The Search Continues - Part II
Saturday, June 10, 2006
So today I woke up not so full of hope, all my hopes having been dashed yesterday! But still, we were scheduled to see something with Alona (as opposed to Elena) that sounded promising (on a website that I had never been able to contact by email while we were still in the States, but which had the nicest looking photos of all).
After taking Belle for her walk (she is such a good girl – she just won’t eat, but I guess she will when she’s hungry), I immediately went to the Internet Club to see if there was any news from any of the people who are supposed to be looking for apartments for me. There were great voice mails from Diane (Belle was very pleased to hear from her), and from Jeremy Poole in Umbria (he had just gotten Skype - at my suggestion - and was calling to tell me that it works and that he loves it). There was a nice long email from Jenny, with news of how they picketed the school board meeting, how Jed’s picture was on the front page of the school newspaper, and updates on Jackson and their upcoming trip to Torch Lake. And there was a message from Elena that there was a new listing on Lenina St. I also looked at her website to see if she had posted pictures of Apartment 28 which she had told me yesterday was available. There were! And they didn’t look half bad!!!! So I tried to call her to tell her I would like to see them, but her mobile was switched off. She called me later and I told her that I wanted to see both of them, as well as apartment 82. She is so difficult. She kept saying it’s impossible to see the apartments, this is so impossible to arrange, blah, blah, blah. But I told her it’s impossible for me to take an apartment without looking at it, blah, blah, blah. So she’s going to call me back. Meanwhile, Alona called and told me that the apartment we were to see at 11 today could not be seen until 6 p.m. this evening! Dashed hopes again. I told her we would like to look at one room places as well as one bedroom places, and we made an appointment to see at least two apartments at 3 p.m.
So now I told Ed that we had to contact Arkadiy and Gennady, the two lawyers he is working with on the OSJI project, and ask them to help us. Arkadiy is the head of an important civil rights organization, and quite an important and impressive lawyer in the Ukraine. Gennady was hired to run the Public Defender pilot project office in Kharkiv. Ed really hates to impose on them, and I do too, but we have no one else to help us – without someone local to contact real estate agents we are at the mercy of the internet companies that cater to Western tourists and charge by the night rather than by the month - the Elenas of the world. Well, this really paid off – within half an hour Arkadiy had lined up an appointment with an agent to show us an apartment in Rosy Luxembourg Square, at the southern end of the city center. Ed and I walked down Sumskaya St to the Monument next to the Metro Station Sovietska, about a mile, and Gennady came to meet us and act as translator. Then Gennady took Ed to see someone at another agency (his wife had called this agent earlier, after Ed had called Gennady), while I waited for Tania, the agent that Arkadiy had called. I saw her soon after and tried to make pantomime small talk (she speaks no English, and we all know how pathetic my Ukrainian is – besides everyone here speaks Russian, not Ukrainian; they usually understand Ukrainian, but not the way I speak it, that’s for sure) while we waited for Arkadiy, who had also decided to come in person and help. He arrived a few minutes later and the three of us went off to see this apartment while Ed and Gennady consulted with the other agent. We got to the back of the apartment complex and Tania pulled out some papers with official stamps on them and spoke to Arkadiy, who then explained to me that in order to see the apartment I had to hand over $400 cash to Tania and sign these papers!!! If I decided to take the apartment this would be the commission (which we knew about before); if I decided not to take the apartment I would get the money back. At first I told them that I didn’t think I had $400 with me (I did, actually, since I have been carrying all our cash and my passport with me rather than leave them in the hotel), but after making certain that I would get the money back in dollars, and after Arkadiy assured me that this was the normal practice, I looked in my fanny pack and “found” $400 exactly. We went in the now familiar door with the three digit code (you have to press all three numbers simultaneously), into the now familiar rather dingy and run down and very dark entrance, into a small but functional elevator, up to the 7th floor. We rang the door bell to one of the three doors on this floor and it was opened by the housekeeper. We entered a kind of vestibule where there were two more doors, one of which was open and led to the apartment I was to look at. It was unbelievable – I thought “I can live in this place”!!! It was bright and sunny with hardwood floors in the living room and bedroom, and inoffensive linoleum squares in the kitchen and bathroom. It has an enclosed balcony with doors leading to it from both the bedroom and living room. There is an air conditioner in the bedroom and two satellite TVs – one in the bedroom and one in the living room. The sofa is ugly as sin, but I can cover it with white sheets. The bedspread is also an eyesore, but I brought my own bedding, so that’s not a problem. The gold painted columns that separate the two rooms are a little over the top, but will remind me that I am, in fact, in the Ukraine, not some poor urban section of a big U.S. city. The bathroom has brand new fixtures and a washing machine. A new shower curtain will do wonders. There’s a wardrobe, some drawers, a small kitchenette table and bench and clean kitchen appliances. The fridge even has a small freezer. There’s an electric kettle and I can buy a toaster. I called Ed and told him that our worries were over – we had found a place I wouldn’t rather die than live in. We decided that I should see the other apartments that we had appointments to look at and that I would let Tania know tomorrow morning whether I would take the place. Of course she is keeping the $400 until I decide. I will call tomorrow and let her know and if I decide not to take it she will give me the money back on Monday – we’ll see – maybe it will never be an issue. If I decide I want it, I just have to call the housekeeper and she will meet us there and give us the key and we can move in tomorrow (after, I’m sure, we pay the entire 2 months rent up front, in U.S. cash dollars).
Meanwhile, Ed and Gennady had arranged to see two apartments with the other agent, which we understood were close by. It was getting close to 3 p.m. so I called Alona and asked if we could meet at 6 p.m. – that my husband was in a meeting and couldn’t get out sooner. She agreed. Arkadiy asked about Ed’s meeting, and I explained that I had lied – we agreed that one could lie to a real estate agent (please don’t take offense Joan!), but not to the Court.
We met up with Ed and Gennady, said goodbye to Arkadiy with our heartfelt thanks, and Ed, Gennady and I went to have a cup of tea before meeting the other agent at his office, close by in Constitution Square. The agent then proceeded to hail a cab – we were all astonished because we thought the apartments were nearby. He explained to Gennady that there is one close by, but we can’t see that one until 7 p.m., and that the other one is further north, near our hotel. So we squeezed into a tiny cab and drove to a section north of Svoboda Place (the largest square in Europe, if, of course, you don’t count Red Square!). The first place we stopped at looked promising, but it turned out to be the wrong address – and we drove on to what I thought might be the same apartment I had seen the day before with Vlad and Sasha. But no, it was a different place, but not nearly as good as the one I had seen in Rosy Luxembourg Square, and much more inconveniently located. (Ed’s offices, which haven’t been fixed yet, will probably be a 10 or 15 minute walk from Rosy Luxembourg Square.) They dropped us off at our hotel and we agreed to meet the agent in front of his office at 7 pm to see the place in Constitution Square (which is a one room, but very reasonable $430 a month, apartment).
By now it was getting on 5 p.m., so we went up to see if we could get Belle to eat something and grab a bite ourselves before meeting Alona in front of the hotel at 6 pm. Belle must have been starving, because she ate pretty quickly, and came with us to the Café Verssay across the street from the hotel. We had another delicious meal, for $10 for the two of us. We even communicated pretty well with our waitress. I managed to order a sour cream dressing for the tomato and cucumber and dill salad (the menu was in English and Ukrainian, but there was no dressing specified), black tea with milk, bread (one piece of black and one piece of white), butter and mineral water, without reference to the English menu. There was a lot of gesturing, but we got everything we wanted.
By this point Ed and I were greatly relieved – since we knew that there was at least one apartment I could live in that was available for the right price ($800 a month), we were, as Ed puts it, “playing with their money” at this point. If we find a better apartment –great. If not, we take the one I have already seen and move in tomorrow.
Elena had called and said she could, after all, show me an apartment (also in Rosy Luxembourg Sq) tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. I agreed to meet her at the Independence Monument (which I had seen earlier this morning) at the appointed hour.
We met Alona and her colleague and they showed us pictures of several apartments – none of which looked better than the one I had already seen in Rosy Luxembourg Sq. And they weren’t as well located either. So we passed on seeing any of them, but I did arrange to meet Alona tomorrow morning (time to be arranged by phone) to see a “better” place (again in Rosy Luxembourg Square!).
Off we went, by foot, to meet the agent at Constitution Square. There he was, with his teenage son, to tell us that it turns out he can’t show us the apartment until tomorrow at 11 a.m.!!!! I asked his son (who speaks a little English) whether we could at least see the entrance. We walked around to the now familiar back side, where there is some grass, many trash cans and, at this hour, lots of people, children and even a dog or two. He pointed to the apartment (which blessedly is only on the second floor) and the windows looked okay. He also pointed to another apartment further up, a one bedroom, that was available and that he could show me at the same time the next day. I agreed to meet him there at 11 tomorrow.
We took the metro back, which is not as easy as it sounds. None of the signs are Romanized, so we really had to struggle – not only to figure out where we were going, but where we were!!! Ed spotted a face he would have picked for a jury and asked, sort of in Ukraine, where “here” was on the subway map on the wall. It was a young man with a beautiful young woman – a real natural beauty – no makeup, just naturally gorgeous and friendly looking. They were incredible. They actually took us to our train, got on with us, took us to our stop, got out, walked outside with us and delivered us to our familiar turf. They then went back into the subway to continue their evening. Amazing what people will do for you!!! We did manage to have some sort of conversation with them – she is a psychology student (Ed said that he needs her for me because I’m crazy, using the universal pantomime for crazy), and he turns out to be a lawyer. We explained (and I think they understood) that we are there to help reform the legal system and the police. We think he knew of Arkadiy and was impressed that someone from the U.S. would volunteer to come here and help. But who knows, really, how much we got across to them. All I know is that they were exceptionally kind and nice to us and I am grateful that there are people like that in this world, in the Ukraine, and especially in Kharkiv on a beautiful Saturday night in June!
So today I woke up not so full of hope, all my hopes having been dashed yesterday! But still, we were scheduled to see something with Alona (as opposed to Elena) that sounded promising (on a website that I had never been able to contact by email while we were still in the States, but which had the nicest looking photos of all).
After taking Belle for her walk (she is such a good girl – she just won’t eat, but I guess she will when she’s hungry), I immediately went to the Internet Club to see if there was any news from any of the people who are supposed to be looking for apartments for me. There were great voice mails from Diane (Belle was very pleased to hear from her), and from Jeremy Poole in Umbria (he had just gotten Skype - at my suggestion - and was calling to tell me that it works and that he loves it). There was a nice long email from Jenny, with news of how they picketed the school board meeting, how Jed’s picture was on the front page of the school newspaper, and updates on Jackson and their upcoming trip to Torch Lake. And there was a message from Elena that there was a new listing on Lenina St. I also looked at her website to see if she had posted pictures of Apartment 28 which she had told me yesterday was available. There were! And they didn’t look half bad!!!! So I tried to call her to tell her I would like to see them, but her mobile was switched off. She called me later and I told her that I wanted to see both of them, as well as apartment 82. She is so difficult. She kept saying it’s impossible to see the apartments, this is so impossible to arrange, blah, blah, blah. But I told her it’s impossible for me to take an apartment without looking at it, blah, blah, blah. So she’s going to call me back. Meanwhile, Alona called and told me that the apartment we were to see at 11 today could not be seen until 6 p.m. this evening! Dashed hopes again. I told her we would like to look at one room places as well as one bedroom places, and we made an appointment to see at least two apartments at 3 p.m.
So now I told Ed that we had to contact Arkadiy and Gennady, the two lawyers he is working with on the OSJI project, and ask them to help us. Arkadiy is the head of an important civil rights organization, and quite an important and impressive lawyer in the Ukraine. Gennady was hired to run the Public Defender pilot project office in Kharkiv. Ed really hates to impose on them, and I do too, but we have no one else to help us – without someone local to contact real estate agents we are at the mercy of the internet companies that cater to Western tourists and charge by the night rather than by the month - the Elenas of the world. Well, this really paid off – within half an hour Arkadiy had lined up an appointment with an agent to show us an apartment in Rosy Luxembourg Square, at the southern end of the city center. Ed and I walked down Sumskaya St to the Monument next to the Metro Station Sovietska, about a mile, and Gennady came to meet us and act as translator. Then Gennady took Ed to see someone at another agency (his wife had called this agent earlier, after Ed had called Gennady), while I waited for Tania, the agent that Arkadiy had called. I saw her soon after and tried to make pantomime small talk (she speaks no English, and we all know how pathetic my Ukrainian is – besides everyone here speaks Russian, not Ukrainian; they usually understand Ukrainian, but not the way I speak it, that’s for sure) while we waited for Arkadiy, who had also decided to come in person and help. He arrived a few minutes later and the three of us went off to see this apartment while Ed and Gennady consulted with the other agent. We got to the back of the apartment complex and Tania pulled out some papers with official stamps on them and spoke to Arkadiy, who then explained to me that in order to see the apartment I had to hand over $400 cash to Tania and sign these papers!!! If I decided to take the apartment this would be the commission (which we knew about before); if I decided not to take the apartment I would get the money back. At first I told them that I didn’t think I had $400 with me (I did, actually, since I have been carrying all our cash and my passport with me rather than leave them in the hotel), but after making certain that I would get the money back in dollars, and after Arkadiy assured me that this was the normal practice, I looked in my fanny pack and “found” $400 exactly. We went in the now familiar door with the three digit code (you have to press all three numbers simultaneously), into the now familiar rather dingy and run down and very dark entrance, into a small but functional elevator, up to the 7th floor. We rang the door bell to one of the three doors on this floor and it was opened by the housekeeper. We entered a kind of vestibule where there were two more doors, one of which was open and led to the apartment I was to look at. It was unbelievable – I thought “I can live in this place”!!! It was bright and sunny with hardwood floors in the living room and bedroom, and inoffensive linoleum squares in the kitchen and bathroom. It has an enclosed balcony with doors leading to it from both the bedroom and living room. There is an air conditioner in the bedroom and two satellite TVs – one in the bedroom and one in the living room. The sofa is ugly as sin, but I can cover it with white sheets. The bedspread is also an eyesore, but I brought my own bedding, so that’s not a problem. The gold painted columns that separate the two rooms are a little over the top, but will remind me that I am, in fact, in the Ukraine, not some poor urban section of a big U.S. city. The bathroom has brand new fixtures and a washing machine. A new shower curtain will do wonders. There’s a wardrobe, some drawers, a small kitchenette table and bench and clean kitchen appliances. The fridge even has a small freezer. There’s an electric kettle and I can buy a toaster. I called Ed and told him that our worries were over – we had found a place I wouldn’t rather die than live in. We decided that I should see the other apartments that we had appointments to look at and that I would let Tania know tomorrow morning whether I would take the place. Of course she is keeping the $400 until I decide. I will call tomorrow and let her know and if I decide not to take it she will give me the money back on Monday – we’ll see – maybe it will never be an issue. If I decide I want it, I just have to call the housekeeper and she will meet us there and give us the key and we can move in tomorrow (after, I’m sure, we pay the entire 2 months rent up front, in U.S. cash dollars).
Meanwhile, Ed and Gennady had arranged to see two apartments with the other agent, which we understood were close by. It was getting close to 3 p.m. so I called Alona and asked if we could meet at 6 p.m. – that my husband was in a meeting and couldn’t get out sooner. She agreed. Arkadiy asked about Ed’s meeting, and I explained that I had lied – we agreed that one could lie to a real estate agent (please don’t take offense Joan!), but not to the Court.
We met up with Ed and Gennady, said goodbye to Arkadiy with our heartfelt thanks, and Ed, Gennady and I went to have a cup of tea before meeting the other agent at his office, close by in Constitution Square. The agent then proceeded to hail a cab – we were all astonished because we thought the apartments were nearby. He explained to Gennady that there is one close by, but we can’t see that one until 7 p.m., and that the other one is further north, near our hotel. So we squeezed into a tiny cab and drove to a section north of Svoboda Place (the largest square in Europe, if, of course, you don’t count Red Square!). The first place we stopped at looked promising, but it turned out to be the wrong address – and we drove on to what I thought might be the same apartment I had seen the day before with Vlad and Sasha. But no, it was a different place, but not nearly as good as the one I had seen in Rosy Luxembourg Square, and much more inconveniently located. (Ed’s offices, which haven’t been fixed yet, will probably be a 10 or 15 minute walk from Rosy Luxembourg Square.) They dropped us off at our hotel and we agreed to meet the agent in front of his office at 7 pm to see the place in Constitution Square (which is a one room, but very reasonable $430 a month, apartment).
By now it was getting on 5 p.m., so we went up to see if we could get Belle to eat something and grab a bite ourselves before meeting Alona in front of the hotel at 6 pm. Belle must have been starving, because she ate pretty quickly, and came with us to the Café Verssay across the street from the hotel. We had another delicious meal, for $10 for the two of us. We even communicated pretty well with our waitress. I managed to order a sour cream dressing for the tomato and cucumber and dill salad (the menu was in English and Ukrainian, but there was no dressing specified), black tea with milk, bread (one piece of black and one piece of white), butter and mineral water, without reference to the English menu. There was a lot of gesturing, but we got everything we wanted.
By this point Ed and I were greatly relieved – since we knew that there was at least one apartment I could live in that was available for the right price ($800 a month), we were, as Ed puts it, “playing with their money” at this point. If we find a better apartment –great. If not, we take the one I have already seen and move in tomorrow.
Elena had called and said she could, after all, show me an apartment (also in Rosy Luxembourg Sq) tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. I agreed to meet her at the Independence Monument (which I had seen earlier this morning) at the appointed hour.
We met Alona and her colleague and they showed us pictures of several apartments – none of which looked better than the one I had already seen in Rosy Luxembourg Sq. And they weren’t as well located either. So we passed on seeing any of them, but I did arrange to meet Alona tomorrow morning (time to be arranged by phone) to see a “better” place (again in Rosy Luxembourg Square!).
Off we went, by foot, to meet the agent at Constitution Square. There he was, with his teenage son, to tell us that it turns out he can’t show us the apartment until tomorrow at 11 a.m.!!!! I asked his son (who speaks a little English) whether we could at least see the entrance. We walked around to the now familiar back side, where there is some grass, many trash cans and, at this hour, lots of people, children and even a dog or two. He pointed to the apartment (which blessedly is only on the second floor) and the windows looked okay. He also pointed to another apartment further up, a one bedroom, that was available and that he could show me at the same time the next day. I agreed to meet him there at 11 tomorrow.
We took the metro back, which is not as easy as it sounds. None of the signs are Romanized, so we really had to struggle – not only to figure out where we were going, but where we were!!! Ed spotted a face he would have picked for a jury and asked, sort of in Ukraine, where “here” was on the subway map on the wall. It was a young man with a beautiful young woman – a real natural beauty – no makeup, just naturally gorgeous and friendly looking. They were incredible. They actually took us to our train, got on with us, took us to our stop, got out, walked outside with us and delivered us to our familiar turf. They then went back into the subway to continue their evening. Amazing what people will do for you!!! We did manage to have some sort of conversation with them – she is a psychology student (Ed said that he needs her for me because I’m crazy, using the universal pantomime for crazy), and he turns out to be a lawyer. We explained (and I think they understood) that we are there to help reform the legal system and the police. We think he knew of Arkadiy and was impressed that someone from the U.S. would volunteer to come here and help. But who knows, really, how much we got across to them. All I know is that they were exceptionally kind and nice to us and I am grateful that there are people like that in this world, in the Ukraine, and especially in Kharkiv on a beautiful Saturday night in June!
posted by Susan Spivak at 2:28 PM
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