We moved!

Yes, we have moved to a new apartment that is just a block away from the old one.  The layout is basically the same except that now we have an extra room and a slightly bigger toilet in the hallway.  Finally Jovan and Angel can have their own room! They have been sharing a room for some time now and they almost do everything together - attending the same school, sharing the same friends, and even attending the same after school activity (they learn to play guitar every Wednesday after school.), this has created a lot of stress and tension among them because of the lack of personal space.  Jovan used to complain that l just wouldn't leave him alone, although Angel has no problem at all having Jovan's company all the time...

Lars and I have been pondering about this issue for a long time, but given the space constraint in our old apartment, there wasn't much we can do.  So we have been looking to see if there was any bigger apartment in our current neighbourhood because we don't want to move Jovan and Angel to another school.  However, it seems like this area is quite popular and there was never any apartment available for us. And there was a series of events which happened that led us to having our new apartment....

It started last summer when we realised that the plumbing in our old apartment was acting up.  The water couldn't drain properly in the bathtub and even the pipes under the kitchen sink seemed to be blocked as well.  Since water couldn't be drain properly in the bathtub, the floor would get "flooded" everytime we took a shower, and as a result, the bathroom was always wet and the ceiling started getting moldy.  We contacted the company managing the apartment and they first sent a plumber, who upon looking around, said that they needed to get a specialist to take a look.  The verdict from the specialist was that there was water damaged on the floor and the walls in the bathroom due to the drainage problem and to fix that, they need to do major renovation in the bathroom.  Our neighbour opposite us had the same problem about a year ago (the apartments were built in 1960s, so most of them do need major renovation) and it took them about 4 months to get it fix! As since we can't shower when they are renovating the bathroom (well actually, we can't live there at all! We can't have small kids running around while they drill and bang! Think about the dust and noise!), we were given an alternative apartment to move into for the time being or just use it to shower if we don't want to move. We were dreading about moving back and forth when the following happened...

We had a young single mother with 2 small kids living underneath us in the previous apartment. She likes to have her music on LOUD during the day and she would have parties during the weekend which ended around 1 am (that is if nobody calls the security company to complain).  Her friends like to gather in the stairway and talk loudly and the most annoying thing is that she smokes a lot and we can't really use our balcony during the summer because Lars and I are super annoyed by the smell.  But we tolerated her and although Lars had called the security company several times because of her parties which never end, we never seriously thought about moving out (well... we were praying that she would move though...).  Then, a couple of weeks after Christmas last year, she had a party which again, continued till the wee hours.  Lars called the security company at 12am because not only was the music super loud, they were banging on things and laughing and talking in the stairway. A few days later, another elderly neighbour who was living in the next house (different entrance but still the same building) came knocking on our door. Since Lars was working late, I answered the door.  She asked me what we thought about the neighbour downstairs and I told her that she likes to have loud parties and doesn't when to stop.  She then took our some photos of the outside of her apartment which looked like someone has been hurling lots of eggs on the wall, door and windows.  She told me that around 4 something am last weekend (the day when my neighbour had her party), she and her husband woke up to banging sounds and they saw that someone had been throwing eggs at their apartment! Her husband went out to the balcony to try to see if they could see the culprits and he got eggs thrown onto him, which almost caused him to have a heart attack!  She said that they saw 2 persons outside, 1 girl pointing at their apartment and another guy throwing eggs and she claimed that both were the friends of my neighbour.  So her purpose was to gather up the surrounding neighbours who were fed up with her parties and her immature friends, and bring a case to the company (Riksbyggen) who manages the apartments and demanding them to do something. I talked to Lars later that night when he got home and he went over to the elderly neighbours place to talk to them and we all agreed that if this was what happened, then we really should bring it up to Riksbyggen.  Lars and I thought that the elderly couple would do what they need to do and that would be the end of our involvement.  But we were wrong....

After her first visit (the elderly neighbour), I think her name was Mia (or something like that), she started visiting us more often! Telling us about what she found out about our neighbour, she even found out the license plate of her father's car and the full name of her father! She gossiped about how our neighbour was also friend with another girl living in another house and there was a guy who lived in another house who was kinda together with that girl and he stayed in her apartment overnight....! OMG! Lars and I never likes to get involve in any neighbourly gossips (well, we simply don't care about other people's business.  They mind their own, and we mind ours.) and knowing that there is someone in our neighbourhood who spies on everybody just creeps us out big time!!!  And so after some consideration, we decided to talk to Riksbyggen to see if we can switch to that "alternative" apartment permanently instead and luckily they agreed!

So we moved! ^.^  Here's a couple of pictures of our view behind our new apartment.

We have playgrounds in the front and at the back!

And we can see a little of the small woods next to the neighborhood.

More pictures coming up soon! Now back to unpacking.... =.="