The Big Move

You guys already congratulated me, thanks a lot. But now you can officially congratulate me as we received confirmation today. They want us in there, we received the contract today for review and only have to make an appointment to sign it. We plan to that that either tomorrow or Wednesday and if all goes well we'll be moving this weekend.

Words cannot describe my incredible happiness. Not only is Pauline the best person I could wish for as far as living together is concerned, I'm also able to finally shake off the depressing coil of this backward town and move into the city. Freedom awaits me, without huge financial strains. Finally.

I'll miss this place, though. My parents have been so good to me and if it weren't for our crappy location I doubt I'd have considered moving out at all. However, I feel I'm needing it. I'm 20 years old now, responsible enough to stand on my own two legs and above all: I want it.

I'm not looking forward to the actual move, though. I like the thought of moving and I like the thought of a satisfying result, but I hate calling around to get all financial and administrative things in order. And I hate packing the most of all, I'll be happy when everything is done.

My student allowance by the government needs to be raised as I'll be living on my own. Generally this works pretty fast as most student movers switch places within a few days, so I'm hoping I'll be getting my fair and raised share by the 25th of November when they'll be depositing money into my bank account.. I need to get my insurance in order and make sure they'll be taking it off of my bank account instead of my mom's. I'll have to send out the mandatory change of address cards and call several institutions to tell them my place of residence has changed. And of course I have to stop by the city hall to tall them I'm now a resident of their county. All formalities, but they have to be done.

And the worst of them all is internet. Amidst all this official business and bantering you'd think internet connection is not such a big deal, but it really is. I have DSL, which runs via telephone lines. As I'm happy with my current connection and provider and as I'm wanting to keep my mail address etc. etc. I want my subscription to be switched from my parents' house to my new place. For those who don't know, we have two connections in this house, DSL for me and cable for the rest of the family.

Normally you'd call the company that takes care of the telephone lines and tell them I'm moving and want them to switch my net connection from my old address to my new address. Consequence is that this house will be left with no working telephone line. As I'm the only one moving and my parents will be staying that is not an option. There's only one option left, according to the webstie of my provider. I have to cancel my subscription at my current address, tell them to save my username and mail aliases etc. etc. and then when I'm disconnected here I have to subscribe again at my new address.

Canceling subscription takes 3 weeks. Ordering a new one takes 4. Two months without internet is too much and completely ridiculous as something as futile as cable TV takes 24 hours to be installed and activated. In today's world a person is relying more on internet than on TV, I can tell you. I can live with a week or 2 without internet, but 2 months is ridiculous. I'll be checking whether there's a way around this.

Speaking of cable TV, I have some great news. There's no cable connection in the apartment. The company who's renting it to us (which is also the company that owns the building, their activities take place right below us) feels our pain and they will be hooking us up with a satellite connection and receiver. Just like that. It'll remain theirs and the subscription costs are ours, but we can watch a whole lot of TV for 20 Euros a year (approx.) and we don't have to spend a dime on installing it. That surprised me and such kind gestures always give me a good feeling. I'm sure these guys are honest and mean no harm.

I hope to shoot some pictures shortly after we have signed the contract as the apartment is then officially ours to live in. Stay tuned, it's a nice place.

Happiness factor as of now on a scale from 1 to 10:

25

Note: I'm aware it's not all about roses. But Pauline and I talked this over endlessly and we're ready for it.