Apartment! Yah!

Dorthe and I have got an apartment at last. The system is a bit of a funny one - Dorthe is a member of this company that owns and runs many apartment buildings around greater Copenhagen. She has been a member of this organisation for more than 20 years (her grandparents signed her up when she was baptised). you'd think that 20 years on the waiting list would put you at the top for the best apartments, but apparently, it doesn't! We had a look at the types of apartments and locations available before we left in December, but it wasn't until about May while we were still travelling that we staretd looking actively - they would send out an offer, and then Dorthe's parents would go and have a look at it for us - there were many pictures and descriptions of apartments that went back and forth via email while we were away. And even she'd been on the list for so long, it still look us until September to actually get offered a contract. Yikes!

The place is in central Frederiksberg, which is a city inside Copenhagen itself. Back in the old days, it was a separate town outside the city defenses, the closest one to Copenhagen. However, Copehagen has since grown beyond the old defenses, and the town of Frederiksberg is now completely surrounded by Copenhagen - we're about 10 minutres on a bike from Rådhuspladsen and the centre of town though, so its still pretty central. And of course, Frederiks' "berg" has a sister hill (berg), which once belonged to a young fulla named Carl, where he built a brewery and startd making Bavarian style beer more than a 150 years ago - yes, thats right, the massive Carlsberg brewery is a stone's throw down the road from us!

The apartment is four floors up - Copenhagen limits all the buildings here to five floors, so its nearly at the top - meaning that it gets lots of light - it lies in an east-west direction, and so gets morning sun on the balcony and evening sun in the bedroom and kitchen. It has nice wooden floors, and a newly renovated bathroom (a rarity in this town), and comes in at a total of.... 54 sq metres. Massive, I know! Still, its a pretty good place. The main problem though is that the walls are in pretty bad condition - lots of holes in the plaster that need to be filled. Interestingly though, part of the rent goes into a fund for new tenants to repair and paint the apartment - we thus have just over US$1000 to spend on paint and polyfilla etc doing up the apartment when we take it over on the 15th September - it'll give me something to do during the day, I guess, while Dorthe is at work!