22/08 The Madness of Moving House

Moving is always a stressful thing. Pre–pre-move you have the problem of finding a new place to live. I’ve had that problem for months now but it finally sorted itself out and then I was just left with the pre-moving problem of packing finally followed by the problem of actually just moving the things. Anyway, I’m not made of time or money so I enlisted a bunch of people to help me transport the things. But all did not work out exactly as planned as I live in Russia and everyone knows that making real plans is actually just pointless.

So the plan was that in the morning, my colleague would come pick me up in her tiny car (see the picture of our little friend above) and we would drive all the things over to the new place and my new flatmate’s brother (?! Yup, random!) would help carry all the things up the stairs. Some new people would then move into my old flat and by 7pm all would be kosher.

Wait people moving in at the same time? Yes, things got very complicated very quickly. The new people (who are friends of the colleague with the car) were supposed to arrive together with her and then go off and do some sightseeing. Yes, that of course is not how things went at all.

First at 9.30am I get the call from Elena (who is suspiciously sounding too hungover to drive a car…) to tell me that her acquaintances from Yekaterinburg are on my street and want in the flat. What? I had gone to bed at what seemed like 8am after many beers, thinking, she would warn me a bit earlier, so I could at least, wash down the tables one more time and so on. And of course that they were coming together too… Before I even had time to consider such issues the girls, their mum and then two random friends of their mum were in my flat pulling everything out of the room, demanding cleaning products, putting my boxes into a neat order and going through the kitchen looking for bread to make me breakfast! Err, what just happened? I was so half asleep I had no idea… But that wasn't a problem because none of it made sense anyway

So my solution at this point, was to hide. While they were cleaning I went to make copies of the keys for them and then hid for some time in my flatmate’s room, feeling very ashamed at the mess I had evidently left and waited until things had calmed down a bit. Things did calm down a bit, so I came out to talk to them and within minutes I had suddenly somehow found myself in the kitchen drinking tea with the mum and her pals discussing a plan that I had accidently agreed on to go to Novgorod. What? What’s happening?!

Of course the best thing to do at the point was to give them the keys and run away, when finally my colleague turns up with the car. No way we are moving that stuff on this kind of hangover so we went to get food, before arranging to meet yet another person who is also going to live in the flat with the random girls and my flatmate( who is currently no-where to be seen). Yes, complicated is not even a good enough word for how plans were breaking apart in front of our eyes. At this point it all became so immensely tricky that the only solution was to go sit in the park and forget about it all for a while. Innocently sitting in the park, ignoring the moving stress and listening to a story from Rob, the guy who will also move into my place, we suddenly get stopped by the cops.

Yes, of all the points in time, now we get shaken down by the Russian militsiya. The cops tell us that it’s illegal to sit on the grass here. ‘What? But where’s the sign?’ we ask. ‘we didn’t know!’ we tell them. ‘Well there are no signs that tell you killing people is wrong but do you think then that it’s also not illegal?’ they reply using some corrupt cop knowledge. The conversation continues in this way for several minutes, we talk about ‘suggestions’ and possible ways to sort things out and eventually get away with a 400rouble bribe. Whats more trying to be kind they also offer us a lot of advice on other supposedly nicer, places where it is legal to sit on the grass before hilariously asking about whether we all speak to Darius the Swiss brother in that old chesnut, the Swiss language! Haha, comedy cops

So now we really must move the things and the mum of the girls is desperate to meet this other guy who will stay in the flat to check he’s not a psycho. Back at the flat the mum is very happy with Rob and so offers to give us all a lift to the new place, easing the pressure on Elena’s tiny car. Well, things are starting to get better.

Darius, the aforementioned brother, Elena my colleague, the mum and her random friends carry all my things up to the fifth floor (yup no lift), take photos of the apartment (they are curious as to what it’s like to live in the centre of St. Petersburg – Yekaterinburg is not so special) and then head off on their way. Leaving, me, Elena, Darius and then some minutes later my new flatmate Tamara, who is probably really wondering how she ever let me rope her brother into spending his holidays doing such random manual labour, to finally have a beer and eat a roast chicken.

Well, actually drink a whole beer? I had about two sips and a chicken leg, before I had to pass out.

I love Russian chaos, but this move was just one complication too many for my tired and hungover brain and I was in bed by 11pm, hoping to wake up to a much more normal Sunday. If that’s ever possible here...

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