Many love stories begin with love at first sight, but not the one you are about to read. On the contrary, it was a beginning full of tears and swearing.
Let me give you some context…
Change of route: from the Seychelles to the Canary Islands
I recently stopped working as a Language Specialist in a resort in the Seychelles and I am looking for a new island to explore, possibly where I can put down roots and that is not 14-hour flight away from family and friends.
The initial idea is to spend a month in Tenerife and one in Gran Canaria, and from there figure out where and if to stay.
I’m only working on my new projects, and forecasting that money would need some time before start finding their way to my bank account, I set a tight budget for myself, that doesn’t allow for any fancy hotel stays or vacation house rentals.
The month in Tenerife is almost coming to an end, and I’m a few days apart from my ferry to Gran Canaria. While in the middle of the Open Water course to learn to dive, my phone rings.
The first (ignored) alarm signal
“Hola, Filomena!”
It’s my future landlord in Gran Canaria.
“There has been a problem with some pipes upstairs, and somehow the damage affects your room, but don’t worry, I have already taken action to fix it. At most, you might have to adapt for the first few days or sleep in the living room.”
Only once I arrived on site I understood why he cared to prepare me psychologically.
It’s the beginning of the Christmas season, and I have no intention of spending my remaining days in Tenerife with my laptop and my phone in search for houses in Las Palmas.
The couch will do.
What am I leaving in Tenerife?
The sun. Beaches. My new friends. A room a stone’s throw from the sea.
What welcomed me in Las Palmas?
Bad weather, cold temperatures, and a shitty house.
Change of route 2: Tenerife to Gran Canaria
During my time in Seychelles, I used to wear a uniform for six days a week, and the rest of my time I was mainly wearing a bikini. After a year and a half like that, I found myself needing to buy new apparel and equipment to go around in society. However, I might have exaggerated.
Loaded like a pack mule, I leave the sunny south of the island to reach the port of Santa Cruz by public transport, determined not to exceed the budget I gave myself so as not to evaporate my savings.
I board. I spend the crossing pressing on a point near my left hand thumb, which seems to be the secret button to press to appease seasickness.
I set foot on my new island and I understand that the ferry did not arrive in Las Palmas, but in Agaete, 35 km from my final destination. I lift the burdens and take a bus to my new and comfortable home, looking forward to the moment I’ll get rid of the bags and feel on me just the weight of my body.
I get off the bus and the scenario is more or less this.
It rains.
It’s cold.
And all I have to keep warm is a sweatshirt.
Disclaimer: temperature’s perception might be subject to mild exaggeration. I hereby declare that in the absence of sun, and in presence of calamities like wind and rain, the Canary Islands cease to be the Caribbean.
I am unprepared. I didn’t bother to check the weather to see if winter existed in these African latitudes.
I’m already starting to miss the warmth of Las America and Los Cristianos.
I pull the luggage and realize that San Pietrini stones are not limited to the city center of Rome.
I cling to Google Maps, the Charon responsible for the success of my crossing to my new home. True hell of this story.
The check in
I arrive at the house like a traveler in the desert who finally finds himself at the foot of an oasis. I long for a hot shower, a good dinner, and a comfortable bed to dive into and forget that I miss Tenerife.
I don’t find any of this.
The guy I had spoken to on the phone opened the door for me. Before I could say hi to him, my face gets slapped by the stench of damp, visually supported by stains the color of vomited sadness, well settled in the upper parts of the walls.
I don’t like the house, it looks very different from the photos, but at least I’m sheltered.
I feel the same disappointment a man must feel when inviting a woman to a date at the beach, and he has only seen her in retouched photos, posted after 5 hours between skin care routine, professional make-up and hairstyle.
He shows me my room.
And I show it to you, in its splendor, with a video I recorded for my sister asking me “So, what’s the new house like?”
Positive note: there is a bed.
If you missed the micro detail, there was also a 3×3 meter hole.
I must be dreaming, but since in this dream I’m feeling cold, I ask him for a bath to at least take refuge in the pleasure of the streams of boiling water running down my neck.
“The bathroom? Sure!”
I follow him and leave the door of the Emmental room open.
“No, no, no, always keep it locked.”
What do you mean? I’m going to take a shower. Who lives here? Are they dangerous people? Are they thieves?
The level of discomfort rises.
I head to the bathroom, hoping the shower will wash away the feeling of being in a predictable horror movie. However, the guy makes things worse.
“I’ll turn on the water heater. You have to wait half an hour for hot water.”
I didn’t think these kinds of heaters still existed in 2020, but I realize that the comfort of the shower will have to wait. I’ll go out for fresh (and wet) air.
It’s still raining.
I’m alone. Hungry.
Tears and rain run down my face as I think about the beautiful people I met in Tenerife and I wonder why on earth I made the decision to start from scratch once again, in a place where I don’t know anyone and that is showing me a level of inhospitality never encountered before.
I go into a pub located just in front of my building on Plaza Farray to grab some food. While waiting for my dinner, I approach a group of three guys who were sitting at the table next to me and ask if they could suggest any ways to look for a room.
One of the guys replies,
“You should look in Telde. It’s better than Las Palmas, cheaper, and there’s more sun.”
Fantastic. I even chose the wrong side of the island.
I also ask for information from another table, the boy at the counter, and the waitress. Unfortunately, no one can provide me with any helpful information, and they confirm that it would not be easy to find accommodation for just one month.
Furthermore, I ask for help on a Facebook group, but all I receive are offers for rooms priced at €60-70 per night from people who were trying to make up for the lost earnings during the pandemic months.
I return to the decadent dive and hear chatter in a language I don’t know.
I head towards the living room.
Emmental House’s tenants
In the many changes of houses and cities collected in the past 10 years, I have built a certainty: it is people who make the difference in experiences. This thought lifts me up. I tell myself that for this day there might still be hope, which lies solely in the human quality of the people on the other side of the wall.
I enter the living room and see two boys in tunics: the Mauritanians the boy had told me about. They are having dinner.
I put on a smile, the best I could considering the whole situation, I introduce myself in Spanish and tell them I am the new girl living here.
They both stop talking and turn their heads towards me, then back to each other, continuing their conversation in Arabic. IGNORING ME.
What the heck did I just see?
Did they really not even tell me their name?
Really, not even a “hello”?
Am I asleep or am I awake?
I remain immobilized by amazement. The only part of my body not petrified are my eyelids, which blink rapidly in disbelief at the scene my eyes have just sent to my brain. The organ between my ears quickly takes care of pigeonholing the two guys in the list of people I don’t like to have around.
How did I find this room? And choose it?
What have I done in this or other lifetimes to accumulate this karma?
Only twice in my life have I rented a house without visiting it first in person: once in Tenerife, and it went well, the second here. They were both emergencies, already described in “Escaping the Seychelles and shenanigans to reach Canary Islands“.
There have been no others and there won’t be.
Houses auditions
Thrilled to leave Emmental House and its inhabitants behind, I spend hours and days reading ads, chatting, making phone calls and visiting houses.
I have 3 candidates who accepted to rent for just one month, with the possibility of extending the stay:
- A Colombian boy who askes me two questions: the first is where I am from and the second if I already have a boyfriend.
I cross it off the list.
- A Canarian lady who has a room to rent in a very large house on the seafront. When I ask her who else lives here she replies:
- me and my partner in a room;
- my daughter and her boyfriend in another;
- two Erasmus students here;
- and then this would be your room.
1 kitchen. 1 bathroom. 7 human inhabitants and 2 feline inhabitants.
I cross it off the list.
- A very friendly and sporty Italian man who has been living there for years. The other flatmate is a cool girl. 3 rooms, 2 bathrooms. 5 minute walk to the beach.
Habemus casam.
Sine holum in roofum.
Amen.
