Rest your weary head

Each week Dustin Jordan, who is currently living abroad, talks about his travel experiences. This week he talks about living arrangements.

Dustin Jordan

When you have lived or travelled abroad for long you get used to certain truths: your circle of friends will be constantly changing as fellow expats come and go – and you will end up changing living quarters frequently.

I’ve had the privilege and horror of calling many different places home in the past. Some have been the lap of luxury, others tiny spaces with barely enough place to move – and some even strange places in the middle of nowhere.

When I first made the switch to live abroad I was lucky enough to be given an apartment by my employer. It made life a whole lot easier to not to have to wade through awkward negotiations with a landlord, pay a threemonth deposit upfront or have to stress whether the translated contract said the same thing as the native language contract.

Having come from a home where untidiness was not tolerated I was shocked to discover that my previous tenant had not bothered to clean the apartment. There were dishes caked in old food and dust all over.

Perhaps the worst thing of all was the hair I found pretty everywhere. Was the previous tenant using his hair as confetti? I was not sure why anyone would leave an apartment in that state or could live like that.

Armed with rubber gloves and industrial strength cleaner I spent most of the first week cleaning.

Moving to a new country after that meant that I would have to find a place to live for the first

time. As most expats will tell you, the first apartment you choose never ends up being the best one. You’re not familiar with the area so you take a place because it seems cheap and clean enough. Then you discover it’s old and falling apart and you share it with a million cockroaches. I’ve even heard of friends who shared their first apartments with rats.

Once you get used to a city you move to the place that the veterans recommend. So I made the switch and ended up in one of the swankiest places I’ve ever called home: a two bedroom, two bathroom brand-new apartment fully furnished with a pool on the roof. It was a great move.

The life of a traveller is never permanent though and after having called that home for a while I ended up in many different housing arrangements. One was a room in a shared house that was actually much better than it sounds. For a while I also called various AirBnb apartments home. I’ve recently even had the weird chance of calling a wood cabin in the middle of nowhere home.

Some places have fond memories. Some are reminders of just how resilient one can be and the way travelling teaches you to constantly adapt.

The one thing that remained the same throughout the years of living abroad is my suitcase. By that I mean the size of it. One soon learns to not be tempted to add any kind of decorations or keepsakes to the new place because 30kg is all you have to carry with you to the next destination. Which maybe is not such a bad thing.

Hoarding is something you definitely can’t do as a constant foreigner.

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