Fick dich Hildebrand & Juergens

Moving is a huge pain in the ass. That's the light-hearted summary of the clusterfuck of a move that's about to go down. And it's probably the least severe for me because I'll be snorkeling in Croatia on Friday, when the move will supposedly happen, if nothing else goes wrong.


A few months ago a group of friends and I decided it'd be cool if we all lived together. I think it was sort of a joke at first, but then it became a pretty convenient prospect due to all of our current living situations ending or being shitty. So we started looking at places. We needed 5 rooms and a moving date of end of September/beginning of October. We found a pretty nice one at the beginning of August and made an offer. The property managing company accepted us. They are called Hildebrand & Juergens. We got the contract and signed it. I handed over the signed contract to H&J at their office on August 11th. I remember that because it was the day I missed my flight back to the US and it's hard to forget a day like that.


So at this point:


1) We have an official contract for this new place.


2) My 3 new roommates all have to be out of their respective apartments by the end of September. The two who currently live together, MM, must hand over their keys to their landlord on the 30th, and the new tenants (who are total bitches, but more on that later) are supposed to move in the very next day. The other roommate is just renting a room, so she just needs to move out of the place, no key handing over ceremony or anything.


3) I don't have to be out of/can't get rid of my place until the end of November, so am potentially looking at 2 months of double rent.


Handing over an apartment means cleaning and painting and generally getting the apartment to look like what it used to. This is a perfect opportunity to get fucked over by the landlord, and I guess it happens often. These nit-picky assholes come scrutinizing the house looking for any damage, and they write it down. Then they compare this list to a similar list that was made at the last tenant changeover. If these lists don't jive they start subtracting from the security deposit. But it's not like an official, standardized process, it's just regular retarded realtors writing down vague descriptions like "slight damage to the baseboard" in whatever room. So yeah, maybe there are a few scratches or something, no big deal, and the 5 years you live in your apartment you don't do anything to the baseboards, there's no extra damage occurring. But then some other twat comes to do your moving out inspection, and they write something like "scratches on the baseboard." And they look at the lists and go "Oh, you damaged the baseboards, you're going to have to pay for that." And of course you disagree and look like an asshole when you say "it was already like that when I moved." Then they show you the list and say, that's not what our informations says. So whatever, they fuck you out of some of your deposit. Not unexpected. 


Anyway, to avoid such a situation, we negotiated with our realtor, who is pregnant, for a moving date some time earlier than the 30th, so that MM can clean and paint. We all agree on a move-in date on the 27th. Great. Cool. I finally catch my flight home and have a nice 2 week vacation.


When I come back I start trying to find someone to take over my apartment. Even though my official move out date is Dec. 1st, I can get rid of it earlier if I find someone to take it over. So I show it to a bunch of people, but nobody is interested. Then this one guy comes. He's also an international student and works at the other Max Planck Institute. He looks around the place and says he'll take it. Like, not some equivocal "I like this place" sort of thing. I told him he can let me know by email or phone if he wants it and he said, right there in my entry way, "No, I can tell you now, I'll take it." So I initiate the paperwork and send this guy a couple of emails in the next few days. He ignores them. I'm starting to suspect that he's a bit shady. I send him a text telling him to get in touch with me. He responds and says he'll email me later that day. He did, and this prick tells me he hasn't made any decisions yet on an apartment and he's still looking around. And he hopes I'm not offended. I sent him the paperwork anyway, and told him to decide over the weekend. He did that too, and he backed out completely. I just...you know, what are you supposed to do in that situation? I can't kill him. And writing some personal indictment would just be a waste of time. Hey Charles, you're a huge fucking inconvenience and I'm really displeased with how you handled this transaction. Go fuck yourself. So, you know, I moved on and am still trying to find someone. No one is interested. It's not a bad place, but it's not that nice, and it's too expensive for what it is. 


So there's that part. Now here's the better part.


I'm about to give a seminar to my whole department last Thursday, the 22nd. 15 minutes before I get a call and I understand that it's some guy from H&J. I can't understand much else, so I ask him to speak more slowly, he says okay and just keeps sprinting through his sentences. I go find someone who speaks better german and learn that this H&J guy is saying we can no longer move in on the 27th, but we'll have to wait till the 30th. 


Oh right, some background. We had already schedule movers for the 27th and a guy to install the kitchen that day also. The kitchen guy is going on vacation on the 29th. We were going to spend the 28th and 29th cleaning and painting the MM residence. Their landlord had set the 30th at noon as the hardline time they had to be out and have the place clean. And he had the audacity to send them a letter explaining that the new tenants, these college girls, would be moving in the next day, and if the flat wasn't ready MM would have to pay for a hotel. Like it's their fault he scheduled the new tenants to move in right away. Brilliant move on this dick's park. These girls are the ones I mentioned above. The bitches. I'm pretty removed from this issue, you know, but it's just one more thing about this whole tragedy that pisses me off. At this point in the narrative though, we're just aware that they're also fucking flaky. They kept saying they'd buy furniture and really wanted this thing and that, and agree to a price, then 2 days later say, oh, we have some unexpected expenses, we'll just pay you half for all that shit we said we'd buy. More on them later.


My seminar. Now we can't move in until the 30th. Hopefully I've explained well enough that you understand why this is stressful. We have our new german roommate, who's on vacation, call H&J to work something out. They're unapologetic fucks about the whole thing. Our regular contact, the pregnant lady, was out on maternity leave, and this new guy more or less said he didn't give a shit what agreements we had worked out with her, she wasn't there and there's nothing we can do. Also, the reason we couldn't move on the 27th is because they hadn't started the renovations yet. Fucking...we turned in the contract on August fucking 11th and now, on the fucking 22nd of September they haven't even started fixing it. And there was no compromise or appreciation for the situation they put us it. Just a big fuck you. They won't even let us move our stuff in a few days earlier. Nope. Nothing, not even the keys until noon on the 30th. 


On Friday we threw out a hail mary, one last gasping S.O.S. to some people at our institute. They confirmed that we are fucked. Their brilliant advice was to bribe H&J to get in earlier. Bribe?! Bribe?! Are you fucking kidding me. "Oh, it's common here for people to do that." What is this, fucking Africa? Goddamned Russia? Like we're just going to stroll into the H&J offices and say "Haha, thanks for trying to fuck us, here's a hundred euro." Get the fuck out of here. Bribe. 


So the moving date is now on the 30th. Thankfully the moving company has been understanding (apparently they've encountered H&J before) and will still do the move. Of course, I'm not even going to fucking be here, so that's really nice. That's sarcasm by the way. I have a whole apartment full of shit that needs to be moved, and I won't even be able to help. So what'll have to happen is that MM, who are getting railed from both sides at the moment, and the german roommate will have to handle it. I mean, who the fuck knows what else will go wrong.


And these bitches, the new tenants at MM's place, they really are just the delicious icing on the fuck you in the ass cake. They've been emailing MM directly about the move. At first they were these bitchy passive agressive emails about how they need to know what's going on and what furniture they're going to get and it'd be really nice to have a response soon. They got increasingly bitchy and the latest one was actually sort of threatening, saying how MM better be moved out and have the place clean by the 30th because these girls have already arranged all the logistics for their move. Yeah, let us tell you how bad we feel and then show you some things about shit not working out. Grow up and fucking deal with it, and spare everyone you're condescending drivel. 


Maybe you just read this and are thinking, "but Jesse, you don't really have it that bad. There's not a time constraint for you, and you won't even be there for the move." Well, you're right. I am not fully on the receiving end of this. It's just the way these assholes conduct themselves...it really pisses me off. And it's compounded by the fact that I can't really express myself to them. I can't have a rational discussion to understand and explain, can't make my point clear, I can't even yell and be a pest and ruin their day. I seem to have created this delusion that things here in Germany are perpetually logical and functional. So it's particularly egregious when things aren't functional. And then I'm aware of the delusion, and I hate delusions. And finally, it pisses me off that the best solution is to just take it, finish the move and get over the whole thing. 


So there it is. Hildebrand & Juergens, eat shit and die.