The Novy Living Facility

Greetings Vsyem!!!!! It’s the end of the week, and keeping with tradition that we do something interesting or special at the end of the week, I thought I would share our apartment with you. (Just in case you were curious to see how the other half live..) Moscow when compared with our CBD is huge, but when compared with Greater Melbourne, they are roughly the same size (Maybe Greater Melbourne being the larger of the two) yet Moscow has 16-19million people living within this area.

Therefore Moscow is a city of apartment buildings. One cannot look anywhere without seeing apartment buildings. Our building is located 10 minutes walk from Timiryazevskaya Metro in the north of the city. A Soviet era flat, it is the equivalent of a studio apartment with a bedroom/living room, bathroom/toilet and kitchen. We also have an enclosed balcony (good for storing junk) All the windows are double glazed and we have at least four heavy doors with numerous types of locks between the street and the inside of the apartment. Even James bond would not have enough equipment to defeat every locking mechanism one has to pass when going home at night. So I include these photos for you to look at. We haven’t really started to decorate yet, but rest assured, we will get there in the end.

I hate our fridge, as does Sveta. I’m told the fridge is as old as the apartment (that is to say, fairly old) and it has a nasty habit of making large amounts of noise when the compressor clicks on (several times during the night) Our oven/stove unit is not much better and looks like it should be in a museum. (read: Antique)

Today also marks the first day I was able to sleep in. Previous days I have woken at 5am and 7:30am so it’s nice to have caught up on some sleep. I have four classes this afternoon, all straight from English file so it will be a fairly easy afternoon, unlike the previous two days where having to prepare clubs took time and concentration (concentration and thought abilities were pretty lacking as one can imagine.

On the weekend I will be working on the new-improved Radio Krasnaya which will have video’s, picture galleries, podcasts and video’s for you to enjoy. Please stay tuned for further updates. Any questions you ever have, please post them in comments and they will be answered. Please say hello too. J J

Have a lovely weekend all. Hopefully we will have internet at home soon so MSN, ICQ and Skype will be a goer again. Until then, I hope you are all behaving. Take care.

Matt.