Renting
A real travel diarist would take notes, remark on small details, and meticulously document interesting occurances that wouldn’t cause the ordinary traveller to look up from their frappacino, but make for terribly stimulating reading. I’m afraid that I have accepted my limitations and am not one of these. Paul Theroux, another implausible over-achiever can write his way to hell for all I care*.
What I give you are floury descriptions and pointless padding around inconsequential events which, to me, are highly amusing but are irrelevent to the average person (here I measure irrelevence in factors of a very large number.) I will however attempt to make an exception in this case because it would be a shame not to document such an interesting experience as searching for rental accommodation in Barcelona. Here goes:
My first advertisement in the local online classifieds:
Chico australiano busca habitación de bueno rollo. Prefiero aglo centrico de Barcelona. No fumo, soy limpio y puedo pagar hasta 350 euros. Gracias!
“No students!” said Olga as I walked into the door of her fifth floor apartment, a few streets up from La Sagrada Famila. Olga was from Russia and being tall, blond and serious, she looked the part. If she had told me that she was a secret spy for the Russian government but occasionally sat on the bench for the former Soviet Republic’s women’s basketball team I wouldn’t have quivered a nostril. She wore a black suit that swished as she swept me around her neat two-bedroom unit and spoke in a calm but authoritative tone, as one would use when demonstrating the inner workings of a nuclear power plant.
“This is the living room. This is where we watch TV, talk and drink tea.”
The tile floors were clean and the whole place smelled like a combination of pot pourri and pine-o-clean.
“And the kitchen. We keep it clean. There are cockroaches in summer and I like potatoes.”
I felt oppressed so I thanked Olga and said my goodbyes. We both knew we’d never be living together unless forced at gun point. As I exited I passed two Japanese women. I thought that maybe it would have been interesting to stick around to witness yet another cultural collision but thought better of it; plus I had another appointment.
This time with Tere, in the same area, who had responded to my advertisement the minute I’d posted it. In any other situation this would have made me apprehensive and I was to an extent; but it was Saturday afternoon and I had less than 24 hours to find a central place to live otherwise I was heading 30 mins by train out to Sant Cugat to the company flat. Free rent: yes. Kind offer: of course. Perfect chance to save some money: why not? Lightyears away from the action and where I wanted to be: no thanks.
From the façade, Tere’s building seemed nice enough. The streets were clean and there were quiet cafes and shops peppered up and down the streets. I nearly felt a wave of optimism. There was no elevator but the building had potential – it was modern with a marble stair case and a token old lady struggling to climb the stairs.
“Hola,” she said.
I pictured afternoons when I would come home from work and help her with her shopping, malking small talk in my soon-to-be fluent Spanish about the weather and how the price of bread isn’t reflected in the latest inflation figures.
My fantasy was to be short-lived. A small and greasy-haired woman opened the door for me on the fourth floor. In Tere’s flat there were boxes stacked against the wall filled with books and clothes. There were more clothes lying over the floor and the kitchen - I only presume it was a kitchen as it was greasier than the others – reminded me of a dark cave, only this one had yellow algae, grey tiles and half a rotting ham sitting on the bench. Something flashed through my mind about cave-dwelling sea hags but I was so stunned that I couldn’t even form coherent metaphors.
Still, I did have the presence of mind to notice that, through protruding teeth, Tere spat out Castellano like a machine gun firing down upon hapless Morroccan immigrants. I didn’t understand a word.
“Lo siento, todavía no hablo mucho español,” I said.
“No problems, I can teach you. I don’t speak much English so you’ll learn.”
Great, I’ll learn how to talk to fisherman and hookers.
“Ok, this is the room, the living room, the bathroom… blah blah blah. 350 euros.”
“What’s that scratching noise I hear?”
“Oh, that is my cat, Bonita. You like the cats, yes? He is playing with mi niño Gonzalo. You like children, no?”
Walk slowly away. Keep eye contact and don’t panic.
Next was Paolo an Italian fashion designer who, with his tight shirt wrapped around his tight body, shaved head and radiant tan, looked the part. He also looked the part of the lead dancer in the ABBA stage show, but he was a gentleman and presented his flat with professionalism.
Paolo’s place was no haven of IKEA trinket. There were designer lamp shades, low and long coffee tables made of dark woods from extinct Indonesian rainforests, shag rugs and wooden blinds. Hanging on the walls were abstract paintings framed in gold leaf. For all I knew it could have been solid gold. Before me was a man who, I was sure, demanded a such level of class.
The room was huge. There was a double bed, a sofa, a large desk, a chair and a single cushioned chair for reading in the sunlight that was streaming through a large window. It was the perfect inner-city eurpoean bachelor pad. Paolo knew it, so did I. Our eyes met and before I could ask the question of price, which I expected to be 400 plus, he stabbed at me with his Italian accent:
“I work many hours so I don’t like de noise at night. And you cannot bring de people home. You play guitar? I don’t like de noise.”
What about breathing? Can I do that or does it have to be under my bed covers? Do you have a toilet inside or is there a vacuum chute to which I have to hermatically seal to my arse so that I may shit outside?
Shame, but goodbye.
There were others. But my attention started to wane after a while and they weren’t really worth mentioning in great detail. For instance, there was Hussien: a Pakistani gentlemen who informed me in polite Spanglish that the three Bolivians who were currently occupying the room were soon to vacate and that for a mere 350 euros a month the urine-smelling shoe box and stained mattress could be mine. I wanted to inquire whether I had to install my own cockroach infestation or that the ones that I noticed scuttling away from the room were free. Hussein however was clearly in no mood to bargain. It seemed as if he had had plenty of experience ripping off foreigners and I didn’t want to shatter his illusions of Australians. I left without saying goodbye, content in the knowledge that even such a trivial display of humanity would have been wasted.
In the end a softly-spoken Catalan homosexual was my saviour. I took a risk going to see Jordi’s** place as time was short – it was Sunday afternoon and I was tired, hungry and ready to pack my bags and head up to Sant Cugat. But what the hey, I thought. So I followed the map into the centre of the city, climbed the four flights of stairs and knocked on the door.
“We wear earplugs to go to sleep,” he said. There was no humour in his voice. The other flatmates, two girls, one Polish and the other Argentinian, both nodded.
“People are out on the street until five in the morning every night in summer. We’re on the top floor so it’s boiling in summer and there are eight Columbians living across the hall.” I noticed that his eyes were sinking like two pits of molten tar with every sentence.
“I’ll take it,” I said and slapped a 100 euros on the glass table. Jordi raised an eyebrow and proceeded to show me how the hot water system worked.
I had finally found my “auberge espagnole” moment – something rare and perfect. A room right in the centre of the city, at a low price with cool international people my age, all who worked. Sure, it was like sleeping in the midst of a university orgy every night, but I got used to it and even became one of the street revellers on most evenings.
Finding a place to live was what I might euphemistically label as fun and interesting but after a few drinks I would probably reveal the truth: that it was tiring and frightening. Deciphering the property advertisements in any big city requires some local knowledge, or more importantly, an awareness of how far people are capable of tipping the scales of bullshit. But not everyone tries to rip you off. Sometimes, with the right advice or a piece of luck, you can find a comfortable little hole to crawl into so that you can await the next storm.
* Paul, if by some impossibly small chance, you are reading this, I refer to you only because I admire your professionalism and excellent writing style. Keep up the fantastic work.
** Name has been changed to protect privacy however just about everyone with testicles in Catalunya is named Jordi or Xavi, so it’s no great stretch of the imagination.