So, although Natalya Mikhailovna is my host(ess), I stay in the dormitory (obshchezhitie in Russian, which means something like "shared/communal living") across the street and I go to Natalya Mikhailovna's, for the most part, only for meals (which still comprise the better part of my day). Our dormitory is obviously of Soviet manufacture: the visitor is greeted by a grey box of an edifice with nary a trace of ornamentation, save the single utilitarian sign, which looks as though it were stenciled on poster-board with colored pencils as a last-minute primary-school science-fair submission. Upon entering, one finds the interior to be slightly more colorful, but somehow even less inviting: some sort of dull sea-foam green and metallic cadet blue lining a dimly-lit corridor, its only differentiating feature being something of a toll-booth from which a hunched, troglodytic woman keeps watch and occasionally glowers as you go by.
By Russian standards, the bathroom I use is neither particularly great nor awful, although it's absurdly big to have only a lone toilet sitting in the corner. Also, the thing about Russian toilets is that they have something like a mantle, from which your excrement stares at you offensively until you've flushed it (I've been told this shelf was designed to allow the agrarian populace to collect it for implementation as manure). Also, one doesn't flush toilet paper in Russia.. you put it in a small waist-basket usually found right next to the toilet (which, naturally, makes Russian bathrooms even more malodorous than their American counterparts and, invariably, attracts flies). Moreover, Russian bathrooms don't have toilet paper: If you're lucky, they'll have scraps of newspaper, but most of the time, you just have to bring your own.
My room is surprisingly big, and not completely lacking in amenities, though not necessarily the amenities you would expect... or need... for any reason. In order to determine precisely what these amenities consist of, I've decided to take inventory, as much for my own benefit as for Your Readership's. In my room, you'll find:
1) A door, covered in wallpaper, but lacking a handle on the inside. Side note: I would sometimes spend 15 minutes trying to get this door open, attempting to use my key for leverage and getting a little help from a rusty nail stuck to the door. After telling Natalya Mikhailovna, she locked the carpenter in my room until, after about 10 minutes of struggling, he gave in and finally agreed to make a handle for me (that's how you get things done around here). The next day, I got locked in the shower for 20 minutes, because that room also didn't have a handle on the inside.
2) A sink, with a lone patch of wallpaper surrounding it and the hot-water handle torn off (lest you be misled into believing that there's hot water to be had)
3) A bucket, the purpose of which both I and Your Readership can only guess
4) A set of drawers, full of silverware, a near-empty jar of Nescafe, and a broken handle (aha!)
5) A vase full of dead, dried flowers
6) An "Ocean"-brand refrigerator
7) A shelf full of notebooks and quizzes from the Altai Technical School of Food Production
8) A radiator
9) A very sweet, heartfelt card from 2007 congratulating Ekaterina Ivanovna on her graduation
10) 11 plates, 2 teapots, three teacups, and 7 shot glasses
11) A blue and yellow hand towel with a bear holding balloons that says "Happy Birthday!"
12) A table covered with a tablecloth with pictures of rolls and croissants on it
13) A dresser with hangers and:
14) A green flag with a drawing of a cup on it
15) A ruler with a paper goat's face attached, and
16) A bag with flip-flops and pointy, leather high-heels that somehow fit me perfectly (see photo); I'll have to wear them out sometime when I go to Altaiskoye's only club.
By Russian standards, the bathroom I use is neither particularly great nor awful, although it's absurdly big to have only a lone toilet sitting in the corner. Also, the thing about Russian toilets is that they have something like a mantle, from which your excrement stares at you offensively until you've flushed it (I've been told this shelf was designed to allow the agrarian populace to collect it for implementation as manure). Also, one doesn't flush toilet paper in Russia.. you put it in a small waist-basket usually found right next to the toilet (which, naturally, makes Russian bathrooms even more malodorous than their American counterparts and, invariably, attracts flies). Moreover, Russian bathrooms don't have toilet paper: If you're lucky, they'll have scraps of newspaper, but most of the time, you just have to bring your own.
My room is surprisingly big, and not completely lacking in amenities, though not necessarily the amenities you would expect... or need... for any reason. In order to determine precisely what these amenities consist of, I've decided to take inventory, as much for my own benefit as for Your Readership's. In my room, you'll find:
1) A door, covered in wallpaper, but lacking a handle on the inside. Side note: I would sometimes spend 15 minutes trying to get this door open, attempting to use my key for leverage and getting a little help from a rusty nail stuck to the door. After telling Natalya Mikhailovna, she locked the carpenter in my room until, after about 10 minutes of struggling, he gave in and finally agreed to make a handle for me (that's how you get things done around here). The next day, I got locked in the shower for 20 minutes, because that room also didn't have a handle on the inside.
2) A sink, with a lone patch of wallpaper surrounding it and the hot-water handle torn off (lest you be misled into believing that there's hot water to be had)
3) A bucket, the purpose of which both I and Your Readership can only guess
4) A set of drawers, full of silverware, a near-empty jar of Nescafe, and a broken handle (aha!)
5) A vase full of dead, dried flowers
6) An "Ocean"-brand refrigerator
7) A shelf full of notebooks and quizzes from the Altai Technical School of Food Production
8) A radiator
9) A very sweet, heartfelt card from 2007 congratulating Ekaterina Ivanovna on her graduation
10) 11 plates, 2 teapots, three teacups, and 7 shot glasses
11) A blue and yellow hand towel with a bear holding balloons that says "Happy Birthday!"
12) A table covered with a tablecloth with pictures of rolls and croissants on it
13) A dresser with hangers and:
14) A green flag with a drawing of a cup on it
15) A ruler with a paper goat's face attached, and
16) A bag with flip-flops and pointy, leather high-heels that somehow fit me perfectly (see photo); I'll have to wear them out sometime when I go to Altaiskoye's only club.
No comments:
Post a Comment