JIRI in Middle East: Chapter 1: The great apartment search

You know this feeling when you wake in the morning with the head burning from inside, with eyes scanning the unknown environment around your bed and erased brain trying to slowly put pieces of yesterday puzzle together. I bet you do. And you probably also know what usually happens when there are two dance clubs in 17^th floor, Arabic and African discotheque in 2^nd and Irish pub in the basement of your hotel :)

This happened to me on Saturday around 12am. Few minutes after my awakening rang the door bell and room service wanted to take my laundry that I didn’t have and even if I did, I wouldn’t have remembered at that time that I had it. But he also gave me a newspaper with property classifieds pages. I though that it was a kind of sign pushing me into action in The Apartment problem solving and I started to read what is available.

My first intention was to find a studio or one bedroom apartment as close as possible to Al Raha Beach where I will be working for maximum price 5000 Dhs a month. The day before Kamil told me that usually they want to pay one year rent, which means 60000 Dhs a year. Quite a surprise, because 60000 Dhs is a hell lot of money!! Locations were that set to Al Shahama or Khalifa City A or somewhere close.

After ten minutes of staring into the newspaper I found one according to my requirements. I called the guy and he told me that we meet at 2pm at Abu Dhabi International Airport and go see the flat. Great!! First try, first hit. A called Kamil, who was in the same situation as me and we drove to the airport.

I am a patient person. The fact that I knew that I would need a lot of patience here made me even more patient. At 2:45 I had to admit that this quality makes me a perfect person to this environment, at least for now because I don’t know what kind of elephant patience I will need in the future. After those 45 minutes of waiting at the airport and trying to reach him he finally answered. But as a professional property agent he told us that he didn’t have the car and we should meet him at Mafraq Hospital!! OK than, what should we do. We drove there. After a couple of circles around the terminal and forced turns because of roundabouts under construction we reached the right highway but in wrong direction. “Doesn’t matter, we go that way and turn here to this highway and we are there” I said. The problem was that the highway crossroad was under construction too and in such a ingenious way that it was completely impossible to get to the other. So we had to drive another five kilometers to the next exit, do the double roundabout trick of getting from A to B and return five kilometers back to finally drive where we wanted. One more DRT and we stood in front of the hospital. After five minutes called that agent that he is here and we should follow him, after which came a car, made a fast 180° turn and started leaving again. We followed him. After a missed turn to the highway I started to doubt, that we are going where I though the apartment was.

There we met one of the exciting natural phenomenon. A sandstorm. Everything around got compactly orange and yellow and the visibility was around ten meters. Actually it looked very similar to a snow storm.

After 15 minutes in the storm we stopped and I knew that something was wrong. We definitely weren’t in Al Shahama where we were supposed to be, the house wasn’t how I wanted it to be and even the agent wasn’t like an agent should be!!. Fat black Indian with black dirty shirt and slippers. From outside the house was a typical white Arabic one-floor house with white wall around. We stepped in through broken rusty door and came to a small hall. Actually the door to the apartment were new plastic ones, but behind it, it was a complete mess. Low room without windows full of broken furniture and dirt in the floor. Kitchen was even dirtier with questionable cooker and with a thick layer of black dried oil all over. I don’t remember how was the bathroom, but imagine something in that style. I wouldn’t take it for free, but I am no Pakistani but European so I was offered a generous price of 50000Dhs!! I am so out of here!!