I have been looking for an apartment to share with C.R. My current landlady may want us all out by the end of the summer, and if she doesn’t, I can’t decide if it’s wise to try and survive another winter in the freezing apartment without enough hot water to go around. I have been thinking a lot lately about moving out of the center of Florence where the tourists are like locusts and the heat rises straight up and traps any molecule of cool air in its death grip. I long for the calmer neighborhoods of Italians, where there are piazzas lined in trees and cool breezes that tickle the singing birds. I need a little peace.

So we have been searching for something in our preferred area and daydreaming of the possibilities. Early this week, I found a perfect apartment: two bedrooms, kitchen, balcony, in our price range and just where I want to be. I asked Cazz to call, because I feared that I may not understand all of the vocabulary over the phone. He called to ask if we could go see it and explained that C.R. and I were interested, and that I was working here and had all of my documents. I listened eagerly, already planning move-in dinners and mentally setting up furniture. When he hung up the phone, without a date being mentioned, I sensed something was wrong. The woman at the agency, had apparently made a range of excuses, finally ending with “Please don’t insist”, indicating that the apartment would not be available to stranieri foreigners. We could not even go to see it.

I was hurt, and Cazz, bless his Italian heart, was incensed. He went into a soliloquy of the problems with Italy and searched for a number to send an angry message to the agency. Thwarted by the lack of decent contact information, he eventually gave up. All of my mentally taped-up pictures came fluttering down, and I am resigned to the continual search for decent housing. I can’t decide if I should stay where I am for the time being, save a little money and try to bear the cold, angry winter, or if I should keep looking. My spirit is a little dampened by this turn of events. However, I know there are reasons that things happen, so I will take this as a blessing in disguise. Working with an agency in Italy is a tricky thing. They have huge and sometimes unreasonable fees, ranging from an entire months rent up front (not to mention the actual rent, deposit, etc.), to fees every month on top of rent, that you pay directly to them. After all is said and done, the rent is a decent amount more than the price quoted when you did the search. So maybe a private listing will be more fruitful.

In any case, for the time being, my apartment is comfortable. I have two friends in town from the states this week, and they are astounded by the size, location and price of it. It truly is a little gem, and is mostly marred by the inattention of the owner, who likes to make unreasonable demands, and doesn’t want to pay to have anything fixed. This, alongside the lack of hot water, fear of the impending cold, and the fact that my evil neighbor likes to throw my bike around our shared space on the ground floor make moving out seem refreshing. But it takes time and patience to construct this life, and if that’s the price I have to pay to live in this country, I’ll pay it twice over.