A VENEZUELAN'S GUIDE FOR MIESZKANIES ...

Hey guys, as I think everybody but Chavez know, I'm buying an apartment in Warsaw (and I really hope he doesn't realize it since I don't want my 55 sqm taken away since I only use 3 sqm to sleep, btw I have a bunch of new stories with the Embassy of Venezuela in Warsaw and the new bolivarian ambassador, but those are better for a different time), so of course I thought the difficult part was to find an apartment I would like and wouldn't be very expensive, the credit, I was told was going to be a piece of cake, and doing the interiors pretty easy, but well here it comes more or less the story:

FINDING THE APARTMENT

Well, lets start with some background, Polish prices are something between Venezuela/US (small cities) and WE/US (big cities), usually prices for very nice apartments in the city center are between 1500-2000 Euro sqm (of course there are some that are more expensive, but not that many), currently buying an apartment (usually called mieszkanie in Polish - now you understand the name of the blog, sorry but Iwonka and I talk all the time in a mixture of Polish/Spanish/English/Venezuelan so I got used to it) seems to be the number one priority of every inhabitant in Warsaw, which its amazing, everybody is buying one, it doesn't matter if you only earn 100 USD per month, you are trying to get one, the reasons are many: tax for housing is only 7% (is going to be 22% in 2 years), this year is the last time you can deduct taxes for the materials you buy, by 2009 Poland will have the Euro and if you ask people in Spain and Italy they can tell you what happened there to real state after the Euro (let's second guess that one because now we have a crazy president in Poland, also for another story, but I'm going to start thinking that I'm bringing bad luck everywhere), and real state revaluing an average of 10% per year. Of course most construction companies have realized this and are building apartments in any imaginable place (even close to cemeteries!!!!!).

People in Europe live in small apartments, that's the way it is, a 150 sqm apartment in Poland is considered a mansion, a midsize apartment is 50/60 sqm, plus in the price of the apartment the cost of the parking lot is not included, not even the storage room. One last thing, people in Poland usually prefer houses, the dream of 99% of the people (let's hope Iwonka agree with this because I don't want to be hit later) is to build their own house, houses are also cheaper, but usually are very far from downtown, and if you know me a bit, I'm a downtown kind of person, another interesting thing is that the whole idea of allowing to buy a house (meaning land) to a foreigner is quite a subject here; it is allowed, but I think that almost everybody are against it, people are afraid that foreigners are going to conquer Poland or something, now this is only for Poland, Polish people are not having any issue if they want to buy land in US or Spain. Now since I'm a respectful citizen of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Poland, I decided against going for a house.

OK, saying all that, in the last year I saw something close to 25 million apartments, in almost every neighborhood of Warsaw, I saw them in construction, done, used, including everything inside (even TV!!), 30 years old, bad odor from somewhere, I can tell so many stories of the owners of the apartments, for example, there was one that had some kind of fetish with elephants, and there were elephants all over the place, every size, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the closet, I actually kind of liked that apartment, but went out running just in case it was a set-up to become a human sacrifice or something...

So after looking for so long, finally I found one that I really liked, It was pretty small 55 sqm plus 10 sqm of balcony and definitely more expensive than what I was calculating for my budget, but it was new and very close to where I live right now (as my mum says, you get in love with the are where you live) and the building is done with very good quality (the construction company, SKANSKA, are the ones that did the bridge between Denmark and Sweden, and also the ones constructing a super cool office building in Warsaw), plus it has Sauna and Gym, which are highly appreciated. So now begins the interesting part...

NEGOTIATING

You would think that since I'm in Poland, everything is quite straight forward, to negotiate too much is from Latin American or Middle East countries, but not here, in the heart of Europe (heheheh, this is funny, but Polish people will always say that they are the center of Europe, just don't argue with it, is like arguing with a Venezuelan about beaches), well I was wrong, here you negotiate everything, the apartment, the parking lot, the finishing, the storage room, how you are going to pay, the materials, and please realize that in parallel to this you are in negotiations with the bank for the credit and the people who are going to put the kitchen and bathroom (which for some weird reason are not the same people that are finishing it but well what can I tell you).

After 2 weeks, I finally agreed on prices for the apartment and conditions for the credit, and here comes a wild card: Iwonka and I after discussing if we should buy the apartment together (and about a day of each of us panicking), we decided to buy 2, so we could delay the decision :) and even get money from renting one later on, so to all I'm saying so long please multiply the amount of anxiety by 2 (Iwonka's apartment is like 10 min walk from mine btw).

THE CREDIT

Ok, so as I told you, here you can negotiate, and you can do it for everything, length, percentage, currency (yes you can have it in a different currency, and actually most people do it), percentage of the insurance, life insurance, ability to renegotiate, there are more, but I'm tired of writing.

Remember what I told you about foreigners and land? well its not that extremely easy to get a loan if you are not Polish, not all the banks allow you and the ones that do, sometimes don't give you the best conditions. After checking in like 10 banks, Iwonka and I decided to work our loans with Deutsche Bank (these Germans guys most be very competitive and good, at least that's what I thought) the credit was for 25 years and in CHF (that's Swiss Francs for the ones that are guessing, I know there must be one or two around there) and supposedly we were going to be signing-up in 2 weeks.

Well then everything happened, the whole soap opera, checks of everything (I sincerely think that a German spy was sent to Venezuela to dig-up some dirt), delays, more delays, documents that weren't signed, documents that were forgotten, you get the point :), so after about one month (and in the middle of our vacations) the bad Iwonka came up from her confines, and you really don't want to mess with bad Iwonka (is even worse than the bad April, which is already kind of bad), she was yelling at the bank guy so much (his name is Wieslaw, again a very polish name, short name is Wiesiek - Vieshek) that then the guy asked his boss to start calling us, of course in the mean time I was playing good cop, I love to play good cop, I am good cop (I don't break the law, I am the law - there is no reason to say this here but it sounded cool), and I play the foreigner good cop, the one that calms the bad cop in a foreigner language that only the two cops can understand, which by the way I enjoy a lot (is not the most polite thing, and of course we can find a person that speaks Spanish and then we are doomed). The best situation came up one of the times we were going to sign-up (yep there were more than one of those), there we were with the pens in our hands, and we realized Deutsche changed (without telling us of course) the length in years of the credit, when I saw that I immediately took the pen away from Iwonka, not because I didn't want her to sign-up, but because I was afraid of what she was going to do with it (I felt like I saved a life)...

Well at the end I signed-up, but just yesterday (October 24th, 2005), after like 2 months (even HP submits documents in a faster way - internal P&G IT joke), Iwonka is going to sign-up today (still pending the fact that she has a different credit offer right now), so we are almost done in that part.

THE FINISHING

Here comes the best part :), you get excited because you will choose everything, and of course I have to control myself not to spend a crazy amount of money. Also my vocabulary in Polish and English has been expanded with like 300 words I didn't know, for example: basin - umywalka, WC - sedez, tiles - glazura, baterie - this is the funniest one, baterie are batteries like in English or Spanish, but also means "faucet", do you get any logic on this? because I can't, how is it possible? what is the relationship? but well, that's life.

Of course here we are negotiating a lot, and prices for labor are pretty high, plus there are crazy things that for sure are the same in every country but well I have never done an apartment before: why if you want to buy a basin the faucet is not included? or the best one, why in hell when you buy a WC the seat is not included?, maybe I should move to this business and create a new whole concept of bathrooms and call them the easy to choose bathroom, also I didn't realize how expensive the equipment for the kitchen can be, from now on if I see anybody not taking the right care of the kitchen equipment this person will die (am I becoming my Grandmother? ).

It's being so long since I don't write about Poland, and this is actually the first time I write in English!!!, the reason for that is the subject I'm going to talk right now ... My friends, my friends in Poland, and since I wanted everybody to understand what I was writing, I decided to do it in an universal language :D.

It's already more than 30 months since I came to Warsaw, so long past all the "excitement" of the new things, I've been already 4 summers and this winter is going to be the 4th too, so I don't see too much sense writing that I fell again walking on snow, or that I did something stupid (which I keep doing all the time of course ).

That's why I decided that this time I'm going to talk about my friends, I usually don't talk that much about them to my Venezuelan friends (something I still don't understand). I'm a very happy guy in Warsaw, and the main reason are the people I'm going to write about now :D. I will put the age (only for men I don't want women complaining, gender and nationality of them, since it can be difficult sometimes :D ).

IWONKA (Gender: F, Nationality: Polish. Her name actually is Iwona, but Iwonka is the way people call her and she loves it, is like little Iwona, the problem is that Iwona doesn't have a diminutive in Polish as does for example Barbara or Aleksandra, so don't try to call her Iwo or something like that).

A couple of clarifications here, is not 100% true that I'm not living new things, since I've been the last 6 months with Iwonka which have made me realized so many things (for example I happen to like bikes),  also not 100% true that I haven't talk about her, since I do that most of the time.

Iwonka is such an interesting person, full of energy (you should see her dancing) and has a gift that very few people in the world have: for some reason you want to be good when you are with her, really I'm not kidding, I even curse in front of my grandmother but I can't curse in front of Iwonka, and is not like this is her effect only on me, people stop drinking or smoking, start doing sports, losing weight or go to church and start donating money when they are with her, the other day I cleaned my fridge, I cleaned my fridge!!! I don't know, but if anybody knows me, knows what a milestone in my life that is (of course Iwonka helped me a lot, but nonetheless I did it without her asking for it). She is also smiling all the time (even when we are in Venice and is raining like hell) and can find a good thing for everything bad that happens (just try not to touch a Polish problem, because there she goes nuts and will kill you within 1 minute, and I'm not even going to put what does she do to people that do that and are not Polish, she is also very stubborn, yes like a donkey, so don't try to argue with her, even on topics like Poland is cold!!), she is also extremely sporty, and the more extreme the better for her, if there is a person that can climb mount Everest with a bike AND boyfriend on her back, no oxygen and no shoes, is probably Iwonka, just hope there is no snake on the way, since she is extremely afraid of them, even if they are dead, even if they are on TV, now Lions and Tigers she can handle and bare handily beat, but not a snake (long reptiles depending on the case might apply too)... She also make comments out of nowhere to say something she is not OK with, like reminding me how good the kitchen weight I bought is (of course, I have never used it, and I bought it 3 months ago and she told me it was useless but I bought it anyway).

ILLYA (Gender: M. Nationality: Russian. Age: 25. Yes... yes... is not a mistake, is a man, I know is very difficult to understand how is possible that a man name can finish in "A", but that's the case in Russia, there are even more names like that for example Sasha or Zhenia. The translation for Illya in English would be Elijah and just to put one more thing about his name, this guy once won the "best female driver" in a go-cart competition in Switzerland when the organizers didn't realize it was a man and he accepted it in front of about 100 people)

I met Illya about a year and half ago, at a P&G friends party, and hi is such a cool guy. He works in Marketing and is aware of anything new that is available, it can be the new fashion from GQ magazine, the newest Ipod or the first toaster that screams your name when the bread is done, if you check with him for sure he will know it. I don't know what is your image of Russians, but mine was that they were very cold blooded, something similar to Germans, Polish (sorry for that Iwonka) or Scandinavians, well if that is your case too, then you are wrong, Russians are very very emotional, and Illya is emotional at it's best, he laughs and he cries, he gets mad and he is happy, he fights and he gets quiet, and all of this you can see on his face, Illya can't lie to you, because his face says everything. He might be 150% of the time sick but he is extremely good to have fun with, with Illya you can laugh about so many things, to be honest most of the time is at him too, but that's the beauty of Illya, he makes fun of his mistakes, and can handle it. Illya also likes defy logic, he would be going crazy because he doesn't have any money and then buys an Ipod, or would go 2 years without filling taxes documents being a foreigner in Poland because he thought the company does it for you!!! or go to a club looking for women and then complain that chicks at clubs are looking for men!!!! or maybe the most incredible of all, he is complaining, and hear this one, he is COMPLAINING a lot about his stomach and some kind of infection he has, then we are doing a BBQ at a club and of course he asks not to prepare anything for him, since he has this problem, and then he enters the club eating McDonalds, but not only that, he tries to convince everybody that the Doctor told him that McDonalds is better than grilled meat!!! (I have the name of the Doctor to know where NOT to go). But there is one thing that you can be sure with him, if you need him he will be there, no matter what, he will be there and help you, even if he doesn't know how to help you, and for sure you will laugh a bit about something he did that day.

KAMIL (Gender: M. Nationality: Venezuelan? Polish?. Age: 24. He has Polish blood but Venezuelan heart, and he plays with that very well, he will be Venezuelan or Polish when is convenient for him :D, he also happens to speak both languages perfectly, dances salsa and merengue and is my main repository with April (whom we will talk about later) for my "why the hell this happens in Poland" comments)

Kamil is actually of all my friends the one I know the longest, the one that has been all the time in the Alejandro's Polish history, and is my main contact with outside P&G world (this is amazing but he is the only non-P&G friend that I have, anyway I consider this quite good, just try to leave your country and have friends that are not connected to work/university and then we talk). Kamil has a cool mixture of being a child and adult, he might be 24 but he acts older than that (of course he will tell you that he acts 30 which is not the case at all but if he feels happy about it lets give it to him), he is also a "I will be there if you need me guy", and can't remember how many times I've had long drink talks with him at my place (I know I'm leaving it too easy to make fun of me and Kamil right now, but I don't care). He is also much more capable of doing things than what he thinks, he only needs a bit of direction and will and believe me this guy will be rocking'. His girlfriend, Kasia (short for Katarzyna and you pronounce it Kashia) is the sweetest person on earth, Iwonka and her have become very good friends, which is very funny, now Kamil gets to know he is invited before I tell him, or I can call him to talk about a fight with Iwonka and probably he already knows everything :D. I also happen to know the whole family of Kamil, and they are great, his sister Eva, also lives in Poland (and Illya likes her a lot by the way) but for some reason she never gets to go out with us, maybe she hates me or something like that!.

LUKASZ (Gender: M. Nationality: Polish. Age: 28, his name is pronounced Wookash, strange right? Well there is a polish city called Lodz that is pronounced Woodsh, and no way in the world you can guess that city is pronounced that way)

Most of my friends know Lukasz because he went to Venezuela, and this is the kind of person Lukasz is, for that trip he asked me if he could go (even though I didn't know him very well), I said of course, and one week later there he was paying a very expensive ticket and going only for a week!! He is coming back to Venezuela this year with me, but this time will be for a month (Iwonka and Illya are also coming). He is very sensitive guy, and likes knowing everything about you, including your family and if he can meet them even better, he seems to be like that all the time with girls too (girls happen to talk a lot to him for some reason, including Iwonka!!!), he has this ideal woman in his head, that of course doesn't exist (sorry girls but it really doesn't exist, at least not in one body). This guy during a bachelor's party got to know the number of children (and names) of the stripper, didn't see her naked and still paid her!! He is also extreme sport aficionado, he can get drunk one Saturday sleep for 2 hours and then run half a marathon, he has also been at Kilimanjaro (which I find very exotic), he is one of these guys that hasn't play squash ever in his life, and then you (who plays twice a week for a year) play him and lose. He is very good getting feed-back, I actually got some feed-back that Illya didn't (Illya, Przemek, Kamil, Lukasz and me understand - ohh also Iwonka). He is also very P&G, needs a vision and loves talking corporate :), he is IT but thinks is Marketing :), and to finish he is probably the easiest to talk with, and the one that has the least problems accepting my crazy things (which as you know are a lot).

PRZEMEK (Gender: M. Nationality: Polish. Age: 30, hehehehehehe, this one is very difficult, his name is pronounced Pshemek, actually his name is Przemyslaw or Pshemesuav, don't ask me for a translation of the name to English because it doesn't exist, this is a VERY Polish name, which creates a problem because one of the Polish tricks with the names is to translate them to English and is OK to be called that way, like Grzegorz -> Greg or Pawel -> Paul. I have another friend called Przemek, and for the first 2 months I was calling him wrong and he was so polite that he didn't correct me, actually nobody did!)

Przemko (you can call him this way too) is by far my funniest friend, the easiest to make fun of and maybe the craziest one, nonetheless is the one that is the most aware about his weaknesses and strengths, believe me he is very clear about them, he can talk a LOT about them. To most people he looks very strong but in reality he has a super big heart, I still remember this day that I was kind of sad, returning to Poland from a Business Trip and he went to the airport to pick me up, but here comes to funny part, he doesn't have a car, he went to pick me up by bus :D. He is also the kind of guy that gets drunk and starts dancing, of course he thinks he is John Travolta, he owns the floor and start jumping, screaming and licking people's hands (but that was only one night, at least that's what I was told). He also thinks that Iwonka knows how to move her ass while dancing (the whole concept of Iwonka and dancing is enough to write a full book, maybe I write something about that in a different occasion, or, when you meet Iwonka you will understand). If Lukasz is corporate, Przemek really thinks he is the next Bill Gates, this man is really into his stuff (of course he is Marketing), he was once at the P&G bus and an IT person made a comment that a competitor's detergent was better than Ariel, and the next day he went to this person and gave her 2 bags of Ariel!! Imagine that Iwonka knew that story from someone else (not me) before even knowing Przemek.

MARLON (Gender: M. Nationality: Venezuelan. Age: 30, yep I know, like Marlon Brando, actually I think that is the first thing everybody thinks when we hear Marlon's name, by the way, I just realized that I actually know 2 people outside P&G, so now I actually think that I'm better than the average)

Marlon is the only other 100% Venezuelan that I know (sorry Kamil and Eva for that) that lives in Poland, but he tried to put it more exotic than me, he doesn't live in Warsaw, he lives in Lancut (pronounced Wooantsut, I hope you get the idea by now :D ), which is not even a city, is pretty much a town, this would be the equivalent in Venezuela to Carora (and maybe Carora is too big) or in US to Cincinnati (hehehehehe I had to say it!!!!!) so if you think I look different in Warsaw, imagine him :). Marlon is a semi-professional-model, he works in a textile plant but he also models from time to time (matatigres like we call it in Venezuela), and even won some tournament in south of Spain, he was in the local newspaper (of Lancut of course) and almost qualified for a very nice commercial. This guy has a whole album with his CV and the most funny pictures of him modelling, and he shows them with pride :D. He's been in Poland for 5 years and speaks very good Polish (something that I don't like because then my Polish doesn't look good!!!), and as me, has tried to understand to the Max the Polish culture (something that Kamil doesn't like because the Polish in him also appears when Marlon and I say something not so nice about Polish culture, so as you can guess we try not to say these things when Iwonka and Kamil are in the same room with us, that would be bad, really bad). He had the most attonishing sexual experience that I've heard off, really, I can't put it in writing because maybe my family is reading this, but what happened to him I've never heard off and I was laughing like hell for 2 or maybe 3... months :). He is also a specialist in commenting things that are completely wrong like if it was true, like saying that Casablanca was directed by Steven Spielberg, hehehehehehe. He is definitely the most innocent of my friends, although he tries to demonstrate he isn't, he is just too good, the kind of person that you meet and you know immediately that he is a great guy, maybe even to marry your sister (Marlon if you are reading this, don't you think that I'm encouraging for anything!!!! My sister happens to be available right now (I think), that's just a coincidence and you will die if you touch her).

APRIL (Gender: F, Nationality: American, I will keep it in American, I have to say that I'm completely against that since Venezuelans are Americans too, because maybe I'm wrong but America is a freaking continent not a country!!!!, but well, I can't fight the world or the most powerful country in it, which also reminds me that for some reason in Europe, in US too but well... we know geography is not their thing... sorry, they consider North and South America as 2 different continents!!!, maybe they don't realize they have the same name, is like saying that Western and Eastern Europe are 2 continents, but don't argue that with them, they will start saying that then Asia and Africa then should be considered only one with Europe, and then the conversation can become very very boring)

April is like my big sister, a person I can have a lot of fun with and also can go and ask for advice, she is extremely polite in understanding people's diversity (she actually leads a diversity team in Warsaw P&G), so you can go to her with the weirdest problem ever, I don't know, something like you would like to have sex with animals, and she will look at you and no blink, and for sure you will think she supports you (maybe later on will call the police but YOU will think she supports you). She is also like a little innocent child sometimes, and has fun doing things like playing table games, giving Halloween sweets or playing the flute (even better, she went to band camp once, so you can imagine the amount of American Pie jokes starting with... at band camp...), with her I can talk for hours about living in Poland, we agree in 99% of the things, and with her I've understood a lot about Americans too (and of course she understands a lot about Venezuelans and now, and doesn't want to know another one!!). I've happen to be in Cincinnati a couple of times when she is there and we have had great fun, and here I'm actually talking seriously, I know that there are some people that would find this impossible to happen (well, you are actually right :D, maybe I just got lucky). She is from Kentucky (the land of George Clooney and Ashley Judd, like you care about it), and tries really hard to speak Polish, which is not very common for expats, and something I really appreciate (now I don't know why I appreciate that, since I'm not Polish, but well, I do).

Well, this was long, I actually have several more friends I could talk about, some of them like Zhenia and Zbig (which are my former and current managers, so I think maybe is a wise move not to put them here), there is also Nort, but he moved to London so he doesn't qualifies as Polish friend anymore, but for sure I can write a whole chapter on him and his way of thinking, or Jarek or Kuba, god I could write so many funny things about them!!

Well, I will try to write something more next month, of course assuming that people are actually reading what I write :D.