Home Sweet Fourth-floor Walk-up

Any kind of transatlantic comparison is complicated. I've been asked a number of times how the cost of living in Croatia compares to the U.S., and I can't think of a good way to answer that question because any estimate of "the cost of living" contains some hidden assumptions about what you need to live. Living in the U. S., an average middle-class person has certain expectations: you have a spacious home, you own your own furniture, you own one car per adult and drive everywhere, you eat out frequently, you have an Ipod, an Iphone, a flatscreen TV, etc etc. Your average middle-class Croatian can't afford to live like that. The same product here usually costs much more than in the US: a tube of maybelleine mascara is about $20; a bottle of ReNu contact solution is almost that much; a base-model Mazda 3 starts out at about $23,000.

However, in Croatia it is much easier to live comfortably on less. We don't own a car,and although that is occasionally inconvenient, it isn't a hardship. Also, housing is significantly cheaper. My apartment costs 1200 kn a month, which, according to today's exchange rate, is $205. What would you get for that kind of rent in the States? In most places, nothing! My first apartment more than ten years ago cost $250 a month, and it was an unfurnished efficiency in the ghetto (a dead body was found in the street in front of my apartment while I was living there) in very-inexpensive Lubbock, Texas. So what does $205 a months get you in Croatia?

The apartment is in a large, square externally-charmless communist-era building, of which there are MANY in my neighborhood, with more going up all the time.  I took these pictures from my balcony:

To my American eyes, this looks at first glance a bit like a slum. But this is a respectable part of town near a number of parks where hoards of children play unsupervised. All kinds of people live here: students, families, elderly couples. The apartment is fully-furnished, and it's a ten-minute walk to the baroque town center, on the tentative list to become a UNESCO World Heritage site. There's a balcony and a washing machine. It has an air conditioner, which is not the norm in Croatia. Right in front of the building are recycling bins for paper, plastic, and glass, and both the balcony and bathroom have places to hang clothes to dry, so I'm living quite a bit greener. I can walk to the grocery story in five minutes, Kristian's job in seven or eight minutes, and the castle or cathedral in ten.

Of course, the apartment is still a huge adjustment. The furniture and decor are serviceable, but old and ugly (there are lace curtains, which I LOATHE), and a TV is not included, so my PS3 is sitting forlorn in the wardrobe. The apartment is on the top floor and there's no elevator, so, yes, I have to go up and down four flights of stairs when I leave the house. The kitchen is bigger than some others I've had, but there's also a kitchen table crammed in there, so your legs have about six inches of space to squeeze through on the way to the balcony (I've got a lot of thigh bruises from that table!). Several of the windows in the apartment don't open, so it's hard to get any air flow, which is especially frustrating for me because it is really cool enough here most of the time not to need the air conditioner. I prefer window air, but this apartment is stuffy.

All that I am adjusting to pretty quickly:  the weather's cool; I remember to avoid the corner on the table; I double-check that I have everything BEFORE running down the stairs.  Seriously. Two of my neighbors here on the 4th floor are elderly ladies.  They walk up and down those same stairs.

But the bathroom is the deal-breaker for me. I'm going to just have to let all my frustration out, so bear with me: there's no sink in the bathroom, which of course means that the only sink is in the kitchen. The bathroom is TINY, with the toilet wedged in between the washer and a little "table" consisting of a board sitting on the boiler's gas tank. I'm telling you, I do not have child-bearing hips, but when I sit down on that toilet one hip or the other bumps the washing machine or knocks the board off the "table." And that toilet has no flushing power, and by that I mean you're going to see even toilet paper for a second or third flush.

I'm SLOWLY getting used to the "shower." It's a tiny, cramped tub ( maybe 2.5 feet long) with a little step that you're supposed to sit on. The removable "shower" head is affixed about thigh-high if you're standing, but the mounting rotates against the wall, so if you leave the shower head attached instead of holding it in your hand, it will sooner or later twist around and squirt water off in some random direction. Imagine washing long, thick hair while you either hold the shower head in one hand or try and set it somewhere where the water won't squirt out of that tiny tub. Plus, the boiler is hanging up at one end of the tub, so, if you stand and shower, your face is three inches from it.

I don't hate this apartment (except for the bathroom). Except for the bathroom woes, it's comfortable, and the cheapness and "greenness" of the lifestyle make up for a lot. And yet, I'm  getting out of this kind of apartment as soon as we get married in favor of something newer and more spacious. Thanks to Kristian's job (he's a web-designer for a firm and does freelance work), and my blessed American salary (I earn what a lawyer or doctor makes here), we have a lot of choices. However, if we both earned average Croatian salaries (which we very well might at some point), we would have to make do with this kind of apartment. Well, I would have to make do....he doesn't have the same objections I do to this place.  He will object to spending money on rent that could be used to purchase Iphones and a $1000 camera, things that seem like extravagances to me but seem to him to be luxuries on par with spending 2200 Kn every month on rent when you could spend 1200.

  Anyway, in this apartment I'd survive and be happy, and I'd learn that a person doesn't HAVE to have a living space that is everything she dreams. So much of what we think we NEED to live is actually a luxury, a luxury that we've come to believe is a necessity because we've almost always had access to it.

Moralizing aside, since we can afford options--for now--I'm shopping for another place.