So I have finally found an apartment. My apartment search has been a long and harrowing one, but an end is now in sight. The Peace Corps came yesterday to approve it and now all I have left is to have the breakup talk with my host family. They have been expecting me to stay I think, but it would be much better for me to go to my own place. Here is one man’s journey through his Albanian apartment search…
I have been back and forth on whether or not I even want to move. It would have its pros and cons, which I will list for you below.
Pros:
1) My apartment is small and it would be nice to have something bigger to host other volunteers when they come to visit as well as to have places to put all of my stuff
2) I would kind of like a kitchen. I currently have a sink in my bathroom, one burner on my balcony, and a sink in the 5x7 room that is technically the kitchen
3) Turkish toilets are not all that they have been made out to be. Living in a new place and eating new and sometimes questionably cooked foods do not mix well with these contraptions. I can explain these toilets in more detail at a later time.
4) Closet space. I don’t have a lot of clothes, but I would like a place to put what I have.
5) I would like to live more in the center. It is a 15-minute walk from the center to my house and it is all up hill. I am not complaining and I know that I am young and that I can handle it. Its just annoying. I also feel like there is more activity in the center that I could involve myself in.
6) This is the natural order. Peace Corps volunteers are supposed to live with a host family and then to move out on their own. I could stay but then I would be in a kind of crappy apartment and still with my host family.
Cons:
1) The apartment, however small, is kind of cozy. I kind of like the place at times. At other times I am just really frustrated by everything. I also have a really good view, the result of the hill I have to climb to get here. This is probably the best thing about my apartment.
2) I like my neighborhood. I am close to the school and the neighbors are great. I have been afraid that if I move the neighbors will all turn on me.
3) I like my host family. They are a good family. Maybe a little crazy at times, but they have grown on me. I have lunches with them five days a week and the food is really good (except for okra, but I don’t think that can be helped). I think that they have wanted and fully expected me to stay. There are also financial complications that pertain to them and I will explain this in further detail.
4) Guilt. People tell me that under communism entire families lived in these small studio apartments (I have also heard two families with ten people, but I think this is an exaggeration). For this I am sorry, but I have noticed that they are almost all empty at this point. There are four like this in my building and besides mine only one is occupied. The others have been turned into storage rooms or are just empty. I am sure that there are others like mine around, but you don’t even see too many of them. I know that I could reasonably live in one of these, but I just don’t want to. If the Peace Corps will pay for a larger apartment, why not take it? Also, if I am supposed to exemplify all of the great things about American capitalism, I would get the best place I can with the money that I can pay without mixing emotions.
5) So apparently this is my host family’s apartment. They (a family of four) lived in this room. The neighbors moved to Greece and offered their two-bedroom apartment to the family. This family doesn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t afford to pay rent, so they worked out a deal where they would fix this apartment for a Peace Corps volunteer that they were expecting last year and the money that the volunteer would give the family would go to Greece. This was kind of their rent. My leaving will throw off this system. I don’t know what the consequences for this will be, but I doubt that my family will be thrown out. They can find another renter or do whatever they were doing for the year before I arrived.

So I think what this has come down to is the fact that I would like to move and have a bigger apartment and a few basic luxuries like a toilet and kitchen, but I feel like I shouldn’t move. Throughout my apartment search I was able to put these things off until I needed to make a decision, but when the time came I felt that I should move. The other volunteers were able to help me out a lot with this too, as my sitemate had to put up with all of my agonizing.
The Peace Corps told us that in Kucove we could pay only 6000 leke or about $60 a month. It was almost impossible to find apartments in this price range. Juliet and I both asked the Peace Corps to raise our limit and they raised it to 8000 leke. We had hoped for more, but it didn’t happen. We looked at a bunch of apartments but most of them were 10,000 or 15,000 leke. This is probably factoring in the special foreigner price that we were both quoted. People assume that we have more money because we are Americans, they don’t usually believe that our limit really is our limit. I found an apartment that was spacious, it had two bedrooms, but not very modern. The kitchen was old and the bathroom was old and kind of smelled (but it didn’t have a Turkish!) It was a compromise, but the only thing I could find in my price range. The night before the Peace Corps was going to approve our apartments (actually it was about 9:00, it was cold, and I was in my pajamas watching a movie) Juliet called and said that there was one more apartment that she had heard about. I almost didn’t go, but she talked me into it. It was nice, it had a nice kitchen and a nice bathroom. This was the one that I had decided on. I am glad that I looked at it and it came in right under the wire.
When someone from the Peace Corps arrived to approve the apartments we ended up looking at all three (Juliet’s one and the two that I was looking at). We got to the apartment that I had looked at the night before last, but the guy thought that the apartment was for Juliet and not for me. He almost didn’t want to rent the apartment to me. I guess that he thought that I would destroy it or something. I don’t really know. The poor program assistant for Juliet who didn’t really even know me had to defend me and tell the guy that I was a good boy who wouldn’t break anything or even smoke in the apartment. Eventually he relented and decided that I could live in the apartment as well.
And that’s where I am right now. I told my host mother that I was looking for apartments a few weeks ago, I told her on Friday that I looked at an apartment, but I haven’t said exactly that I will be leaving on the first of November. I was hoping that they would connect the dots, and maybe they have and I don’t know yet, but I need to sit them down and say that I am leaving. I have been kind of putting it off, but I will do it soon. Ahh.
The guy said that he would clean the place up, fix the refrigerator and give me the keys so that I could start moving things in before the first. Once I get some pictures I will post them up here.