Life: Before and After

Ya’ know how I was saying that each of us were waiting for the other shoe to drop…that Georgia had been too good to be true? Well, I wasn’t being entirely honest with you.

See, the apartment that was arranged for us was possibly the crappiest, nastiest rip-off in all of the Caucasus...and getting out of it has been somewhat of an ordeal. There were tears, Paul almost died, but in the end we achieved victory. Ok, here’s the story:

Before we’d even arrived in Georgia, all of us had heard what a crappy place our apartment was to be. We were told that it was grungy and overpriced—but Jenik (our professor) had explained that it was set up for us by his friend Gogi, and that it was normal for it to be overpriced because it was a short-term, summer sublease, etc… And this made sense to us…at the time…

When we first saw our new pad, we were a little shocked. There were big puddles of piss in the hallway along with giant electricity wires. There were giant cracks in the ceiling and in the walls. The whole place had obviously not been cleaned for quite a while and had that general stank-like funk. For cooking we had a camping stove—only one of the burners worked. Many of the locks didn’t work so half our time was spent either locked in or out of this hell hole. After three days of living in sewage, we were informed that we had to pour buckets of the water down the drains in our bathroom to keep them “wet and flowing.”

There were gypsies that lived in the shacks behind the apartment—my bedroom window happened to look out onto the open air spot where they chose to use the bathroom. Believe it or not, this amused me to no end, and if you ever get me in person, please ask me to show you the “gypsy shit face”…it’s pretty funny.

Needless to say, Paul, Dana and I weren’t happy but whatever. We’d each lived in Russia so we were used to crap. To be perfectly honest, the place wasn’t quite nearly as ghetto as my first Brooklyn apartment. That said, this place was far more expensive than my ghetto apartment in Brooklyn…sketchily too expensive for a backwater like Tbilisi. But once again, having traveled extensively, the three of us were used to being taken advantage of…generally I feel it’s just par for the course.

All of this changed, however, after the arrival of our fourth comrade. Ann arrived a few days after us and it was the first time we’d gotten to see the room in which she was to stay. Quite literally, black gooey mold was dripping from her ceiling! It was by far the nastiest thing I’d ever seen.

A few nights later we were all sitting around discussing what a shit hole we were in. None of us liked the fact that we had a street level apartment in a building in which there was no security door. Each of us tried not to think about it, but there were big cracks in our front door so anyone could get into the place if they really wanted. This theory was tested a few moments later when some drunken Asian man started pounding on our door demanding to be let in. It was 1:30 in the morning, and even though Paul yelled at him to leave us alone, he persisted in banging on our door and ringing the door bell for a time.

To be honest, the whole thing sucked. But we weren’t quite sure what to do about it. Georgia is built on a patronage system and we weren’t certain if it had been Jenik’s friend who had set up the apartment or if it had been a friend of a friend of Jenik’s friend, etc… This was very important as none of us wanted to offend Gogi as he had been so kind to us and had done everything possible to welcome us (he’s the one who picked us at the airport and feasted us incessantly).

But after doing some research, my cohorts convinced me to go to the mattresses. Apparently everything we’d been told was crap. Short-term summer leases in Tbilisi are actually very cheap and easy to come by as everyone who’s anyone leaves and goes to the coast for the summer. For the same price, we could have been staying in an airconditioned palace! I also discovered that Gogi had never even seen the apartment—it was a co-worker of his who had made all the arrangements. This made perfect sense as I couldn’t fathom how Gogi could have put us there—he’s almost like a surrogate father and he’d never have put us in such an unsafe, unhealthy place.

After a week of machinations that included me having to break the bad news (I’ll never forgive Jenik for making me “captain” this summer…), we found the most beautiful, fully refurbished apartment there ever was. Every single room has a balcony, and the views of the city are absolutely stunning. We even have a washermachine!!! I can’t begin to tell you the excitement this little piece of equipment has caused us. The best part is, this place is actually much cheaper than the evil outhouse.

Since our place is so lovely, we are slowly becoming the official hang-out of Expats. My anti-social nature rebels at this thought, but fortunately the place is big enough that I can escape when necessary.

I kinda’ miss the old gypsy woman taking a crap outside my window…but I’m learning to live without her. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make so long as I have a whirlpool tub.

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