at last, a flat
A couple of things have happened. Firstly, I now have a flat and an address, though I am not going to tell you it as my entrance hall has a post-will-be-stolen feel to it. Rather magnificent though, with lovely tiling and general bigness. A photo will follow.
To be honest, i don't know my address. To put you out of your misery, biscuits can be sent to my office.
Don't get too excited though, i'm only in this place for a month. it may make finding a place for the whole duration harder rather than easier, as six months is the perfect length. This place is fine, if not ideal. I'm sharing with William (again, photo to follow), a charming New Zealander attached to the UNDP writing a web-based educational tool on economic transition in the region. For transition, read hideous, knee-jerk decisions to sell everything off, slash social provision and drive millions of people out of work. Slovakia now has a flat 19% tax rate, Russia thirteen or thereabouts. Tesco has more of the retail market in Slovakia (>50%) than anywhere else, which has had an effect on small shops here the likes of which we can only nightmare about in britain.
But the flat: after snore-avoidance in corridors, pouring water on my sheets to stay cool enough to sleep and listening to my compatriots through the small hours, my sleeping arrangements are again ... interesting. There is a tendency in this country for having bedrooms you walk through to get to other rooms. Maybe it's a communist shareitall phenomenon. I am in such a room, although to be fair i think this place was designed to only have one bedroom and me in the living room. My first thought was So, where *is* the bed, and of course it was under the sofa. The short bit of the sofa:
Still it's only for a month. Just don't ask whether I have an oven.
We have a bar right next door, called 4zby: štyrizby, štyri being four and izby being rooms. It’s named after the film Four Rooms, apparently. The beer’s not as good as elsewhere, but it’s also cheaper and closer, and utterly appropriate for a celebratory na zdravie.
Speaking of compatriots, I am especially impatient to finish The Amber Spyglass (a shout out to Oli for the recommendation and loan) as I have just got Philip Pullman’s subsequent Lyra’s Oxford from the library. That is the British Council library, which I was helpfully informed would be closed for a month from yesterday evening. Having dutifully gone down to stock my summer with books in god’s own language, I was told I could only borrow fiction (okay), and I could only have one book – they are spending their August holiday doing an inventory. Having chosen the Pullman book, I talked them into letting me have another, my colleague (who helpfullly informed me, and with whom I will be working closely on matters of fertility and youth policy) recommended Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet.
This is also the colleague in whose flat I lived for a while, a man for whom generosity is a mother tongue. This reinforces my sense that to have, to enjoy and to share are the sides of the happiness triangle. I’ll do the same for someone some day.
With Adam, a UNDP intern from Hungary, I took a long walk today and came across this gorgeous dog and its companion, and a few doors down the house you can also see at flickr. That site has a great deal more to it, but its basic photo-gallery function is quite pleasing enough for now. We then went to an art gallery and saw a bunch of rather cool stuff, but i'll have to tell you another time as my laptop battery is making like the fat lady.
The other thing i must tell you about is my work, as I now have a much better idea of what i'll be doing. But that will also have to wait.
To be honest, i don't know my address. To put you out of your misery, biscuits can be sent to my office.
Don't get too excited though, i'm only in this place for a month. it may make finding a place for the whole duration harder rather than easier, as six months is the perfect length. This place is fine, if not ideal. I'm sharing with William (again, photo to follow), a charming New Zealander attached to the UNDP writing a web-based educational tool on economic transition in the region. For transition, read hideous, knee-jerk decisions to sell everything off, slash social provision and drive millions of people out of work. Slovakia now has a flat 19% tax rate, Russia thirteen or thereabouts. Tesco has more of the retail market in Slovakia (>50%) than anywhere else, which has had an effect on small shops here the likes of which we can only nightmare about in britain.
But the flat: after snore-avoidance in corridors, pouring water on my sheets to stay cool enough to sleep and listening to my compatriots through the small hours, my sleeping arrangements are again ... interesting. There is a tendency in this country for having bedrooms you walk through to get to other rooms. Maybe it's a communist shareitall phenomenon. I am in such a room, although to be fair i think this place was designed to only have one bedroom and me in the living room. My first thought was So, where *is* the bed, and of course it was under the sofa. The short bit of the sofa:
Still it's only for a month. Just don't ask whether I have an oven.
We have a bar right next door, called 4zby: štyrizby, štyri being four and izby being rooms. It’s named after the film Four Rooms, apparently. The beer’s not as good as elsewhere, but it’s also cheaper and closer, and utterly appropriate for a celebratory na zdravie.
Speaking of compatriots, I am especially impatient to finish The Amber Spyglass (a shout out to Oli for the recommendation and loan) as I have just got Philip Pullman’s subsequent Lyra’s Oxford from the library. That is the British Council library, which I was helpfully informed would be closed for a month from yesterday evening. Having dutifully gone down to stock my summer with books in god’s own language, I was told I could only borrow fiction (okay), and I could only have one book – they are spending their August holiday doing an inventory. Having chosen the Pullman book, I talked them into letting me have another, my colleague (who helpfullly informed me, and with whom I will be working closely on matters of fertility and youth policy) recommended Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet.
This is also the colleague in whose flat I lived for a while, a man for whom generosity is a mother tongue. This reinforces my sense that to have, to enjoy and to share are the sides of the happiness triangle. I’ll do the same for someone some day.
With Adam, a UNDP intern from Hungary, I took a long walk today and came across this gorgeous dog and its companion, and a few doors down the house you can also see at flickr. That site has a great deal more to it, but its basic photo-gallery function is quite pleasing enough for now. We then went to an art gallery and saw a bunch of rather cool stuff, but i'll have to tell you another time as my laptop battery is making like the fat lady.
The other thing i must tell you about is my work, as I now have a much better idea of what i'll be doing. But that will also have to wait.
posted by chris at 12:39 PM
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