One Apartment Seouled to the Waegukin

The apartment search ended in a dual victory. First, I found a nice two-bedroom apartment in quiet section of Itaewon Dong-2. This part is stuffed with all kinds of win. First, it is not by the Itaewon station, which is where all the seedy bars and crappy tourist joints are. Second, it is a very quiet place; you have to navigate up some little roads to get to it. Third, it is top floor with no shared walls. Fourth, it has a stove! I met the ajumma who rents the place, and while she is a bit manic, she seemed quite friendly. She had, of course, not warned the current tenant that I was coming with my real estate man, but the current tenant was quite understanding and, since she (Tiffany) spoke fluent English (surprising for a Canadian!), I was able to ask her a series of rapid-fire questions that neither the Ajumma nor my agent could follow. In this conversation I got info on the neighbors, the ajumma, the monthly bills, and pretty much anything else I could think to ask. As it turns out, Tiffany is leaving Dongguk after three years there. A few blocks away, the neighborhood is grand, with little nooks serving sam gyap sal, a couple of nifty looking western-style bars, and an English bookstore which, I’m certain, the OAF will wear out.

The dual victory aspect of this was that we also went back to re-check a place I had seen last weekend. At that time it smelled a bit of mold, but we were told cleaning had removed that problem. We got there and the mold smell was just a bad as ever.

As a bonus surprise, the ajumma/landlord who owned it decided, just this afternoon, that the rent should go up from 800,000 won to 850,000 won. In an email to me (which I received in his office as I had been in transit when he sent it), my real estate agent referred to this woman as the “bad landlord” and he was nearly prostrate with embarrassment that this change had been communicated while I was on the train on my way up to Seoul. Then, after telling us that there was no mold, but that if there was we could always open the windows (I should note that it was 13 degrees below zero last night) she tried to force me to decide on the spot, “you need to decide tonight or it won’t be available.”

It was nice to walk away from her.

As a bonus and a problem, the place I did get is available February 26th. The bonus is I don’t have to pay for time I won’t use it, and the problem is that I will have to move up there with some dispatch. Anyway, it was back to the real estate office and a quick lesson in how all that works in Korea. The ajumma seemed quite happy to have the place pre-rented and treated my lame Hanguk-mal with extreme politesse.

Tonight I’m just happy that this problem is solved. One room is big and the other room is office-sized. It isn’t gigantic, but it is certainly large enough for small gatherings, which is also nice. When the BKF and JAE come visit this spring, I can fix them some hearty Korean food – because there’s a Korean cooking school right down the street. That’s another win.

When I left the office, the air smelled fresher and all the girls were prettier. ;-)