advantage of the sunny weather to stroll around at the national botanic garden in Meise:



Very nice place, we managed to go straight through it from the entrance in the village side 'til the greenhouses, which we visited in their entirety (albeit quickly). I'd like to post some pictures of the inside but they are crap since I didn't have my camera, only my mobile phone. X-P

In the afternoon, another tour of a nice green area, the region around the lake de la cambre (in Ixelles):



On the monday, no work for me, I tried to arrange a meeting with the owner of the house we liked, but couldn't make it. we just went to visit another one, which we didn't like particularly, so we decided to stick with the one we already applied for. cross your fingers for us, guys and girls. We'll let you know more later on!!!