One part of staying in Vladimir for another year was finding a place to live. I had a wonderful year with my host family--I can't compliment them enough for their hospitality, patience, and excellent cooking. My host family allowed me to do as I pleased, and I never felt like I was restricted or had my freedom constrained, but I knew that I needed to live a bit more independently if I were to stay for another year. So one of my colleagues and I did an apartment search in the spring and found an apartment that was being rented out by a friend of an American Home security guard. The price and location were right, and it's nice to have a connection to the person you're renting from. So we told her we wanted to rent the place, and we moved in on August 1.
Russia is a lot more informal than the US in things like this. In college my friends and I rented an apartment from the big campus-area realty company, and we had to sign all sorts of forms, have our parents co-sign the lease, put down a security deposit, and get all the utilities in our name. We did none of that for this apartment. We never signed a contract with our landlady, and she still hasn't even collected the rent for our first month (there's no security deposit)--she said she'll come by today or tomorrow to pick up the rent money. The situation with utilities is also strange for us Americans. We pay for hot water, cold water (there are two separate meters because the hot water comes from a central plant), and electricity. We have a gas stove, but the gas isn't metered; I think there is a flat-rate fee of 250 rubles (about $8) a month for gas. In order to record our electric meter reading, there is a piece of paper taped to our door in the entryway. This month our neighbors beat us to it and actually recorded our electric meter for us (you're supposed to write down your meter reading on the sixth of each month).
The apartment itself is pretty standard. In Russian terminology, it is a two-bedroom apartment, which means that there are two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. That's it--no living room, no study, no dining room. The square footage? You're looking at a whopping 570 square feet; that's one quarter the size of the house my mom occasionally derides as being too small for our family in the US. That size, though, is normal for a Russian apartment, and families of three, four, or even five people live in places that size or smaller. Talk about claustrophobia.
The apartment hasn't been remodeled since it was built, and that was probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s, so the style of the place is very Soviet. For example, there is a radio mounted on the wall in the kitchen that receives only one station. In the Soviet Union, that radio would blare the national anthem at 6:00am, and all the good communists would get up and go to work building socialism. Of course, that whole building socialism thing kinda ended, and the apartment hasn't been touched since, so things are a bit beat up, but it's a good place for two 20-something teachers. Here are some pictures of my new place:
Russia is a lot more informal than the US in things like this. In college my friends and I rented an apartment from the big campus-area realty company, and we had to sign all sorts of forms, have our parents co-sign the lease, put down a security deposit, and get all the utilities in our name. We did none of that for this apartment. We never signed a contract with our landlady, and she still hasn't even collected the rent for our first month (there's no security deposit)--she said she'll come by today or tomorrow to pick up the rent money. The situation with utilities is also strange for us Americans. We pay for hot water, cold water (there are two separate meters because the hot water comes from a central plant), and electricity. We have a gas stove, but the gas isn't metered; I think there is a flat-rate fee of 250 rubles (about $8) a month for gas. In order to record our electric meter reading, there is a piece of paper taped to our door in the entryway. This month our neighbors beat us to it and actually recorded our electric meter for us (you're supposed to write down your meter reading on the sixth of each month).
The apartment itself is pretty standard. In Russian terminology, it is a two-bedroom apartment, which means that there are two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. That's it--no living room, no study, no dining room. The square footage? You're looking at a whopping 570 square feet; that's one quarter the size of the house my mom occasionally derides as being too small for our family in the US. That size, though, is normal for a Russian apartment, and families of three, four, or even five people live in places that size or smaller. Talk about claustrophobia.
The apartment hasn't been remodeled since it was built, and that was probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s, so the style of the place is very Soviet. For example, there is a radio mounted on the wall in the kitchen that receives only one station. In the Soviet Union, that radio would blare the national anthem at 6:00am, and all the good communists would get up and go to work building socialism. Of course, that whole building socialism thing kinda ended, and the apartment hasn't been touched since, so things are a bit beat up, but it's a good place for two 20-something teachers. Here are some pictures of my new place:
My room
My room from the other side. You can see my bed (it's really two twin beds pushed together--now that's what I call classy) and my balcony. The art on the wall isn't mine.
The hallway
The bathroom. Notice the combined sink-shower faucet. That's standard for Russia.
The toilet room (Russian apartments usually have separated bathrooms)
The kitchen
The kitchen balcony
The kitchen again
The view out my window
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