beyond borders

WELCOME AT BAYT AL-ANDALUS. THANK YOU FOR STAYING WITH US.

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ACCESS

Your rental agreement provides for private access to your own room (green or lavender), and shared access to the co-working space on the top floor (Cordoba), corridors and stairways, the dressing and bathroom on the first floor, the kitchen, pantry, dining room, winter garden, and outside walled garden (with extra toilet) on the ground floor.

The basement is not part of the deal - since it contains a lot of storage of our own stuff. Thank you for keeping the basement door firmly closed (with the latch) and only allowing entry to certified utility professionals (water, gas, electricity, Internet).

You can access the house with your own door key code. Your code is managed online by Francis. If you encounter a problem with it, please contact us over WhatsApp. Thank you for making sure that nobody is watching you when you type in your door code. Also never share your code with anyone else. When someone else needs entry, you must contact Francis who will provide the visitor with a temporary access code.

When leaving the house or coming home, please always ensure that the front door is locked behind you.

COURTESY AGREEMENT

Bayt al-Andalus has always been a sanctuary to us, and we apply a strict no shoes and no smoking policy.

Please refrain from spilling energy (water, electricity, heating). Always switch off the lights when you are no longer in a room. Be careful to always switch off the gas in the kitchen.
Thank you for your kind cooperation.

WIFI NETWORKS

We have three networks, and the one that will serve you best depends on your whereabouts in the house. Anywhere on the street side, this is expected to be The Tao of Kindness (pwd LALEMAN93). In the back (pantry, winter garden, and back garden), The Tao of Meaning works well (pwd AD401C93C4). Elsewhere, hop over to The Tao of Learning (pwd AD401C93C5).

Thank you for not sharing the network keys with passers-by.

The modem for Kindness is in a private room on the first floor (Room Nalanda). You normally have no access to this room. In case of an emergency, you have to contact us (Fateme, Michaela, Francis). The modem for Learning is in the co-working space (Room Cordoba), in the painting corner. The modem for Meaning is in the pantry (on top of the fridge). In order to avoid interruption in your connectivity, please leave the modems and repeaters plugged-in in at all times.

THE COMMONS | co-working space

Your co-working space is in Room Cordoba on the top floor. This used to be our training and workshop room - and during the Covid years it became our painting studio and home office.

Whenever both the Green and the Lavender Rooms are occupied, please adhere to a gentleperson’s clean desk policy. Out of courtesy towards one another, all the common spaces in the house should remain common. Store your personal belongings only in your own room, or, when in commons, in the lockers. Cordoba provides one blue locker for each of you, and you should have equal space in the chest of drawers on the landing too.

In the faraway wall left of the mantelpiece, you will find the repeater for The Tao of Learning. Please keep it plugged in at all times. There is a beamer attached to the ceiling, and a remote control to operate it on the mantelpiece. For a cinema experience, plug in your own device using the HDMI connector coming out of the wall left from the door.

THE COMMONS | DRESSING & BATHROOM

The dressing (Room Samarkand) is pretty straightforward. You should agree to each use one of the Almohad wardrobes, The space in the chest of drawers and the large Ikea wardrobe should be divided and used according to your preferences and mutual agreement, This is an old house and the doors cannot be locked. We always agreed that when the light is on in the dressing, this means that someone is either there or in the bathroom and toilet. When you vacate the room, please switch off the relevant lights as a sign that the room is available.

THE COMMONS | BATHROOM AND TOILET

The bathroom contains a Vaillant boiler. The boiler serves hot water from all the taps in the house, including the kitchen downstairs. It also operates the heating system, which is essential during wintertime. Please never switch it off. If there is any trouble with it, let us know asap. Only an ENECO technician is allowed to service it.

For heating, thank you for helping use save energy by regulating the radiators in the rooms separately when they are not in use. Each radiator can be set on “star” - which stops the heating but will keep the room from freezing up. There is a Honeywell wireless mobile thermostat in the house. The thermostat regulates the Vaillant boiler in the bathroom, which steers the heating system in the entire house. Do not keep the thermostat in a room that you are not heating. The thermostat should be in the room that you agree among each other is the room where you want the temperature set, for instance, the downstairs dining room or the top floor common room.

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In the bathroom, thank you for cleaning the glass separator after every use of the shower. Also thank you for not throwing toilet paper in the toilet. This causes serious blockage of the sewer systems. Always use the bin instead. If you are staying in the Green Room (Marrakech), please apply the same paper-in-the-bin routine for the toilet in your own space.

To protect your safety, thank you for leaving the windows closed. Climbing onto the roof from whichever window is strictly prohibited.

THE COMMONS | THE DINING ROOM & winter garden

The dining room is the second space in the Granada Alhambra en-suite series of spaces on the ground floor. Unlike the center room, the street-side Alhambra room is private and is not accessible. The dining room is separated from the kitchen by a sliding door. It can be used as a co-working area and as a space to eat and sit.

If you are a musician, feel free to use the piano.

The room has a large cupboard too, with space to be divided according to your mutual agreement. Always remember that this is commons - and part of the deal here is that nothing should be uniquely claimed buy any of you.

The winter garden is of a hybrid design. The doorway is in Alhmohad style and reminiscent of Granada, the walls are tiled with mirrors and colored glass stones originating from Chari Bazaar in Delhi, and there are mosaics from Tunisia and from Damascus. Please keep the door closed. To avoid a dangerous draught from passing through the house, the door giving out on the walled garden should be kept closed, even in summer.

THE COMMONS | THE WALLED GARDEN

The walled garden was designed by its architect (Jef Huygh, Prix de Rome 1911) to be a reflection of the Generalife Palace in Granada. Like its original, it is a piece of paradise - if only you know how to enjoy it. Coming from the house, at your right side is a chest of drawers filled with tools and gear for small jobs. Feel free to rummage. Thx for returning the tools to their place after use. In the left corner is the broom closet. This contains cleaning products. They are the property of Fateme and should not be used unless you have her permission to do so.

If you are a gardener, feel free to get to it. There are plenty of (empty) pots in the back for you to use. Our only request is that if ever you use the blue and/or black ceramic pots for something, please leave them behind when you leave our house. They are a valuable collection - mainly gathered from our many gardening tours and garden visits in the UK.

Collect garden and plant refuse in the green litter box. Compostables (leaves, old soil, coffee grind, used tea, .. but NOT cooked food or meat and fish products!) can be mulched and kept for composting in the two big black compost containers.

The carp and koi in the pond should be fed with due measure only - and almost never in the winter when the temperature drops below ten-or-so degrees Celcius. In periods of a very long drought, thank you for switching on the water aeration pump every once in a while. It is noisy and a bit of a bother. Aerate the pond when you are not in the garden.

If you use the hose to water plants, please remember to close the wall-mounted tap after every use.

In very cold winters, Fateme will close the outside water circuit and the outside toilet can no longer be used.

THE COMMONS | THE kitchen AND PANTRY

The pantry has three household appliances that you are expected to take good care of: a fridge with freezer, a washer and a tumble dryer. Please be aware that you are responsible for their good use.

In the kitchen, feel free to use the stove and a microwave-cum-oven. It is absolutely forbidden to use the vintage stove in the central mantelpiece: It is an old Flemish model that was popular from the 1930s to the 1950s. We have mounted a piece of wood on top and it should only be used as an extra workspace.

If you use the dishwasher, you are responsible for its regular maintenance (salt, descaler, etcetera). Anyway - for environmental reasons it is advisable to your dishes by hand.

PRIVATE SPACES

Private spaces are the spaces and rooms reserved for ourselves, for whenever we are in the country. The private spaces are: the front rooms (the first door of the Granada suite at ground level), the orange room (Nalanda), the children’s room (Macao), and the basement. Of these, only the basement is normally accessible. The three rooms that belong to this category are accessible only with the help of Fateme. If anything at all needs to be done, or for any reason you need entry to one of these spaces, you need to contact her.

THE BASEMENT

The basement is not part of the commons agreement. It is strictly not done to leave your stuff downstairs in the basement unless you have reached out to the owners (Francis, Michaela) and they have agreed with your appropriating a corner in the basement for your own use.

Basically, the basement is a private space for ourselves. Whenever we are around, we need access to our own storage: bicycles, winter clothes, etcetera.

The only reason why the basement is not locked is because you need access to get to the switchboards and utility points. Never show any third person the way downstairs at face value. Sadly, in Antwerp it is a common practice for thieves to scout their victim’s houses by pretending to be inspectors of utility services who need to “check the meters.” Whenever you have been in the cellar, make sure you switch off all the lights and close the door with the latch. This is important: we have been the victims of a burglary before, and the perpetrators entered the house through the cellar.

YOUR OWN SPACE

You have private access to your space, i.e., the Lavender Room (Jaipur) or the Green Room (Marrakech). There are no keys. From the inside, lock your room with the vintage door slides. From the outside, use a padlock (BYOD - bring/buy your own device).

The beds are kingsize, four-poster beds imported from a Jaipur antique shop. The mattress size is kingsize. This is not a hotel: you are responsible for bringing your own linen.

You are also responsible to clean your own space. If you require help from Fateme, who comes bi-weekly to clean all the common spaces, you are free to make your own arrangements with her - at your own cost.

CLEANING AND MAINTENANCE

Fateme is on our team as your on-site point of contact. She lives in Antwerp and can come by if you need her. Fateme comes to the house every two weeks on Wednesdays to clean the common spaces. She is not expected to clean your private rooms or do the dishes or the laundry.

You are free to ask Fateme to clean your own spaces, however, this will come at your own expense.

If you or anything in the house needs special attention, please send us a WhatsApp note and we will arrange for help.

Shared tasks

Remember to sort the trash in white bags (“restafval”), blus bags (recyclables) and the green garden box. The trash should be put outside on the street on Thursday evenings, but noit before 20:00 hrs. Collection is on Friday mornings.

To avoid that plants be collected and discarded by the refuse collection team, place the trash bags at some distance away from our front door garden. A good place is near the bicycle rack.

DISCLAIMER

Thank you for helping us to optimize the present document. Whatever information you feel should be included here, please let us know!

updated: Antwerp, November 10, 2023