ul. Krasina 24, ap. 10

In an attempt to show my loyal reader(s) a little bit more about my new-found life in Moscow, I snapped a few pictures of my apartment. This is the first of a multi-part series: I will try to post pictures of my building and neighborhood in the next few days.

The apartment has three bedrooms and is located on the fifth floor of a five-story building. Sorry, no elevator. On the bright side, I won't be in the market for a second-hand Stairmaster.




When you enter the apartment--through the typical double doors--my apartment mates' rooms are on the right, and to the left is the common area. It has a TV (I don't actually know how many channels we get. I haven't even turned it on!), coffee table, and couch.









Again to your left, beyond the couch, is the kitchen. It is, for kitchens in Russia, large and well apportioned. In fact, it's better than those of many of my rental places in the States (but not Todd St.!). Note the bookshelf in the foreground. It is, in addition to my contributions (the most recent New Yorker and Graham Greene's The Quiet American), well stocked with Russian fashion magazines. Perhaps I will browse them over breakfast. Let's call it "cultural research."





One of the advantages to living in a country awash in oil and gas: gas stove. I had forgotten just how awesome cooking with gas is. Hooray! There will be future posts about cooking successes and follies. Sneak peek: on Thursday, I made a potato and leek soup with cream. Yum!














The view from my room into the common area.


















My room, which includes a large desk by the window and more cabinet space than I could possibly use. In addition to those in this picture, the entire wall behind me is covered with similar cabinets. Whoever remodeled this room seems to have knocked over an IKEA. And I can't complain.








There is also a balcony which leads from the common room. The view isn't much, but that's because our neighborhood is relatively quiet and the building is screened even from the local streets by other buildings. The sound is the soft hum of busy streets--Tverskaya-Yamskaya and Sadovaya--that are 3-4 blocks away. This is the view as you look left, in the direction of M. Mayakovskaya. It's a little scary that the maple in the foreground has lost almost all of its leaves. Not all the trees are that far gone, but fall is in full force. On a happier note, there is a beautiful goldfinch in the tree at this moment. It's the little things.








This is the view as you look right. The building in the foreground is a secondary school.

















A closeup over the top of the school, that is the top of the Stalin-era "skyscraper" at Kudrinskaya ploshchad'. You can check out more about it and it's six contemporaries on their collective Wikipedia page.