If you follow me on Facebook, you might have seen that two weeks ago (already), I moved from a dump to a Soviet palace. It’s not a real palace, of course, but compared to the dump I was living in, it is!
I’m not exaggerating when I say that the last apartment was a dump. I wrote about the problems with the dump and more in my post, Living Conditions in Moscow, from the raining WC to the mould in the bathroom, but little did I know that they were they were just previews of what was to come…or not come.
The landladies painted over the huge patch of mould in the shower and they gave me a new mattress, but here’s a list of things that never got done or fixed. ↓
1) The sofa in the kitchen never got thrown out. It’s falling apart and dangerous with all kinds of things sticking out of it. I tried to move it once to clean behind and underneath, but there was no way that was going to happen.
2) The cupboard doors weren’t fixed. They’re all crooked and didn’t close properly.
The kitchen doesn’t look too bad from afar, but when you actually use it…yikes!
3) The kitchen counters were caving in; it looked like they were going to give out, especially by the sink.
4) The floor tiles were coming apart from the walls.
5) The wallpaper was peeling in the kitchen and in the WC. You could see tons of mould underneath the peeling wallpaper in the kitchen.
Looking down the hall toward the kitchen, you’ll notice a hammer keeping the cabinet doors shut.
6) Only two the stove elements worked, and you couldn’t depend on the oven since it wouldn’t get very warm.
7) Some of the windows didn’t latch shut.
8) Most of the doors didn’t latch shut either – cabinet doors as well as room doors, including my bedroom door and the WC door! We ended up using the inside handle to hold the toilet paper since we didn’t have a holder.
9) The floor in the WC and in the bathroom was coming apart.
10) The bathroom sink was never secured. If you put any weight/pressure on it, it would come down! The little glass shelves were very crooked and they looked like they were going to fall down; they were never fixed either.
11) We were promised screens back in June, and we never got them. We were told several times when they would be installed, but no one showed up every single time.
12) We were also promised new windows, but they never came either.
13) One day, the main lock for the door wouldn’t work at all! Thankfully, the top lock was okay, so I guess that’s why the landlady never showed up to replace the lock. She was supposed to come a few times, but never did.
This great view was the only good thing about the dump.
I’ve learned that just not showing up isn’t uncommon in Russia, especially when it comes to landlords and services like plumbing. Believe it or not, that explains why it took over 2 months to get the leak in our WC fixed. After the downpour in the WC, a slowly expanding puddle kept reappearing next to the throne. My constant nagging made no difference whatsoever. I lost count how many times a plumber was supposed to come and never showed.
What a great way to start the day!
That includes after our kitchen plumbing exploded.
One morning in August, I woke up to the sound of my door buzzer. My iPad said that it was 6:52am. What the…?!
When I opened my bedroom door, steam was creeping down the hall from the kitchen. Through the cloud of steam, I could see that the floor was completely flooded. The neighbours below were buzzing us because we had caused a major downpour in their apartment.
Luckily, they were very kind and understanding about it, and they helped us clean up.
A plumber came a few hours later and fixed the kitchen plumbing. Since it’s connected to the main pipes behind the toilet, they were checking that as well. They said that they were going to fix our toilet problem, but they never did. Our toilet finally for fixed a couple of weeks later.
I can’t believe that I was living there 2 weeks ago. My new apartment is a different world not only because it is worthy of tenants paying to live there, but because it’s a step back in time.
Stay tuned for my post on
my Soviet apartment next week! ![😀]()
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