Cross-Cultural Frustrations

Well, I was reminded yesterday that I am no longer in the United States. Everything, and let me emphasis EVERYTHING, is done here differently. Some things are not so bad, they are just different, then other things can drive you up the wall because you can't understand why they would chose to do things that way. Anyways, we got an apartment yesterday, but it was much more trouble than we ever expected. We used a friend to help us translate and she brought us to a nice real estate agency. They had called our friend the day before and said they had two really nice new apartments for rent, but by time we got there, they were both "already rented" -- not sure how that happened so quickly. The first apartment they showed us was pretty good and we told the guy we would think over it and give him a call after lunch. He had another place to show us (which was actually his to sell -- the first was on his friend's list to sell). The second was pretty good also, but we felt that the first one was in a better location. However, there were a few more we wanted to look at, so we told the guy again that we would call him after lunch with a decision. So, we headed off to another real estate agency that had one that we really liked from the outside. N actually went there last week and they said the landlord was out of town but come back Friday. Nate wouldn't be there on Friday, so he asked about Monday, and they said that would work. So, we came back this Monday, and they told us that the landlord wouldn't be in town until 4:00 that day, so we asked if he would be available the next day, and they said yes. So, yesterday (the "next day"), we went back again, and they said "Oh, he is out of town, he will be back at 4:00"...?!?!?! So, we decided that maybe we just were not supposed to have this apartment. After lunch, we called the first guy back and said we wanted the first apartment. He said he would meet us in front of the apartment at 1:30. Great :)! At 1:30, he shows up and says that he is sorry but they just rented out the apartment to another family that looked at the apartment right after us --- WHAT???? My apartment is not mine anymore?! For a few seconds I saw red...to be honest :) So, long story shorter...we looked at a few more and finally settled on the second apartment. It's definitely a "foreign" apartment, with the bathroom sink in the hallway between the kitchen and bathroom...our views may be of other old apartment buildings...we may have to walk through a street full of little restaurants and shops to get to the main road...but it's "home", and home is what you make out of it.