Home, sweet home. Pensionado-prisionado

Renting an apartment in Cartagena is quite complicated. In Europe you just share an apartment with your friends or strange people, everything is quite easy and unproblematic. In Colombia it’s a little bit different. First, in Europe if you are looking for a place to live you just go online and you can find plenty of them, with prices, photos, directions, detailed descriptions etc. In Colombia there is no point in going online. You should go to the next supermarket instead and read all the classifieds that you can find there. They are very enigmatic, mostly there is just the name of the neighbourhood and phone number. Other way to look for a place to live is just to walk around and see if there are any ads in houses’ windows.

Next,  Colombians usually don’t move out until they have their own family. Even if they do, they might just stay with their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and so on. Sharing apartments with people who are not your own family is very rare. So, you might ask what they do if they go to another city to study at the university? Well, while Europeans want to go independent in their late teens and go to live alone or share apartments with other crazy students, taking care of themselves, doing the laundry and cooking on their own and also enjoying the freedom, partying, and having great social life, Colombians go to so called “pensiones”. Living a life as a pensionado for a European person is a total nightmare. Been there, done that. Basically, it means following: there is a Colombian family with a big house, they just rent spare rooms that they have to university students. They also cook for them and do the laundry (If they are Colombian students, they usually don’t do it for foreigners. Why cooking and doing the laundry for them, if you can only charge them for bed and bathroom?). They also mostly set many rules for you. I just don’t understand why Colombians students do it. It seems like they were afraid of going independent and taking care of their own lives. They also call it “ambiente familiar”, which I hate. If I want to have “ambiente familiar” I just go back to live with my own family and not with a strange one. They say they want you to be a family member. It’s a fucking lie, it’s not like being a part of the family, they don’t care about you, they just care about your money, which is fully understandable, but I don’t know why they don’t let you live your own life. In my opinion, if you are paying for a room, you have the right to feel at home, it includes also leaving and coming back when you want, inviting who you want and when you want and do in your room what you want and with whom you want, it’s your room, right? it’s your home and not a prison. Colombian landlords don’t get it at all.

It is very often, that living a pensionado lifestyle you have no key to the main door, so you have to knock every time you get back and wait for them to open the door. Of course, they are not very happy if they have to do it at 3 AM when you come back from a party. Sometimes they might even lock you in at night. And if you want to have friends come over – God forbid! Not to mention girlfriend/boyfriend staying overnight. This is a family house and you should respect their rules. They obviously forget to respect the fucking 600 000 pesos (300 euro) that you pay them monthly… :) Besides, mostly they don’t let you use the kitchen or the washing machine (if they have it).

Thank God in who I don’t believe finally I found a place to live where I have kind of a freedom. It’s not the most beautiful house in the world, no splendor, glamour and luxury, but at least I can come and go when I want and invite who I want, there is even no problem with couchsurfers :)