J'ai pas le moral, je suis fatigué(e)....

People have been asking about my new place. I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to come right out with it - the apartment I thought I had was a scam and my 1500€ are gone. Long gone. As in probably buying some con-artist Frenchie drinks in Mexico. En gros, this guy pretended to be the renter of the apartment and rented it out (separately) to both myself and a Parisian, giving us both a full set of keys. I believed him because I signed a contract, got a receipt for the deposit & the first month's rent, a copy of his passport, a copy of his EDF bill and three different phone numbers for him. But I first became suspicious when I went over there last Friday and saw that none of his stuff had been moved out. I immediately called him (and the other two numbers provided) but all of the phones were off. I also emailed but didn't get any response. I became more and more worried as the weekend went on and decided not to move in Sunday as planned. I came back Monday and found someone else's stuff there, but no one home. And then I went back last night and knocked and it turns out the guy had also signed & received the exact same paperwork as I had and had just moved in Sunday. We went to the police to file a report, but they unfortunately laughed in our faces, saying it was our own fault for not going through an agency. Now we are going about it on our own, trying to find who the real owner/renter of the apartment is, and if they're aware that someone else is going around giving away keys to their place. I guess you can never be too careful.

So that's that. I've freaked out enough over this these past few days (which unfortunately involved several nights of heavy drinking and one shameful night at poor Princesse Ecossaise's house) and now I am sort of over it. Yes, it sucks, but I can't do anything about it and I need to dedicate the little energy I have left to finding a new apartment, and finding one urgently. The problem is, I'm leaving tomorrow on a business trip and won't get back til mid-September. So I'm missing two weeks of apartment hunting in the prime housing season in Paris, which leaves me feeling a little more than depressed, not to mention desperate. There's nothing I can do about it while I'm gone though, so I'm just going to try to put it aside for now and focus on my trip. But please, for the love of God, if you know of an available rental or even an apartment share, please send it my way!

The one bright spot in my week was scoring a free ticket to a private Tryo concert sponsored by FNAC, promoting their new album. They are one of my favorite French bands, and my knowledge of them goes way back to when I first met Fabrice. It was the only CD he brought to the US, so we listened to it pretty much constantly for two years. I knew the words without even knowing what I was saying. There are still certain songs that are difficult for me to listen to (ie. the ones that were "our" songs), but that wasn't enough to stop me from seeing them in concert as it's something I've always wanted to do. And it was a nice respite from all the stress of the past few days, if only for a short while. So here's a brief clip I took of them, before a big security guard came over and told me there was no filming allowed: