Most Russians live in apartment buildings of between five and nine floors (big cities have taller buildings; the tallest apartment building I've ever been in was a 26-floor building in Moscow). In order to reach their apartments, of course, most people ride elevators. Most apartment buildings also have several different entrances that don't connect to each other, which means that most buildings have quite a few elevators.

These elevators are nothing fancy, and usually they are tiny little cubicles that are frequently dirty and sometimes scrawled with graffiti. Elevators here are usually pretty primative too. For example, my host mom and I got into the elevator in our building with another lady, and I asked the lady what floor she was going to and pushed the button for her floor and my floor. This confused the elevator, and my host joked that Russian elevators have no memory. Another funny thing about the place I lived in Moscow was that the building had eight floors, but the elevator had buttons for 12 floors. I always wondered what would happen if I pushed 12....

Elevators also break down fairly often, and that is big problem if you're an old lady who lives on the 11th floor. There is only one elevator that will get you to your apartment, and if it's broken, you have to trudge up all the stairs carrying your bags of bread, potatoes, and cabbage. The elevator in my entrance breaks down every so often, and it wasn't working for a few days last week. I saw lots of unhappy people slogging up and down the stairs those days. Here's a picture of the broken elevator in my building and the inside of the elevator in the building where I lived in Moscow.