Put Your John Hancock or Lajos Batthyány Here and Here

Tonight we signed the papers for our new apartment or for your British readers, our flat. In the US when you sign a legal document, we have the saying "Put your John Hancock on it." It makes me wonder if here, they should say "Put your Lajos Batthyány on it." He was the first Prime Minister, though typical of things to come, he didn't last long. John, though, had a good run. 

Our attorney came over to our place before we were all to go to the realtor's office, not our realtor, but the seller's realtor. We love our attorney; his English is excellent and he has always been kind and fair with us. We have worked with him since 2002. For the nominal fees he charges, a sizable portion must be spent on printer toner and paper. For the number of papers we signed, he must have had to deforest a small jungle. We will need to get a boy scout troop to plant seedlings, just to ease my conscious. Before we started, I was fine. Now I have to have surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome. We went through 2 ink pens between Ron and I and this was just what we signed while still at home. The rest of the papers, we had to sign in front of the seller. 

Here is the best part though. Ron had to go to the bank yesterday and get 1 million 300 thousand HUF to bring along. Being that that is a lot of money in any currency, even Monopoly money, I felt he needed a body guard. We got Peter, our realtor to go along. Peter is 6 foot 6 inches and could be a linebacker for the Broncos. He escorted Ron home again, but it was Ron, Csaba and I who traveled the tram to get to the meeting. Csaba put the money in his briefcase which soothed my nerves slightly. If had had to carry it, I would have been like a neon sign screaming ROB ME!

After all of the pleasantries, we continued and finally finished signing the reams of paperwork. Then it was time for the rubber stamps, which took us from post lunch into tea time. When all the documents were completed to everyone's satisfaction, the moving company came to haul them out to the appropriate locations. It took 3 movers.

Tomorrow, we transfer another FAT chunk of money over to the seller, but we hold back a smaller, tasty morsel of money until they have paid off their mortgage, cleared all debts and get ready to move out, scheduled for January 30, 2012. We have seen so much of them lately, I feel like we are friends. Gosh, I hope they never ask us to babysit.

Ron and I went to an Indian restaurant for a celebration dinner, but as we were ordering, the phone rang. We accidentally walked off with two copies of two different documents. How they even noticed that two copies of 4,302 pieces of paper were missing is beyond my scope of thought, but I had to run it back to the realtor's. We wound up taking dinner to go.

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