New place of residence: Bethnal Green Road

Bethnal Green Road welcomes the Strategy Guide! After a hideous day of sending out a ton of emails, calling a thousand people and doing five viewings, all of a sudden I had three rooms to choose from. That was yesterday, when I got really caught up in the decision making process, this morning I made the decision and signed a tenant’s contract. From the first week of September I will be Living in London, at the lively Bethnal Green Road to be specific. And I am really excited about it!

Monday and Tuesday were mostly desk research; I strolled several accommodation providing websites such as Gumtree and Flatmateclick in order to look for appropriate rooms and to find out what to expect at which prices. I emailed a whole bunch of the landlords and people looking for tenants to share their room with. Where possible I called them. Mostly without success though. Also, I used my personal network both the Dutch one and my up and coming London one. Eventually I managed to arrange for a few viewings here and there.

So, Wednesday was viewing day. The first room I viewed was council housing in really poor condition, however at a price of 560 quid a month! That kind of scared me and made me realize I had to either downgrade my standards or upgrade my monthly budget. I chose the latter. Luckily, the respective landlord had other accommodations for let, of which one was rather nice, a spacious room in a recently refurnished building at Bethnal Green Road. In the evening I had my fifth and last viewing of the day, council housing in Hackney. Hackney is a rather depressing neighbourhood in my perspective, but the apartment was quite nice!

At the end of this exhausting day I could choose from two places right away, including the one in Bethnal Green. The landlord of the Hackney place first had to make a decision on who to choose from as there were eight viewers. I was leaning towards the Bethnal Green room when the Hackney landlord called to tell me that he really me to rent his room as I would suit the apartment and its inhabitants really well. I decided to sleep a night upon the whole thing.

This morning I had another walk around in Bethnal Green to get a better view on the neighbourhood. My peers at the university told me that it is a rather rough area, not particularly safe. Nevertheless when I walked there I felt quite at ease and I really dig the atmosphere there! The street is full of vintage clothing boutiques, specialist food stores of all sorts of cultures and it really has that creative vibe to it. Focussing on creative industries in my dissertation I am sure to find some inspiration there. So I decided to sign the contract meaning that the room will be mine to rent from the first week of September!

I still have a few days here in London, so tonight I celebrate…