Rambling: Apartment Hunt

I’m currently looking for an apartment, and let me tell you, it’s not fun. Don’t do it! (Heh.)

Seriously, it’s very frustrating to look for an apartment, especially in Frankfurt, as there is a lot of demand. I could of course pay a real estate agent to find me an apartment, but they usually want 2,38 times the rent for their services. So basically you’re supposed to give them about 1000 EUR so they unlock the door for you, let you look at the apartment and then give you a paper to fill in with all your personal details (like how much you earn). Crazy.

I looked at a place last week that I actually quite liked – especially the beautiful dark wooden floors. Not that they match any of my furniture, but that’s beside the point. The apartment is above a restaurant, so of course noise becomes a concern. Plus, I do recall the staircase up to the apartment being strange and narrow. So I told people that it was strange and narrow. And meanwhile I don’t even recall how strange and narrow it was, so it’s become warped and twisted in my mind, a staircase out of an Escher painting, even though it probably wasn’t even that bad. I’m probably overthinking it.

Another highlight of the apartment hunt happened today, when I spent almost 15 EUR on public transportation to and from an apartment in a suburb. When I got there, the guy who was supposed to show it to me didn’t show up, and the cell phone number I had written down didn’t work. So I stood around in the cold (and it was really cold) for about 40 minutes and eventually left. It didn’t help my general mood.

What did help my mood, howver, was Felicia Day. I recently downloaded the first three seasons of The Guild for my iPod. They’re short episodes, maybe 5 minutes long each, and they’re about this quirky guild of World of Warcraft players. I’m at season two, and the episode made me laugh. They get better and better. I will buy the show on DVD once I have an apartment.

Well then, let’s hope next week will bring me a lovely apartment with moderate rent, where the toilet is actually inside of the bathroom (as opposed to in a separate room), where the bathroom doesn’t have any pink tiles, where it’s quiet and the subway station is really close by.

Dollhouse 1×06: Man On The Street

The Voight-Kampff test... or is it?

Last week’s episode of Dollhouse was actually surprisingly good. Not only did they do a Voight-Kampff test, they also had some good dialogue (I like you, Mellie). Of course there’s always Topher Brink, who’s this show’s Xander character, minus the charisma. Or maybe just minus the people to play off of. He’s fun when he’s around Ivy, who, were I to venture a guess, might actually become pretty important later on in the show. Then again, maybe this is one of the famous fake Whedon trails, where they WANT you to think she will become important later. Which is working.

What is in store for Ivy?

Another positive aspect of the episode was the Faith-like personality Echo got implanted with – I was waiting for her to whip out the stake any moment. Another negative aspect was the terribly acted “fake news show” stuff. Speaking of terribly acted: My gosh, Mark Sheppard, what the heck? Overdoing it much? Why does it seem both he and Tamoh Penikett both forgot how to act since Battlestar Galactica?

Anyway, truth be told, so far I’ve been fairly disappointed with Dollhouse. In the first few episodes, I kept thinking “This part should’ve been played by Sarah Michelle Gellar”. Then, I thought, where is the depth? Where is the humor? Then I read an article in Rolling Stone Magazine about how Joss Whedon doesn’t want to work for TV anymore after this, because I suppose they twisted his original ideas and dumbed the whole show down. So the only reason I keep watching, really, is because I’m waiting for Whedon’s genius to shine through again. And well, I think in this episode it has. It certainly gives me hope.