Interactions with the Remont-ing Community

With winters here grueling and hard on both the soul and the structures, most Ukrainians busy themselves in the summer with remont-ing, or repairing. Finally, labourers are not discouraged by the subzero temperatures, and neither ice nor frozen earth can prevent access to pipes or walls. In this summer, I've had the experience to work with 3 remonters to prepare my own apartment for winter. Here are their stories.

Andrei
Actually the shop teacher at school, Andrei came to install a light fixture in the hallway and a counter top around my sink in the kitchen. He did a very fine job and used materials from the school, so he didn't charge me anything. The most distressing thing about my new apartment, however, is the broken window on the balcony. Left as is, my home will be open to all the ravages of winter without even a single pane of glass to protect me. Andrei promised to return with glass. 8 weeks ago.

Boris
Having been left with mostly old furniture that was used by someone's grandmother for centuries and then left unattended with the rest of the apartment after her passing a year ago, the sofas and chairs here were in no condition to be used. Boris, the cousin of a teacher from school, offered to reupholster the furniture with old drapes or excess fabric in his spare time. He has done an excellent job so far, but when he came to pick up the last three sofas (right? why do I need so many?), he gave me the most honest Ukrainian answer ever.
   Me: When will you return with these sofas?
   Boris: Not soon.

Vitaly
The downstairs neighbours had been complaining about the pipes leaking water for longer than I've been here. Two years ago, they got on the waiting list for a public plumber to come remont. Finally, an appointment was scheduled for last week. Seeing as how the pipes are either in their ceiling or my floor, the landlady asked me if the plumber could work through my apartment. Of course! What could go wrong?

Vitaly arrived at nine in the morning to begin replacing the rusty old pipes with plastic ones. He stood my tub upright, removed my toilet, dug out large sections of wall and floor, and in the process covered everything in my house with a layer of concrete (and presumably asbestos) dust. Around three or four o'clock, I noticed the stillness in my apartment, but judging from the state of things, he must have been working downstairs. It was only after the landlady arrived to survey the completed work that I realized Vitaly had left.

Now, I've not had a lot of experience with American repairmen, either opting to fix things myself or ignore the problem altogether, but I have a feeling that if one's work involved creating such a mess, one would at least take the hunks of concrete and rusty pipe out to the garbage, not to say anything about the grey snow left everywhere. Worst of all, a hole the size of a strawberry rhubarb pie was left in the floor behind my toilet, not only providing an escape route for my cat but also laying bare all acts performed in one bathroom to anyone with auditory or olfactory senses in the other. My landlady's solution? To remove the rug from in front of my bathroom sink and spread it neatly over the hole.

My favourite part of this story is that all four times I have explained to a Ukrainian the previous paragraph and my expectations of a repairman, the result has been identical: uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Perhaps this is a country in which the squeaky wheel always gets the oil, or perhaps I'm just too softened by first world conditions, but at the very least this is all part of learning to operate within a new system with different standards and expectations. Who knows what life will be like once September comes and I enter this strange world of Ukrainian employment alongside other labourers!