Finding a flat

So, yesterday I woke up determined to not spend another 24 hours moping about being homeless. After all, I'm in mother flipping Georgia. It's beautiful here, I've been eating extremely well, I have cheap and delicious wine coming out of my ears and I don't have to work.

We got up, fared our towlets, bolted our customary cups of instant Nescafe (two weeks here and still no Turkish coffee -- what gives?) and headed for the hills around Tbilisi. We walked out of the alternately crumbling and shiny neighborhood of Aragveli and headed down "Wine Rise" to cross the Mkvari river near the Old Town (Sololaki). We walked by the old bath houses. We walked through a recently redone section of town that is hopping with cafes and someliers. This wasn't here three years ago. Tbilisi no longer feels like a third-world city.

I like the changes, but they are startling. I guess if you're the kind of person who really enjoys feeling like you're roughing it or living a strange, whacko life, Tbilisi mmmm maybe doesn't force that on you so much. It's working at becoming a EU type city.

We looked at three apartments. We were able to eliminate two out of hand. While both were in good locations and were nice in most respects, one had no hot water in the kitchen, and the other had no heating.

This was all a little depressing. But we had a back-up plan, which we are falling back on now.

A friend of ours, "Singing John," was living in Tbilisi on a Fulbright for most of last year. When he returned to the states this summer, he left behind a gorgeous, two-story flat (Europeanism for apartment) in Old Tbilisi. We checked it out when we first arrived here. It has:

3 bedrooms
1 living room
1 European-style bathroom
1 bathroom with a low, sloping ceiling, huge ceramic bathtub and tiny soviet-era washing machine
1 ample kitchen
1 balcony.

add to this hard-wood floors, high ceilings, and lots of windows.

Rent for this palatial apartment? $400 USD/mo.

Um, hell yes please?

Catch? Not available until mid-October. When I regretfully dismissed the possibility of renting this apartment, it was because I thought that we'd have a place within the week -- not a month after we left Columbus. But! It's October 1st, and the places we looked at yesterday were going to take a week to clean up and refinish anyway. So, if we wait one more week, we get this super nice place.

So, we're waiting until mid-October, and we'll have a nice place, and until then we can stop looking and move into Sighnaghi for a few weeks. Hooray!