We had heaps of sleep to catch up on but were both awake for
a while at 4am, but managed to sleep again until 7:40am - time to leap out of
bed and head straight to our apartment, where the power and water servicemen
were due to arrive between 8am and 10am to connect us up.
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| We've arrived |
Wow, awesome service. The waterman arrived at 9am and the
powerman at 10am, the only problem being that the water didn’t then flow, and
the powerman thought that the real estate guy had organised the wrong apartment
to be connected up. The trouble is the number of the apartment. The legal docs
say we are Lot 7 or Apartment 2B but the bell outside the door says Apartment
4. There’s no number on our door. The outcome was that we had to retrace our
steps to the real estate office and unload our concerns to the receptionist
there. The woman duly rang the electricity department in Perpignan and got seriously
annoyed at them. We were a little perturbed but she was very pleasant and
chatty to us. After much waiting, during which the manager of the real estate
office chatted away with us, the electricity department finally sorted it all
out and agreed to send someone else out today.
Yippee.
The receptionist was then going to tackle the water dept. We had
to hotfoot it back to the apartment because they could turn up anytime between
now and 5pm, but we did have time to grab a quick coffee from Bar Pablo. We
were most distressed to find the price of an espresso had gone up from €0.90 to
€1.40 but hope the owner charged us tourist prices.
Back to our place and a bit of unpacking, tidying and
wonderfully soon a second electricity serviceman arrived and very quickly
connected us up. Yes, we have light. Now to start vacuuming the floors,
especially all the large quantity of bird poo and feathers from around the outer
shutters. The place looks so much nicer already.
It’s now 2pm and John has gone off to the bank to sort our
bank card. Hopefully the waterman will arrive soon and then we will be fully up
and running. It was quite funny when we gave our sob story to the receptionist
at the real estate agent. I think I was looking extremely weary and when she
got on the phone to the Perpignan office told them in no uncertain terms that
we had come all the way from NZ, had slept in the car overnight, and needed our
power on NOW. We are going to give her a
little NZ gift when we can confirm back to her when everything is connected.
A wee surprise at 3pm when the water heater started up with
a horrendous permanent buzzing from the switchboard. We will have to put up with
it from 3-5pm each day until we get a sparky in to get prices – he can replace
or fiddle with the breaker that’s making a racket.
Everyone told us when we left NZ that we had to take it easy
and chill out for a while before tackling anything. Unfortunately, as we knew
we would, we have had to run on pure adrenalin for the past three days but
hopefully will be able to settle down soon. We have the hire car until
tomorrow, and hope to make 1 or 2 trips back to Perpignan to collect more
stuff. We thought we only had the car for two days and a bit but we found out
it costs the same for three days so we have kept hold of it. We need tools and
a ladder first off, but are also looking at maybe collecting a clothes dryer
and other stuff while we have the car. A washing machine may have to wait until
we have sorted the kitchen, as we may put in under the kitchen bench instead of
in the bathroom. We will have to hire a BIG van sometime to trip up to IKEA Montpellier
to buy the sofabed (they won’t deliver it), and will collect other bigger stuff
then, e.g. dining table, shelves etc. I think we will happily put this off for
a week or so though.
The town is definitely gearing up for the Easter
festivities. Heaps of street cleaning going on, part of the main street is
being blocked off from 6am to noon on Easter Sunday for processions. The main
street is in the process of a major make-over – it’s ripped up for drainage and
is being laid in new paving and new footpaths. Everyone we have met so far has
been really nice, including the servicemen.
Impressions? The town is everything we remembered. It is
utterly French, and the people are without exception very friendly - always a bonjour as you pass. The apartment is as
expected, not large but plenty large enough. It’s going to be great here. We
can’t wait to lie down and have our first night here, water connected with a
little luck.
The real estate people didn’t believe us that we had turned
on all the required stopcocks, so sent a man out to check and satisfy himself
there was really a problem. By 5pm he’d been and gone promising to sort things
out. With plenty of evening left and our car hire running out, we headed back
into Perpignan for Leroy Merlin (another Mitre10) and Auchan again. The loot
was a bunch of tools, a ladder, drill and more, then a major supermarket shop
until the doors closed at 10pm. Back home for a bread and cheese dinner at
11pm.
At this stage we haven’t arrived mentally. We are running on
exhaustion and willpower, and have no feel for what is happening. A bit sad
really, and not a lot of fun. However we are coping well enough, making dozens
of decisions without getting hassled with each other, and are getting through
the absurdly long list of “things to do when setting up home”. There’s an
amazing amount of stuff to do, and all in a foreign language in an area we don’t
know well.
