After we got the confirmation that we had a place to stay at Yonge Street and Eglinton Ave we needed to prepare some really important things like insurances, payment of the deposit and writing out some cheques.

You might think cheques…are they crazy. No we are not but this is how the system in Canada works, we needed to understand that paying bills here works different as in for example Germany and the Netherlands.

We already knew this from our cellphone contract which isn’t paid by an automatic withdrawal but we need to pay this monthly by writing a cheque, coming to the store or make an online payment.

With the rental fee this is quite similar. But for the deposit we went to our bank to et a so-called certified cheque which means that the funds on the cheque are “hold” for that cheque only, which is a guarantee to the landlord that we are able to pay. The deposit in our case covers the first month rent and the last months rent, for the other 10 months of the first year we needed  to prepare 10 post dated cheques which the landlord can use every month to have the money being paid into his account. Now we understand it, it’s quite easy but it’s still easier and more cost-effective to do it online we think.

After we got that part taken care of we wanted to start looking for some furniture and we started with the bed because that’s the most important part. We went to several stores to get advice about which would be the best bed for us. We soon came to the agreement that we wanted a King Size bed (1,93 meter wide) and our favorite was a box spring since we always love these in the hotels we’ve stayed.

At the end of this day we bought our box spring after an hour-long visit to the Mattress Store The Brick in Vaughan. We went for the Sealy Posturepedic PROBACK Titanium with a metal frame and a box which will be delivered in the first week after we got the key.

After we paid with our debit card, he didn’t want a cheque at all, we went to the Vaughan Mills!

Here we went to the Johnny Rockets to close this busy day with a delicious Milkshake! Danielle went for a Oreos Cookies & Cream and I picked the Chocolate Madness! After finishing we drove back to our hotel.

We’ve been really busy the last 2 days. Yesterday we went house hunting with Petra our real estate agent and today we did some other important and interesting things.

Petra picked us up at our hotel after we had already arranged our Social Insurance Number at a Service Canada office on Lawrence Ave.

We started at Sheppard and Yonge with 3 condos. They were a bit smaller as what we had imagined before yesterday. One thing was clear tenants are not good at cleaning. Afterwards we looked at 2 townhouses, they were much bigger but the location and price was not what we had in mind.

And then we went to Broadway Ave to look for 3 condos a nice one on the 7th floor, one with an amazing view on the 20th floor and a nice one on the 11th floor.

But we hadn’t had the right feeling by any of the condos and townhouses we had seen so far. But there were still 2 condos we looked at. Petra took us to the Quantum 2 North tower at Yonge Street. Here she showed us a condo at the 38th floor. After being there for a minute Danielle and I looked each other in the eyes and we both knew this is it!

Then the exciting part of the whole process of house hunting took place. Will the landlord rent the place to us, maybe we have the final answer by Friday, Petra told us.

This morning we both woke up after a bit more sleep as the night before and felt a bit fitter too. We needed to get out of bed early since we had an appointment with the German Consulate to get an official statement about the validity of our drivers license at 10am. We went downtown with the subway and arrived on time.

After we got the official paper we walked south on Yonge Street to the Service Ontario office on 777 Bay Street to apply for a Ontario drivers license. After paying 80$ and doing a very simple vision test we got a temporary drivers license which is necessary to get a car insurance with.

At that time it was time for lunch and we went to “Signs” a restaurant where the waiters are deaf and you need to order by using American Sign Language. It was an awesome experience, the food tasted great, our waiter Julian was very patient while learning us some signs and the food was affordable.

Afterwards we went shopping in Eaton Centre, one of the biggest malls in Toronto. And then without expecting it we got an e-mail from Petra…the landlord had a positive reaction with only some minor remarks but Petra could clarify those immediately.

The landlord had agreed! Which meant we needed to sign some papers and waited for the final lease contract from the landlord. We were already in the subway on our way back to the hotel. As soon as we arrived there we printed and signed the papers, send them back and 24 hours after seeing the condo for the first time we have a signed lease contract for a condo in the Quantum 2 North Tower at Yonge Street.


Tomorrow we need to finalize the last parts which involve a tenant insurance and getting certified cheques and cheques to our landlord. Yes here in Canada everything still works with old-fashioned cheques…

We can’t wait to get the keys and start searching for furnishments to make the place ours…and then we will slap share more pictures with you!