Hi guys, back again! Today I though id write about my experience renting an Airbnb accommodation during the World Cup in Russia!
As soon as you pencil in your holiday dates, you excitedly lurch into meticulously planning every detail of your perfect experience from the accommodation and transport to the top tourist spots and eateries, comparing locations, travel distances, pros, cons, value for money and on and on till your brain melts and you finally give up popping your weary eyes back in their sockets. You then start to contemplate how appealing spending your time off sorting out the loft topped off with a watching some travel docs in the evening would be. Only to find yourself searching through your laptop’s history trying to remember the pages where you’d.seen the best deals.
There are however, occasions when this saturation of dizzying options are not available. This lack of choice overrides the well known economic premise of supply and demand.
These are:-
A) B) C)
-When you book an authentic loft over a yak milking shed in the middle of nowhere
-When you are booking at the time of a major sporting event and/or
-When you hand over the booking organisation to the stingiest member of your travelling group.
Unfortunately I had the misfortune to endure all three of the above. The sporting event was, as you’ve probably guessed, the World Cup. OK, Kaliningrad did not quite qualify as the middle of nowhere but as a friendly local observed, up to this mindblowingly well organised sporting event, seeing a tourist was about as rare as rocking horse poo. Finally the stingiest traveller who took on the booking responsibility was my mum. You might argue that 100€ per night is hardly stingy but it was, as she constantly proudly reminded us, exactly half the cost of any of the other similarly badly photographed apartments on offer.
‘Well that surely should have rung alarm bells’ I hear you thinking and you’re so right. Not just because it was half price but once the footie has finished, the only tourists to show up there will probably be riding in on rocking horses so these guys wouldn’t care two hoots for the essential component of guaranteeing future bookings - the review.
My mother justified the previously described blurry pics of dark brown 1970’s furniture, swirly carpets and Indian take-away wallpaper by saying it would get us all in the mood to relive life in Stalinist Russia, ( people of her generation are convinced all Russians wear gloomy overalls, live to serve the Communist party by slogging away on long shifts in factories, and find their only respite in the oblivion found in their rationed vodka) I think the vodka bit was the only reasonable part of her argument as it was an essential requirement to get any chance of even a snippet of sleep .
O just to run you through what the owner nonchalantly showed us as we walked up the stairs trying not to heave as the stench of cat pee pervaded our nostrils. Essentially what we’d walked into was a 50 year time warp with spiders webs to match. The sleeping arrangements were two sofa beds whose ancient ‘cushions’ made your yoga mat look snug and bouncy.
(Picture of the bedroom that we were paying 100$ a night for) :
We soon realised why no photos of the bathroom were featured. I’ll be considerately scanty with the details but suffice to say melting the toilet seat onto the rim does save on screws They had generously left a bowl and and a contraption that only my mother could identify as a spin drier in case you felt the urge to wash out your smalls.
(Bathroom)
Fortunately the food in the town of Kaliningrad was delicious and inexpensive so we didn’t ever venture into the kitchen. I particularly recommend the Zotler Bar Leninskiy Ave., 3, Kaliningrad 236006, for its sausage platter and the Borsch and Salo Ploschtschad Pobedy, 10, Kaliningrad, Kaliningradskaya oblast 236006 which, as the name suggests, serves excellent borsch
When you visit a new country and are fortunate enough to meet with the locals in a quaint bar, observe them from the luxury of a cafe terrace, or when renting, you see the intimacies of their homes. You ask yourself if they are representative of the country as whole or just the odd kind/ generous/weird/ totally not house proud individual.
I’m sure where we had the misfortune to stay/pay through the nose for is not representative of the Russian idea of cleanliness and interior design (Mr Ikea hadn’t been born when this place was furnished) nor that all of them are TV addicts obsessed with time - every room had at least 3 clocks of varying sizes and a TV for which the owner aside from considerately leaving us some pre worn slippers also took time to write out a detailed TV guide in English in case we found watching the best footballers in world football in brand spanking new stadiums too tedious and we’d rather put our feet up (rickety table allowing) and watch some Russian soaps.
(TV guide the owner had left us)
Have you had similar experiences with AirBnbs pictures not matching what the real thing is actually like, or paying a lot extra just because of a special event? Let me know in the comments!
