Searching for an Apartment

So much to write about! The long gap in posts was caused largely by my search for a residence, as well as my first few days of work at the Polytechnika, a few get-togethers and so forth. Last week was apartment-hunting in earnest, and I got a very good sense of at least some of the housing stock around here, as well as some of the neighborhoods in Krakow. I have to say, this is one seriously beautiful city, now that I have had more than a cursory look at it.

The housing stock I saw was variable, from brand-new-can-still-smell-the-paint to old but well-maintained to just old. One of my early trips took me to Bronowice, which is to the west of downtown. There, I looked at an apartment in the "Eastern Apartment Bloc" style. As a side-note, I don't think that we'll see "Eastern Bloc Revival" as an architectural style anytime soon. Though the buildings were kind of large and grim, there was a nice green-space in the middle of them. Although it was a set of blocs I did get a sense that people knew each other in the community, as I saw people conversing with each other and gossiping. I think that this is what the designers of a lot of the housing projects in the United States were trying for: cheap, stacked housing with a pleasant space in the middle. However, where those designers had failed in the U.S. it appears that the architects over here succeeded. I also really liked the potential landlords, an older couple, but the apartment itself smelled strongly of cat.

The most entertaining landlord I met was a lady leasing an apartment about 2 or 3 blocks east of the Planty, a circular park where the old city wall used to be. It was also convenient to the main train station and therefore also to the Polytechnika, which is a few blocks further north from the trains. Given the location of the place, I was quite enthusiastic about checking it out. And then I actually went there. The landlady showed up with her boyfriend, who was putting on/buttoning up his collared shirt as he walked up to the building (and no, he was not wearing an undershirt). We went up to the fourth floor and looked into the apartment. First, the kitchen was hilariously small. It was probably possible to turn around in there, but not easily. Imagine a room that is maybe 6 feet by 6, and has in it a four-burner stove, refrigerator, sink, and small table. Second, the bathroom was remarkable in that it had NO SINK. However, the kitchen had a sink with TWO faucets, one of which was functional but the landlady said it was better not to use. The bathroom had a toilet with the tank and the bowl connected by shop-vac line, as I had seen in Macedonia.

                The landlady then went on to demonstrate the cabinets. The first door she opened fell off. She and her friend then proceeded to argue about the best way to fix this particular problem, and a few other things besides. Boyfriend at this point also nonchalantly opens the window, sits in the sill and lights a cigarette as we continue to look through the apartment. I noticed that some of the other cabinets were held closed by a series of rubber bands. The refrigerator and washing machine were both old, which prompted “As you can see, the washer is old, um, hey Ed [not his real name], how old would you say this thing is?” “Oh, wow, uh, I dunno, I’d say pretty old. Might have seen something like it in a museum.” There was a fair amount of chatter between those two that I just kind of stood and listened to, trying hard not to burst out laughing. Which only made the situation even funnier.

                Those probably would have made for some entertaining landlords, but I was in this for housing not entertainment. I continued my search and probably looked at about 8 places in varying degrees of niceness. There was one very nice place for not very much a month that was unfortunately quite a ways from downtown. I probably would have had to take a bus to work every day, and there was only one bus that went out that far. Another place was right around the corner from the Polytechnika, but it looked like it came out of a Charles Dickens novel. Another one near downtown was an apartment in alright repair at the end of a very creepy staircase with a bannister that probably hadn’t been dusted since the Jaruzelski Administration. I settled on a sprawling apartment on Kościuszki Street, almost a rock’s throw from Wawel Castle and very convenient to the Jubilat, one of Krakow’s main department stores. It is right on a tram line, and about 2 miles from work. I’m still doing a thorough walkthrough of the apartment, but so far everything seems to be alright with the usual minor irritations to be found in an apartment.

                One funny thing about this apartment was that the guy who showed us around was not the landlord but rather somebody’s brother-in-law. Prof. Kowal was suspicious, as apparently there’s a kind of fraud that occurs here in Poland where somebody will lease an apartment, claim to be the landlord of it, make copies of the keys, lease the apartment to 4 different parties, and then disappear as those 4 parties show up on the same day with boxes of stuff, demanding to know what the other three are doing in “their” apartment. So, we told this guy that we would only deal with him further if he produced a notarized statement that he had power of attorney, otherwise we would only deal directly with the landlord. And when the landlady showed up, we took a very thorough look at her ID as well as the title to the apartment.

                I’d like to give props to Prof. Kowal and Pani Kowal for all their help in this apartment search. Prof. Kowal came with me to sign the lease, and he caught two potentially-tricky problems and solved them. The first had to do with the language of the lease and the way the property was described. This place has a kitchen, an antechamber, and two rooms along with toilet and bath. The lease as initially written referred to a “garderoba,” which Prof. K pointed out could very well refer to the antechamber. After some wrangling, we were able to get language inserted that explicitly referred to my exclusive use of the entire apartment of two rooms etc, as described in the title.

                The second thing that Prof. Kowal was really helpful with was utilities. Apparently, the way utilities are paid for in Poland make no sense at all. Say that the previous tenant was a jerkoff and didn’t pay their gas bill. It is up to you, the incoming tenant, to in some way track down the previous tenant and get him to agree as to where his responsibility for gas ends and where yours begins. And you have to show up in person at the gas company together in order to do this. If you don’t want to do this, either you have to pay the gas company to have the meter read, you have to pay whatever was not paid by the previous tenant, or the gas company shuts off your gas (screw you!) I understand the electric company operates similarly. Oh yes. And because I’m a foreigner this gets even more complicated: the gas company is worried that I might pick up stakes suddenly, leave the country, and leave them holding the bag for all those unpaid bills. So, they make it hard for a foreigner to even set up an account with them.

                The solution we came up with is that the gas company will send the landlady a bill, that bill will be forwarded to me, I will pay the bill and return the receipt to the landlady. All this almost makes me miss People’s Gas and Duquesne Light.

                Speaking of gas: it’s expensive over here. Just how expensive I’m going to find out shortly I’m sure, but I was told it was five times the price of that in the States. I’ve noticed that even in the semi-sleazy apartments I looked at, the windows were new and probably for exactly this reason. Most all of Poland’s gas comes from Russia, as does most of Europe’s gas in general. This gives Gazprom significant monopoly power over pricing and most everything else that goes on gas-wise. The EU has not presented a united front on this….because the Russians ran a pipeline under the Baltic to Germany that bypasses Poland. It used to be that the Germans did not want gas to get too expensive in Poland because the Poles always had the option of turning off Germany’s gas. Now the Germans cut their own deal with the Russians. So, not only do the Russians have monopoly power, they are able to price-discriminate as the market for gas is fragmented.

In general, there is not much of a global market for natural gas because unlike oil it is difficult to transport natural gas overseas. Thus, the energy boom that hit the U.S. has had little effect on natural gas prices over here. There was talk of doing hydraulic fracturing and unconventional gas recovery in Poland, as there was a newly-discovered gas shale in eastern Poland. However, the estimate of the amount of gas in that field keeps being revised downward. Finally, perhaps the most alarming thing about gas in this country is that it does not have t-butyl mercaptan added to it. Natural gas by itself does not smell. That “I smell gas” smell in the states comes from the mercaptan (and in fact there was a small gas-leak scare at Pitt that happened when one of the lab groups was using t-butyl mercaptan in a synthesis , and somebody in the hallway smelled it). Now, the gas in my apartment that comes out of the stove does have a particular smell, it just isn’t one that I’m used to. I’m just astonished that that additive is not present.

Heating in Krakow is generally provided in one of about four ways. First is gas, like I mentioned. Second, there is a citywide steam-heating system, rather like that of New York or Pittsburgh, except that it is used to heat private residences as well as just houses. Third, there is electric heat, which I understand is expensive. What makes electric heat more expensive is that, at least in some areas, there are different rates for different times of day, in other words there is a peak price and an off-peak price. To keep heating costs down, it makes sense to heat the apartment at night. But that doesn’t seem to make much logical sense now, does it? There are still some buildings around here that are heated with coal. I didn’t see any on my tours, but I definitely saw advertisements for places with coal heat.

So, now I have a place! Sometime soon I’m going to start having to talk nerdy to you, and talk about what I’m actually doing over here with my allotment of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.