As you read this, keep in mind that these are our observations and things we as we understand them, with our limited language skills. Sorry, no pictures this week.
They have banks upon banks upon banks upon banks upon banks of apartment
buildings here. In Barnaul they were generally 6-10 floors high, although we saw a few that were only 2
floors and others up to 15 floors high. In Novokuznetsk the majority of buildings are older ones, 3-6 floors high, and the newer ones are higher. Usually in buildings 6 stories or less there is no elevator. Both of the buildings we've lived in have been L-shaped with our entrance where the building turns.
The buildings are all
set at different angles, except that the ones along the main street
are usually parallel to the street. Most have businesses on the
first level (the entrances to the apartments are on the back side).
Each building has several ground-level
entrances with a small lobby and mailboxes. On each floor the landing opens
up to 2-6 individual doors - no halls or connections to other
entrances. Sometimes there will be two doors on each level and behind
those doors will be a hallway with 3-4 apartments. Each "stack" of apartments is called a подъезд (thank you Катя for the correct spelling) or podyezd. We call it a pod for short. The numbering in each pod starts with the first apartment at
the first
entrance and goes up to the top floor. Then it continues with the first
apartment at the second entrance and so on. It appears that there isn't a set floor plan and your apartment may be very different than the ones above and below you. Our apartment is in pod 4 and is #19 on the third floor. There are 6 apartments and 4 mailboxes in our pod.
Almost everyone lives in
apartments with no private yard. Some apartments are privately owned, while others--like ours--are rentals. Included in our apartment is all the furniture, dishes, bedding, vacuum, hangers, and washer. We did have to provide our own clothes, however. :) It's no big deal for most people to move--they pack up a few clothes and settle in to a new place with very little disruption.
We've been told that single home ownership is unusual
except for the very rich, and even those homes don't have
any lawn like in the U.S. They would think we're rich beyond their wildest dreams if
we talked about having an upstairs and a downstairs and a yard. Many of the apartments we
have visited are like studio apartments or slightly larger--they sleep/live in one room,
have 2 bathrooms (one for a toilet, the other with a sink,tub/shower and washer) and a small kitchen.
And a balcony. Almost everyone has at least a small balcony. Many of them are enclosed,
but it's often an unheated area mostly used for storage or hanging clothes
since dryers are very rare. Or they use it to hang out of the
window to smoke.
This week's Russiansim:
We noticed a lady was doing some prep work before painting the hall and stairways in our pod.
After she started painting I commented to Dave that I wanted to import
their paint to Utah because it didn't have a lingering paint odor. A
couple of days later Dave asked me what a potent smell was. Apparently
the lady was still patching when we thought she was painting, hence no
paint smell, because once she started, even just a little paint, the
odor was terrible, a very thick, heavy, sickening, gasoline-type
tear-inducing smell. The nice thing was that by morning it was
gone--until she started painting again the next day. And it took her
several days to get all the painting done on the first floor and stairs,
so we lived with that for a
while. And no, we won't import their paint to
Utah! She didn't put up any wet paint signs, but the color change made
them unnecessary. It looked like she did the ground floor entries in
each pod. We assume she'll go back and do up the stairways and the
landing area on each level at some point.
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