A Bump in the Road

Well, I told you that I would next post when I was settled into my new apartment. I didn't think you'd have to wait this long, but sadly I am still not settled into my new apartment. However, I figured an update was in order.

I was first supposed to move in Tuesday of last week. Then it was Wednesday. Then it was pushed back to Thursday. Finally on Friday, around 6:30pm (2 hours after the time we were supposed to meet) Nick, the guy I'm subletting from, rode his motorcycle to the theater and gave me the keys and I gave him the deposit check. Since it was late on a Friday evening and I had to work all weekend, I didn't have chance to move my stuff until today (and by today I mean Monday, even though it is technically Tuesday as I write). My plan was to spend the day doing laundry and packing my things, and then taking the first load of stuff up to my new place. Then I planned on coming back to Hoboken to have dinner with Matt and Court and to hang out for a bit before taking my final load of stuff uptown and spending my first night there.

Well, to make a long story short, when I got to the apartment building, I found that my set of keys were, in a word, useless. The key to the building did not open the front door, and after a resident had let me into the lobby, I found that the key to the apartment did not open the apartment. Imagine my surprise. After about 20 minutes of trying to coax the key into working, I accosted a resident coming into the building and asked if they knew where the super lived. After I explained my situation, this person said that they would call the super and send him to me. So I sat down on the stoop and waited. For 30 minutes. After I had waited quite long enough, I went out in search of the super. He was hard to find. Turns out he lives in a room off of a courtyard next to the building, which is gated. The gate can be opened by a working key to the building...which I didn't have. So as you can imagine, it was rather hard for me to get to the super. Eventually, I managed to get his attention, and he came out to me.

I had been warned that Roni, the super, had limited English. I was not prepared for the look of total incomprehension he gave me when I told him of my situation and asked for help. He shuffled away into his room, and about 5 minutes later came back and said he would let me into the building. However, he had no spare keys to give me, which was a problem since that means that I would have no way to get back in. Obviously, that was an unsatisfactory situation, so I gathered my things and went back to Hoboken, where I write now.

Clearly this is far from being resolved, but I'm really starting to think that this is a sign that I shouldn't be living at this apartment, even though the guy already cashed my deposit check. Unfortunately, I really only have a day or so to resolve this, because very early Wednesday morning I'm taking a bus back to Pittsburgh for the holiday weekend, and won't get back to NYC until late next Tuesday.

Keep an eye out for a further update, and keep your fingers crossed that it works out!