The Apartment

The apartment from the front. It's in southeast Moscow if I looked at the map correctly.

My brother and his family live on the 23rd floor, the lowest one with the extra balcony way up at the top.

Apparently their old apartment was only a bike ride away from the Kremlin. This is further from town, closer to work for my brother and decently close to the metro for the girls to get to school. It was also less expensive.

This is the door to the kitchen.

You can see that a lot of new apartments are being built. Moscow has been nominated the most expensive city in the world for the second year in a row, and housing is incredibly expensive.

The Kruschevskas are being torn down and replaced by high rises. (The Kruschevska is the cheap high rise built during Kruschev's times to ease the severe housing shortage.) The one in the front right will be torn down eventually; behind is a high rise being built.

The view from the apartment was incredible although the only noteworthy building is Moscow University, one of the Seven Sisters, in the middle back of this picture. We saw fireworks one evening; really the nicest view I've ever had of then. Oh, and some welding going on at night at the new building was almost as exciting as fireworks although not quite so colorful.

As is common in Russia, foreigners pay more for apartments. I found the 6 locks on the door interesting. I was also amused that 3 of the elevators required passes to operate while the 4th doesn't require a pass. That should cut crime down by at least 75%. The apartment is very beautiful but not the most practical, for example the huge foyer with this lovely round mosaic which redeems itself by doubling as a drying room since the dryer supplied by the apartment doesn't work, or a huge 4 person spa, again good for drying laundry but apparently not used otherwise.
























This is by far the most interesting apartment I have ever visited. Because my brother and his family have traveled all over the world, they have cool souvenirs from different places they have been or as gifts from Monica's embassy friends.

Pumpkin the canary

The two cats are babies from the Purina cat food ad cat. I can't remember their names, but they really are very nice even if they are cats. They liked being petted and climbed onto my lap almost every day to get petted, pushing aside anything I might happen to have in my lap at the time

They also came to visit me around 4 AM when I woke up to chat with my men-folk back home and to work on this blog. Really they deserve more than having their names forgotten.

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