The Entrance to Our Apartment......Come on in!

This is the entrance to our section of the apartment building. I think there are 6 to 8 entrances which give access to four apartments on each of the nine floors. We are in the fourth entrance, in Russian it is called a "padyesda'.



"Our apartment entrance"

We have a special magnetic key which we press againt a keypad to unloock the redish door. Next to the door is a 'doma phone' (house phone), where people can call our apartment from outside and then we can unlock it with a button in our apartment.


"Inside the 'padyesda'"

Once you come through the door this is what you see looking back toward the door. The picture is taken from in front of the elevator. The little metal boxes on the left are mailboxes. We are box number 129.


"The little elevator"

This is a very small elevator. We cannot push our jogging stoller into it so we have to remove Ellie, fold it up and try to squeeze in. Two people maybe three are the max for the evevator.


"Elevator floor buttons"

This button pad looks to me like it has suffered a fire in the past, but who knows. Two days ago someone so very neatly wrote all the floor numbers on the metal with a black marker. Before that you just counted the buttons to get your number. We are on the sixth floor.


"Me standing by the hall door on our floor"

This red metal door is the second locked door we have to go through. It has a funny little round key that took me lots of practice in using to even get the door opened. On the outside of this door we have a doorbell that signals we are to come out and unlock the metal door for visitors. You can see our apartment door straight behind me. It is wide open, but usually it has a red metal, locked door in front of it too. So we live behind 3 locked, metal doors. It is quite fun having to open all of them with our hands full with Ellie and shopping bags.



"Garbage disposal"

On the left of the hallway near our door :( is this device. You pull open the little door and drop your trash in. Your trash bag cannot be larger than a walmart bag or it won't fit. It seems like a nifty contraption, but unfortuanitly it comes with a drawback. A noxious SMELL!!!!!! I think there is only 2 days during the week when I don't hold my breath going by it. Those must be garbage removal days. I guess the garbage all piles up in a room on the first floor. The garbage door is the little door to the left of the padyesda door.

So that is the way into our apartment. If you by chance visit us you will now know the way through the entrance , up the elevator, and down our hall.