Tbilisi Housing

I recently moved into a new flat in the city center of Tbilisi. As with most buildings in Georgia, the outside isn't so appealing. Unless it is the Opera House, Concert Hall, stylish government buildings, a fancy hotel, or some piece of architectural work that has made through the last hundred odd years or so, most buildings look terrible, especially housing.

Not unlike its Asian friends most housing in Tbilisi is concrete block apartment buildings. Buildings are usually eight stories high and around ten apartment widths across. In Korea we use to call it Lego Land after the company that makes blocks which kids play with. In Korea, there actually is a Lego Land amusement park. These countries tend to build up. Japan, Georgia, Korea are all small countries with land and resource limitations and large populations. Georgia has about six million, around two million live in the capital city.

In other post Soviet bloc countries you see similarities in the housing due to huge numbers of people living in the capital, a big amount in the countries secondary city, and the aren't relevant as they are small villages when you really get down to it. Sighnali, Georgia is one of its cities, but so is Newark to Manhattan. A city, but not really much.

As with all the housing I have been in in Georgia, the outside is not particularly nice, in fact it is depressing. I live in a group of apartments blocks ten around that surrounds a courtyard of small brick made sheet metal roofed houses, car parks which are big metal boxes, and some abandoned or incomplete structures. To get to my top floor loft which was formally one apartment split into two for university students, I enter the third door on the right of my 9x6 building. Each door means that on each floor is one apartment to the left (A), one apartment to the right (B), and one apartment in the middle (C). Walk up nine flights of stairs and you have 27 apartments in total in this doorway of three.

Stairs are evenly spaced for the most part except for the first step on each staircase. Some of the stairs are missing bits and pieces of concrete and you can see the steel reinforced bars the concrete was laid over. Half of the landings do not have lighting so a flashlight is needed if you want to see the stairs. Dust build up and spiderwebs looking things are common. Some people have nice new doors usually made of thick wood, but most have heavy metal doors that remind me of prison doors. It might have something to do with the war time in Georgia and personal security. Whatever it is, heavy doors, poorly lit stairwells, and rusty railings seem to be common in all the buildings I have been in. A fresh can of paint and some light bulbs would go a long way here, but everyone would have to be on board for it to really have an impact and these things aren't cheap and why should people care about outside aesthetics anyway seems to be the general consensus.

Above your head you will find various piping for water and gas. The piping is exposed, usually rusty, but in its defense, very well installed. It may look ugly on the outside, but Georgian housing is sturdy housing, better than most things the South Floridians every make. Cables commonly run from house to house in what I can only guess is some sort of cable sharing thing. One bill, six people watching television from it. At my old house in Gldani in the Tbilisi suburbs, there was a cable running from our porch to the apartment block 100 meters away and three more lines running from their to other apartments. It wasn't as bad as you see in Africa or India where a technician is something of a genius with figuring out configurations, but it stood out as something unorthodox.

The elevator is an experience and one that is worth mentioning. There are no bells and whistles literally in a Georgian elevator. It is big enough to hold four average Georgian people and three average American people. You are very close together in the elevator and you feel it. The elevator is around two to three should widths long and wide with a six and a half foot clearance. It doesn't feel overly claustrophobic, but you certainly don't want to spend any length of time in it with too many people unless you are making out and even then you might need to have a few beers in you, it is small.

For me to take the elevator I push a push on the second floor as elevators in Georgia do not start on the first floor. The button is hollow as someone broke it, so you essentially push the circular plastic that once had an actually button on it. The elevator arrives. The doors squeak open, you enter. When you enter there are nine buttons on the elevator, 1 through 9. I live on the ninth floor, but my button is seven. The doors close, the power goes out. Now you can begin.

Out of your pocket comes a 5 Tetri coin. You put the coin in the coin box which sends a signal to the electricity box at the top of the building that allows the elevator to begin. You find your button and push it. The elevator lights come back on and the elevator begins. For shits and giggles I once moved my body back and forth to see if the elevator would move. It moved a lot, scared me a little, so now I basically remain dead still in the elevator to not put any more strain on it. My 230 pound body is enough for OTIS. Not really an OTIS, just a box suspending in air by some wires. I figure if the wires can hold the elevator it ca hold at least another 500 pounds or so. Elevators are heavy things.

If you do not have money, the following happens: Elevator arrives. You enter. Doors close. Lights go off. You are fucked. There is no "open door" button. You have to sit in the dark until someone pushes the button somewhere in the building. You can't really open the doors unless you have super human strength or some instrument to pry the doors open. Also, if you don't exit quickly enough, you are in trouble because when the doors close, they close. There is no mechanism for detecting that a human being is wedged between the doors. The subway is the same. When doors close in Georgia, they close, look out!

I live in Sarbartelo, a central part of the city, but not the swankest by any means. I live in an area where people with some middle class money live. People who can afford to go to an urban supermarket and pay 5% more for things and not really worry about it too much. Plus there is the city's biggest market nearby which takes up about a four block by four block area of the city. When Georgia becomes wealthier and starts to standardize everything as is the norm in developed countries, the outdoor and underground markets will be closed by the government, a wealthy businessman will get the lease to the land and build housing and shopping centers for the wealthy. The market which is fundamental to most cities and towns has no place in the modernized urban centers which is really a shame because it is always better than pre-packaged factory farmed foods. Farmers markets in America are usually mobile and more expensive. Urbanization has twisted everything around that now we think organic is a fancy when it was the norm for millions of years or 5700 years if you are religious.

The buildings are usually gray on the outside, different shades of orange and brown from various types of brick work that makes up the back and side walls of some apartments. It looks like on many buildings that at some point people extended the backside of their apartments and brickwork was the way to do it. A rust color is common wherever metalwork has been done, the most common being the metal bars that stick out from every apartment which has string laying across it for hanging laundry, balconies made of rusting metals, and roofing with sheet metal that is, wait for it, rusting, but it rusts quickly everywhere. Some buildings have been painted and in my particular neighborhood there are shades of South Beach, a light blue, light orange, light pink, and light green building to the west of the courtyard. Amazingly, their color remains intact. You will see this occasionally, a painted building next to a gray one. It happens.

The real beauty of housing in Georgia is on the inside. You can usually tell from the outside which housing has been remodeled. The key sign are window panes. If the housing has white modern windows, you can usually bet that the inside has been changed since the 60's, 70's or 80's. The Russians built strong buildings, but they didn't do a good job with the insulation and heating. The old school windows did little more than keep the flies out. Go near any window in any building and you can feel significant cold. See the rotting wood. When the wind blows, your curtains move.

The heater is usually under the window. The kind of heating where if you stand with your back to it, your back gets toasty while your front side gets frostbite, very ineffective. In movies you see people literally gathering around the fireplace, well, in the modern world, people literally gather around the heater because until you are ready to get under the blankets, there is no warm place in the house accept in front of the heater. You still however are fully dressed and wearing a sweater or sweatshirt. As I proofread this, I am sitting on one of my hands to keep it warm. As I told my sister the other day on Skpye as she is sitting in San Diego with the sun shining through her windows, "I have been cold for five months."

The inside of houses are really nice. Even in the old school apartments you will find nice high ceilings, spacious rooms, some molding work, very functional kitchens, sinks that work, floors made of wood, carpets, tables, fine China, cabinets, bedrooms of significant size for a couple or multiple children sharing a room depending on the number of children you have, and plenty of lace work on tables and curtains.

Bathrooms aren't usually much to talk about. They seem to be very small, with low ceilings, small showers, occasionally a smell, but functional. The water pressure however is usually very good and everything works which at the end of the day is all you really care about when it comes to bathroom stuff. Does it have running water, does it stay hot, does it flush, does it have any pressure?

In conclusion, the outside might look depressing, falling apart and stitched together with duct tape, but the inside is nice, spacious, and comfortable. The apartment I live in now cost $350 a month. In Korea it would be $600. In Japan and Chicago $1000. You get good value in Georgia when it comes to housing, but you will be cold in the winter time.