My Italian Apartment

Finding a place to live was no easy task. Having only spent 4 days in Rome in the past, I wasn’t sure of the various districts and when choosing a place to live, you kind of want to know the characteristics of each area. However, after talking to teachers and doing a bit of exploring, I decided to look in Prati. The commute from work isn’t that far and has a lot of areas to explore. Prati is also home to St. Peter’s and the Vatican-which I’m only a few blocks from.

            One thing that I was NOT aware of, that would have been good information to know, is that many listings for apartments in Rome are listed by agencies. If you find a place through an agency, it is your responsibility to pay an agency fee. This fee is roughly about one month’s rent.  Furthermore, if you find a furnished apartment, which is what I needed, you need to put down two months deposit. So when all is said and done, you are basically looking at four months rent down in order to move in. Yikes. I didn’t bring over nearly enough money and my first paycheck doesn’t come until the end of September so thank goodness, Laura, the woman I’m renting from gave me an extension for my second deposit.

            Laura and I had met a couple of times prior to my moving in and I liked her immediately. She’s about my age and really sweet. When I finally moved in, she was here to welcome me and took me on a tour around the neighborhood. She showed me the best places to get gelato, pastries, pizza and the best market to do my weekly shopping.

            There are many differences between European apartments and American apartments. One of the main differences is there are no screens on the windows. There are shutters that you need to close at night and when you leave. My first thought was that being on the fifth floor, I wouldn’t have to worry about thefts…but alas, Italian thieves enjoy scaling walls so no such luck. Another difference is most places only have a washer and you dry your clothes on the clothesline. My clothesline is hanging outside my kitchen window so I’m taking bets on how long it will take me to drop something into the courtyard below…

The last major difference is that most bathrooms have a bidet. I don’t even know what to say about my bidet...:)

            My place is quite spacious. It has two bedrooms, one of which will most likely be used as a living room. However, there’s a bed in there and the couch also turns into a bed…so plenty of space for visitors. The kitchen is one of the largest I saw when looking at places. It actually has an oven and refrigerator, which surprisingly isn’t standard in all apartments.