Chapter 1: The great apartment search - Third round

  On Monday I left the site office around 3pm. Kamil had work to do, so I drove alone full of thoughts about that the whole apartment issue is more complicated than I had expected. I placed a high hopes in this tour and also during daytime it is better and more positive to see the houses and my budget rose by another 10000!!

            Ali came on time so I joined him and the same property owner like yesterday in his mafia SUV. The presence of the owned should have been a warning, but I didn’t care and was enjoying the ride through a beautiful and quiet villa neighborhood. First visit didn’t work because the guy who should let us in was sleeping and not even multiple calls woke him up. So we moved on to the next house.

            Same nice neighborhood full of beautiful new villas. But there was also one which even from big distance was clearly old, uglier, broken and obviously didn’t belong there. And guess what? We stopped directly in front of it!! Through rusty broken door in a peeling white wall I stepped on a big yard full of construction material and broken furniture. Good for children to play football, but for me there was no use of it. What a surprise!! Inside the building was a construction site too. Ali explained me the problem then. People owning villas in the city buy a new one somewhere out of the city and divide the old one to small apartments for renting. They are no architects so sometimes they build weird things like when you have footsteps in the bathroom, or balcony with no door to access it.

            So the first apartment that day was far the best I’ve seen. OK room with normal bathroom, kitchen ready in three days in the corner and one small window to small balcony without access. But still I felt like I wanted something better. Things improved when they shoved me a common roof space. There were chaotically placed air conditioning devices and satellites, so there were no big free space, but I started thinking that I could actually live here.

            In positive mood we moved to another house. This one looked very promising. But when we entered it was a huge construction site. Bricks and mortar everywhere. We almost got dirty when passing through freshly rendered corridor. Again one of the home-made villas. There were like ten different studios available and among them one was a hit. In third floor they had a nice room with small balcony to the garden, one extra window on the other side and big bathroom. There was still a wall between the room and the bathroom and the door was to the corridor. “In three days we break that wall, put new door instead and wall up the old ones” ensured me the owner so that I was not worried!!

The roof space was nicely stair-step with even more AC and satellites even more chaotically placed that there was barely a space for a deck-chair. But I liked the place and it actually was what I was looking for. The price 95000Dhs was negotiable so I was really considering.

            Unfortunately for Ali I had one more ace in the sleeve before I wanted to make a final decision. Anyway…We woke up the first guy and went to see his place. The same construction site and one apartment for rent with a weird architectural invention. Corner kitchen created by building a 1,5m high wall in the living room so badly that when you put a kitchen unit in, there won’t be any space for a cook. “People from Bangladesh have never seen a kitchen in their lives so they can’t know ho to build one” joked Ali. “If you take it, we tear down the wall for you. No problem. In three days” seriously added the owner. Very funny company :)

            With better feeling of at least some sureness I went to the hotel.  The next round of apartment sightseeing is awaiting tomorrow so better to sleep well.