The flat hunting begins...

Another interesting day in sin city.... Thought I'd go and check out the coffee morning of the BWC - British women's club for those in the know...the coffee morning was being held at a cafe on old Arbat street - a street I had yet to visit and what a very interesting street it was! It's supposed to be the old bohemian part of Moscow with markets and the like but it looked more like a party street to me. Lots of bars and restaurants and cafes - we're looking at some flats in this area tomorrow but have been warned this is where all the youngsters hang out so could be noisy...check me out in my use of the word 'youngsters'  - God, what happened to me?! Anyway, as I hadn't been to the tube station ' Arbatskaya' before - don't worry, I didn't have my iphone and so there are not 5000 pictures of a metro station to follow although let me tell you...it was pretty special. I'll have to go back and do my metro spotting bit later. Anyway - this particular metro station had 2,0000000000 steps. Oh my lord, by the time I got out of there I looked like I had been soaked with a bucket of water and poor Arthur had a broken spine from all the bumping of me dragging him backwards up another set of stairs. Finally I got to the coffee morning - looking somewhat bedraggled but still alive and met some lovely ladies. Sadly it was only briefly as I had bravely gone when Arthur was due his nap and so he decided sitting amongst many strange women just wasn't his bag and so after being there for less than 30 minutes I headed off to try another tube station in the vain hope that it had less steps. Long story short - there are steps everywhere and my quest to shorten my pain ended with me extending it by having to change on more metro lines and end up miles from the hotel which meant a long walk home.....grrrrrrr. So, as I enter the hotel Graeme is running towards me shouting 'There you are! The property lady has been waiting for us for half an hour - where have you been and why didn't you take the phone?' - Not really my fault that he had arranged a meeting and I didn't take the phone - how was I supposed to know? After my 80 km walk and mount Everest step climb my response was 'Don't shout at me or I will cry'...and true enough I think I would have done - I was that delirious from my experience. So poor Arthur needing sleep was then dragged into a car and off we went to see our first properties in Moscow! Luckily I grabbed a bag of ginger bread  men and that kept Arthur happy for a while!

So anyway, properties. When we arrived at the first property - which takes forever in a car as the traffic is so bad, Arthur had fallen asleep in the car seat so we asked the lady if he could stay in the car whilst we whizzed up and had a look at the flat. We had both presumed that the guy driving the car was a driver for the property place but when we were up in the flat the girl turns round and says - ' He's probably nervous looking after the baby as he's just a taxi driver' What?! We had left our child in a cab with a random taxi driver who had driven off to find a parking space. Parenting gold star for us ...again. So, we looked at the flat which was owned by an English guy and it was amazing but sadly it was on the top floor and had no elevator. After my experience of the metro that day I certainly wasn't going to rent somewhere that would probably kill me in the end...one bag of shopping too many and that would be it...massive coronary. So off we trotted back to the taxi to find that Arthur had woken up and the taxi driver was speaking Russian to him - maybe telling him that he should get away from his parents as soon as possible as they were inclined to leave him places with strangers. Arthur was having a ball so does he really need us? - that is my question of the day. So off we went to see the next two places. The first was great - the room in these places is mental - the sitting rooms in all of them are about the same size as the bottom floor of house in Pompey - I might add here that the lady was showing us all flats that were at the top end of our price limit - they get a percentage of the rent so go figure. The second had a new kitchen but they had forgotten to put an oven in....? 'Do you really need an oven?' 'Yes, that is something I expect for 2 million pounds per month.' Great flat though and the girl said that she'd tell the owners that we'd need an oven so we'll see. The flat was in a great place, very central and a play park for Arthur in view from sitting room window. The third flat was huge but no elevator. The flat was only on the second floor and they have 24 hour concierge who said I could leave pram with them and so not have to cart it up steps. The hallway was just being decorated and was rather spectacular although that is not a reason to rent a flat! I must admit though, I was pleasantly surprised - all flats were big, light and airy and very spacious. We were laughing at the fact that we found out today that Ikea here is quite expensive and we were banking all our hopes on filling the new flat with Ikea furniture - reality will be a huge sitting room with two small stools and a dog basket that's much comfier than the stools - 'Alice, get out of your bed, my turn tonight.'

So, a semi successful day in the fact that it has made us feel much happier about the kind of properties you can find and that you won't feel cooped up and deranged after a week. I'm unhappy with the system here when it comes to looking around a flat as you have to have the owner and the owners agent there and I find myself being terribly British and not wanting to offend them which leads to trivial outbursts of, 'Oh, that's a nice cupboard' - no it's not it's made of chipboard and smells of wee but heh - what can you do?

No photos because...remember people, I forgot the phone...I know, you can shout at me later - join the queue....!