The Environs

As promised, I snapped some pictures of the immediate neighborhood around my apartment and of my building. This first one is of ulitsa Krasina (Krasin street). It might have been named after this guy: Leonid Borisovich. But since he apparently was disgraced after his death, perhaps not.

In any event, I took this picture on my way to the supermarket, which is fortunately about 2-3 minutes walk away from home. It's not a very wide street, but as you can tell, it's comparatively busy.

This is the outside of the building. As I said in my last post, it doesn't face the street, so you have to know where you are going to find it. I think you should be able to make out the signs on the corner of the building that show the street name and number. It's a gray brick building, a pretty standard five-story apartment block. Since it doesn't appear to have been prefabricated, my guess is that it was built sometime in the immediate postwar period--no later than 1955.

This is the door to our entrance, no. 1 of 2. It's the first line of "defense," if you will. The first of several. There is an intercom over which to call any of the ten apartments reached from this entrance, but for residents, there is radio-frequency gadget that one keeps on a key ring. Just swipe it and in you go. Then inside of that is another door, locked with a push-button combination. And that only gets you to the stairwell . . .

. . . which looks like this. That's our door at the top. Two more doors here, each one with it's own key. Isn't this fun?!

Perhaps next time some pictures of some of the other things in the neighborhood. Stay tuned!