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| Oxley and the beautiful floor |
So I had seen selective photos of my new residence on the internet before I selected it (sight otherwise unseen), but photos and reality are, as always, not necessarily the same. You can be assured that the doors that I featured in the prior post were not included in the photos - don't want to scare off people thinking they need that much padded cell security and all....
The apartment is a one-bedroom apartment and relatively spacious by European standards. My favorite feature is the beautiful floors as shown in the photo (with modeling by Oxley). Quite nice. When I first moved in, there was a long (and quite hideous) runner in the foyer and hallway made out of some synthetic plastic-like fiber. Not so nice. But there was a nice, thick rug in the living room and another one in the bedroom. Added quite a nice, warm touch to the place.
The bed is, unfortunately, not at all comfortable. It is a platform type of bed, no box springs, and I still wake up most mornings with a sore back/body. There is a flat sheet on the mattress rather than a fitted sheet, so most mornings I also wake up to the sight of the striped mattress peeking through at the edges where the sheet has pulled away. There is one not-down-filled duvet available. It is an oblong shape, so it can either fit across the bed, but not high enough to cover your feet and your shoulders (and I'm short!), or you can place it the other way, but then it wouldn't be wide enough to cover the entire width of the bed. Not so nice, though I guess it's a good thing I don't have to share the bed with anyone! Pillows are flat and uncomfortable, naturally. Topping all of this is a groovy washed out looking crushed satin bedspread. Fabulous.
There is, surprisingly, a relatively large armoire/closet cabinet in the bedroom. There's also an old-school TV that I haven't been able to figure out how to turn on either directly or through the remote. And a desk that is small enough to be nearly suitable for a child with a rickety chair that would seem able to bear only the weight of said child.
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| Note positioning of shower head |
One of the surprising things I discovered on my first morning is that, while this is a serviced apartment and can be rented by the day or by the month, there was only a bar of soap. No shower gel, no shampoo, nothing. I hadn't thought to bring anything from Frankfurt as I had assumed that the basis would be here. So this required several forays out into shops in the area, in a not-so-clean/tidy state, to try and find some shower gel and shampoo (finally found something at Yves Rocher, where I had a chance of reading the French labels as there was no way I could figure out the Russian labels!).
The bathroom also hosts the washing machine. As many who have lived in Europe will recognize, it also has a drying feature, though it really just kind of leaves clothes in a steaming pile rather than truly drying them. So I've learned to use the drying rack I found in a closet and build in time for drying into my laundry routine. But I have no idea what I would've done if there wasn't a washer in the unit, so I am pleased to have it.
The kitchen is relatively pleasant. It is full of fine German appliances (Bosch and Miele) which immediately made me feel better. Obviously, the addition of the Nespresso machine that I moved with me from Germany added immediate comfort and charm to the room. Several deficiencies remain, however. Recall that I would be living here for months on end and I do need to eat and I also like to cook. A brief sampling of the issues:
- Knives that are more dull than I can begin to tell you. I couldn't cut bread, let alone dice vegetables like tomatoes. I couldn't figure out where to buy a knife sharpener for several weeks, which was problematic. Smashed tomatoes, anyone? (Hand shredding of tomatoes doesn't work well, either.) I eventually found an affordable sharpener that gets you up to the level of sawing at vegetables. Delightful.
- No spices or cooking oil. I need to do a separate entry on foraging for food, but suffice to say that it is difficult to read spices in Russian and they generally don't have pictures on the packaging, so not as comparatively easy as many other food items.
- No measuring cups or spoons.
- No wooden spoon.
- No vegetable peeler.
- Just forget about there being a pizza cutter.
The other thing that I realized within a short time after arriving (again, this was in the middle of winter when it was ridiculously cold outside, even to a proud and properly winterized Midwestern farm grill) was that it was really hot in the apartment. There was no central thermostat and there were no adjustable valves on the radiators that would allow me to staunch the flow of the wasted heat. The only thing I could figure out to regulate the heat was to open the winters, which of course could only last for a few minutes before it was like being in the arctic. And don't think I didn't ponder seeing whether the air conditioning units outside would function in the cold weather, being the creature-comfort-seeking American that I am. It turns out that the window method is the method used. The heat, going back to the good ol' days of the Soviet Union, are on for the entire building/area for a specified period of months. No variation. You will have much heat and you will enjoy it. I guess better than the alternative of having no heat but it made for many nights of tossing and turning trying to figure out how to get a relatively stable temperature that was suitable to allow one to sleep for multiple hours.
After I had moved in, there were a few minor changes. First, after the second day of servicing of the apartment, the rugs in the foyer, living room and bathroom were suddenly gone. I found them rolled up in various closets and corners. Hmmm.... Did the Lads do something while I was gone? Not clear. But the rug under the bed remained until sometime in May when, suddenly, it, too, was rolled up. Very odd.
Additionally, while I never really use the phone, a couple of months into the experience, it was suddenly replaced with a newer looking phone. Okay. There was one point in time, though, when I had need of this phone (namely, that I had become separated from my BlackBerry for reasons we needn't go into here) as I needed to dial into a conference call. No problem - there was a local dial-in number. Except I couldn't dial in on this new phone because it is a PULSE DIALING PHONE! Not joking. I could dial the number, but then couldn't enter the pass code. Seriously?! Do they even make these anymore? I kept looking around the base of the phone and the handset looking for a small switch that would move it from pulse to touch tone dialing, but no luck. So instead I had to use Skype on my iPhone (there is WiFi in the apartment, I should note, but it doesn't really work in the kitchen) to dial into this call. Not pleased....
Oh. And the apartment came with one pair of slippers and a shoe care kit. But, several months later, the slippers have yet to be replaced. Lucky for me, I tend to visit hotels and have brought back some backups.
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