Help! I need Housing!

After spending most of September couch-surfing at various locales I was very excited at the prospect of my own place in Reutov. However I wasn’t so crazy about the cost of my new place. Moscow has been able to claim that it is the most expensive city in the world for the past few years (mostly because of real estate prices) and the outlying cities are no exception.

When the director of my school and a fellow teacher came with me to visit my proposed accommodation, they reassured me that spending 60% of my salary on housing was a pretty good deal. I probably could have stayed somewhere cheaper, but my boss said it wasn’t a good idea. Some of the stories I have heard about Soviet-era housing also told my gut to steer clear. So I opted for this ‘new building’.

New apartments are quite nice – functioning heating, hot water, internet-ready, washing-machine built-in, working elevators and modern security features. In older apartments any or all of these things might be missing. However these old apartments are still quite livable. I spent a few days in one before moving into my place. Nevertheless when it’s -20°C you don’t want the hot water to stop working!

There are quite a few unique features about Russian apartments. For starters you can’t tell what floor someone lives on based on their address. Apartments are given a number starting from one, so be sure to ask what floor someone lives on before you visit! Also you have several layers of security before you can get into an apartment – first the front door, then a door to your floor and finally your own apartment door. The last thing that I thought was quite ingenious about several of the apartments I have seen here is the dish rack is stored in a cupboard. Because most kitchens are small (mine being an exception) they conserved space by having wall-to-wall cupboards and putting the dish rack in one of them.

Some furnishings that are distinct in my apartment include the couch-bed. It’s a fold out couch, but an uncomfortable kind.It has a crack in the middle and both parts are slightly slanted inwards, so no matter what you do you always end up sleeping on the crack. Having a washing machine in the kitchen it not a new idea, but having to unplug it and turn off the water after every time so I can use other kitchen appliances is a bit weird.

On the whole I love my apartment. It is far better (and bigger) than anything I had in Toronto, so I don’t mind forking over a large chunk of cash to enjoy some luxuries here!

All this discussion about living Russia made me think about what it means to live somewhere. See my comments on this topic in my next blog post titled: Identity Issues.