Six months before I was to leave Romania, my landlord decided to sell his apartment so I had to move. I loved that apartment. I'd lived there for a large part of my stay in Romania so, of course, I had accumulated a lot of stuff that all had to be packed and moved, and then unpacked -- and then six months later, packed again. I was not happy.
It is also not easy to find someone willing to lease an apartment to you for just six months - they prefer the long-term renter. But I was fortunate in that, at the last minute, a friend of a friend found "just the place" for me.
It actually was a very nice apartment:
Modern, and quite adequate for me
A tiny kitchen, but clean and bright
An even smaller bathroom, but hey! for six months it was ok - and it had a shower AND hot water on demand!
The bedroom, hmmm.. the bedroom. You may ask, where is the bed? Well, I only had a mattress - it's leaning up against the wall. But I decided against sleeping in the bedroom. Why, you ask?
I laid the mattress down on the floor, my first night there, and fell sound asleep, exhausted from the move.
At 4:00am, Ceaucescu's revolution began all over again -- at least that's what I thought.
The whole apartment was shaking, and outside my window (I was on the 5th floor), I could hear tanks rumbling down the street, one after another, after another, after another.
At least I thought they were tanks. When I looked out the window, turns out they were trams, running down the middle of the street, one after another, after another, after....
Only to discover that right behind my apartment block was the tram depot... and every morning at 4:00am they left the depot and headed down the street in front of my apartment block to disperse out across the city -- dozens of them! They did this every morning at 4:00am.
My bedroom had very poorly fitted windows - no double-glazing and obviously not sound proof.
Fortunately, there was a pull-out bed in the living room
and also a glassed in balcony between me and the traffic below. Wasn't ideal, and didn't eliminate the noise completely, but believe it or not, I did get used to the early morning wake-up call and was often able to sleep through the tram onslaught.
The view from the apartment window was generally interesting:
Very busy, traffic-wise. There was a hospital down the street to the left, another to the right, and a children's hospital right across from me, so I also had to learn to sleep through sirens.
But there wasn't anything I could do about this:
two or three times a day, the hospital chimney opposite, belched out black, foul-smelling smoke. I once made the mistake of asking someone about this chimney and what the hospital was burning -- you don't want to know.
Another day, the traffic sounded unusually loud outside.
This was the view, and the noise, from my kitchen window.
Miles of trams as far as the eye could see -- and way down the street to the right, a crowd was gathering, so of course I had to go down and see what it was all about (that's my apartment, by the way; the one underneath the balcony with the umbrella, to the left and middle of the bottom 2 white squares).
Here's what I found:
An articulated tram had been just a little too articulate, and had come apart at the seams.
...caused great excitement and major traffic jams for hours
So interesting to see where you were even if only for 6 months of your time. Now you know why the apartment was available. Actually without the noise and the smoke it really was a nice little apartment.
ReplyDeleteI am SO THANKFUL for our ultra quiet bedroom.
Still no sunshine!
So interesting to see where you were even if only for 6 months of your time. Now you know why the apartment was available. Actually without the noise and the smoke it really was a nice little apartment.
ReplyDeleteI am SO THANKFUL for our ultra quiet bedroom.
Still no sunshine!
You must have thought WW3 was starting.
ReplyDeleteThat of course is the other snag with trams. If one breaks down...
Nice apartment, and it is surprising what you can get used to and sleep through. Some freinds of ours used to live by a main line rail track and after a few months, woke up if the night train was late or did not run. Also some freinds of TBH who lived by Heathrow beleived that after they had lived their a while the Airport must have stopped all night-flights because they never heard any aircraft during the night. Of course Heathrow hadn't they just slept through the noise.
It's only in the last few years that we've got those articulated buses in places like York ... they still look very odd to me; Romania must have been ahead of its time. I've never been on a tram but M. took the boys for a trip on one - they reported back that it was like ski-ing on cement!! Can't quite imagine that! That apartment is very pleasant, but a shame about the noise and that chimney ... x
ReplyDeleteIt was a nice little apartment, ChrisJ, but yes, I caught on very quickly as to why it was available! The thing is, that I was heading home to Canada after six months. How often I have thought about the people who lived in the same building who weren't going anywhere - they had to live with it forever, especially if they couldn't afford to move.
ReplyDeleteSnafu, funny you should talk about the airport -- I swear that the number of planes flying over our heads increases dramatically at 11:00pm, just as I am going to bed. It's not even that we live near the airport, but after 11:00pm, they fly over us every two minutes, and it's very annoying!
You know, Elizabeth, I was blessed to have a car in Romania, so I actually rarely travelled on a tram. The first time I did, I almost got arrested, because I didn't know that, although you purchase your ticket at the kiosk at the tram stop, you also had to punch it in a little contraption placed somewhere in the middle of the tram, which stamps the date and time you got on the tram. Inspectors frequently do their thing, looking for freeloaders, and they caught me! They wanted to take my passport -- ha, not likely! So I had to get of the tram!