Today I was eating my brunch after coming back from the gym, and I heard what sounded like water pouring from a broken pipe. My host family wasn't home at the time, and the thought of having to call someone (and I have no idea who) and trying to explain that a pipe in the apartment was gushing water all over the place roused me from my lazy TV watching and munching on eggs and salmon (a breakfast of champions).

Fortunately, it turns out that nothing was broken, and water was not inundating our apartment. This gushing and gurgling sounds I heard were coming from the radiators. Today, the central heat plant started sending hot water out to all the buildings in Vladimir, and what I heard was the radiators filling up. Russian cities are mainly heated by big central heat plants, and the hot water is distributed around the city by a system of big pipes that mainly run above ground. This system is very efficient compared to each building having its own small boiler, but individual apartments don't have any control over how much heat they get, so your apartment is whatever temperature the central plant decides it should be и всё! Also, the giant pipes snaking through the city aren't the most attractive things.

I'll take this as a sign that the cold winds of Russian winter are just around the corner. Fire up the heat plant and break out the ushankas...