Apartment hunting

Much of my preparatory energy for the past two weeks has been devoted to securing a place to live.  Our initial real estate agent has been out of touch for almost four weeks, so last week I went looking for other alternatives.  Fortunately an academic friend of mine is from Poland and offered to help.  He and I looked for places together online, then he placed a skype call to another agent and arranged for us to talk with the assistance of her English-speaking daughter.  My first skype call to Poland was successful, but the agent had not been able to get in touch with the apartment owner yet.  She requested that I call back again next week and she would keep trying to reach the owner.  I'm pretty sure we will get this apartment and it will work out ok, but things are down to the wire and I'm starting to look at hotels just in case we still don't have a place when we arrive in 30 days.   -Carolyn