Evicted!> Angry Rant!

So I am now in a new flat in Prague. How did this happen? On Thursday Kyra and I had just gotten back from a nice walk and lunch in our neighborhood. We were in our wonderful apartment and I received a call on my mobile from the owner of the apartment. She told me in very broken English that three Finish girls, who had come by and seen the place the day before, wanted to rent the apartment for a year and then buy it. She told me that Kyra and I would have to move out the next day. Fuck.

Normally I would have had a contract with the landlady to protect me from this kind of shit. I had in fact signed a month long lease with full paper work, but that had expired a few days earlier, on the 9th of September and we had agreed verbally that I would stay until Oct 3rd, when I fly back to the states. I had even paid her full rent up until the 3rd. Without a contract I was shit out of luck and the real estate agent that had found me this apartment informed me that the three girls would move in at 4 on Friday and that she would try to help me find a new apartment for the two and a half weeks I have left in Prague.

I tried to fight it by making both the real estate agent and apartment owner feel terrible about throwing us out. It was incredibly unethical to do that when they could have easily told the Finnish girls that the place was rented for the next two and a half weeks and that they could find them another place until we moved out. This didn’t work and the next morning I went to see the only place the real estate agent could find on short notice that would rent to me for such a short time and that could be equipped with internet by Tuesday, when I start my next contract.

I considered just leaving all of my stuff at a friend’s flat and going on a short vacation with Kyra until the 2nd, but my Swedish client needed me to get to work as some my consulting is tied into a mailing that they have already sent out, making my work time sensitive. So we took the flat after a good deal of bargaining. They wanted 17,000 crowns for the two and a half weeks and I was able to get them down to 13,000 crowns, which was still a big rip off and still more expensive than the apartment I was being kicked out of. To top it off this apartment is run down, with less comforts of home (toaster, nice plates, cookery, towels, bed sheets, etc.), I can’t be guaranteed the internet will be up by Tuesday, the kitchen is hard to work in, the bed has a foam mattress which is f-ing up my back and it’s a much smaller apartment than the last one. Yeah, I am pretty pissed. Once again I have learned the importance of having a contract for everything.

So I am done renting Czech apartments. The one I had from Jan-May was a pain in the ass with internet, the gynecologist toilet and in the end they tried to rip me off on the deposit. This debacle has pushed me over the edge.