A Tour of our Apartment

In case you were wondering, things are a little different here in Ukraine.  Apartments are better to rent than hotels, I've already mentioned the driving, and the fashion is, um, M C Hammertime?  I'm seeing those Hammer pants come out in full force and it cracks me up.

But I wanted to show you a bit of our life here in Kiev.  Our last apartment was more modern than this one, and had an air conditioner.  But it also cost us out the wazzoo!  This one is more affordable, and has everything we need (no air conditioner, though).

This is the door when looking at it from the inside.  Welcome to our humble abode.  Glad you could join us!

 Immediately to the left is a sitting area.  What, might you ask, is behind the door?  Why, that would be the light switch to the kitchen, of course!

The kitchen is furnished with a nice dining area, an oven, microwave...

and a fridge!  We currently have chicken and ham waiting to be eaten.  Mmmmm!

We'll save the middle of the apartment for later.  First, let's explore the right side of the apartment.  That's where the excitement begins.  Just to the right of the door is the toilet room.  Yep, a separate room for the toilet.

 Just outside the toilet down the hall is a coat hanger and the lights for the toilet, again, on the outside.
 

This is our bathroom at the end of the hallway.  The washer, and tub...

And the "shower".  Ukrainians don't take showers everyday.  They take baths as needed.  This is very european.

And the sink.  Mirror, mirror on the wall, is my girl here after all?

The next door you enter, accross from the coat rack and next to the bathroom is the bedroom.  Excuse the mess, but we aren't at home :)  This is the dresser.  In Ukraine (as well as most European countries) they don't have closets built in.  Instead they buy these storage units and use them as closets.  I'm not sure how they fit all their clothes in them!

 Our bed, which is pretty hard, but it's not nearly as bad as the first bed.

The window in the bedroom is very large and tall.  It has two window panes on each side (one for the outside and one for the inside), both that open in to the bedroom.  I don't know why this is.  It's the first time I've seen  this.

Looking straight ahead once you enter the apartment is the living room.

We haven't figured out the TV yet, but we have one if we ever do!

And we have a balcony, which is super nice.

This is where we dry our clothes (although at our last apartment we dried our clothes in the bedroom on the carpet).

Looking straight down from the 5th floor in to the courtyard.

Our view.  This is a nicer outside to an apartment.  Usually they look like you're living in the slums.  The inside of the stairwell is a little run down.  But Ukrainians own the apartment, the government owns the buildings, so why put money in to something you don't have to?

And the best thing about our apartment?  It has a ceiling fan in the living room!  We spend most of our time there, and keep the windows open all night.