See, it was really just too easy to get my German passport and for us to be able to move here. Now, I know what you're thinking. . .if that was the easy part, this part must be downright awful. And it is.
We had to move hotels again. Just a one-minute walk down the road. Still across the street from Hyde Park. I figured we could buy ourselves another two days so that the estate agents and the referencers could get their acts together.
What is most infuriating about working with estate agents is they're lazy. Very, very lazy. They want YOUR results pronto, but when you appeal to them for help with a company THEY hired (the referencing company), it's, "Oh, why don't you ring them yourself?" Really? For this, I'm paying you almost 300GPB?
Every day, the referencing company wants something new. We've now given them 6 months' worth of bank statements, copies of our contracts, a landlord reference, and two references from our managers (against my better judgment, because independent contracting is such a slippery slope, and M's manager was NOT happy to be contacted). Now they want another reference from M's manager and another reference from our landlord. This has to be a joke.
But I'm looking at it like we are strong enough to handle this, so that's why it's given to us. It can't be easy all the time. That would be nice, though.
On a rather humorous note, this idiot at the referencing company claimed to have done tons of international references, including people from the US. But then in the next breath, she says she can't get in touch with our last UK landlord at the telephone number we provided. Except had she read our paperwork AT ALL, she would have seen she was dialing a US phone number. Facepalm!
Staying in hotels is getting old. It would be great if we were just on vacation, and I wish I could pretend that we were just bumming around Jolly Old England, but our bank account tends to rip me back into reality pretty fast.
Life is so strange right now. It's like extreme pulls from opposing forces are keeping me fairly neutral about everything, which feels so strange. I love it here, but I hate that it's so difficult to get settled.
The kids are pretty happy with the junk food and the parks. But even they're at the point where they want to be settled. It's no fun to move hotels all the time. If I had known we would have been displaced for so long, I would NEVER have packed as much as I did. But then on the other side, we can't really do laundry right now, so the excess clothes come in handy.
I'm glad we came early, though. Can you even imagine what it would be like to deal with all this while starting grad school? Insanity. Everything happens at it does.
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