House Hunter's International Part 2

The kids are in bed and Slingbox isn't working so I have some more free time to continue on with our house hunting adventure here in Moscow.

Apartment 2 - The One with all the Playgrounds

The apartment names have more to do with my perspective (and the kids) than A's perspective. This apartment could also be called Close to work if you were to ask him.

One of the nice features of Apartment 2 is how close it is to A's work. Instead of taking the metro to work, he could actually take about a 30-minute stroll through a really nice park. Now, one might think that walking a little extra to work would be a negative thing here in Moscow with the long, tough winters, however in A's point of view, its actually much better. You see, people here love, love, love their heaters, or so it seems. I am not sure why its like this, but indoors is very hot in the winter. It seems like they just turn on the heaters full blast all winter long. I have read that it is a government-controlled central heating system....so I plan to ask someone here this winter if this is true. We will probably be the only people in all of Moscow running our air conditioning in the winter to help with how hot the heaters will make our apartment. After living in Texas for so long, I am now used to the artificial environment air conditioning provides - a perfect 72 F in my opinion :)

So, now imagine walking briskly in the outdoors for about 15 minutes. You are bundled up heavily and are pretty warm from the walk. Then you go into the metro station, crowded with hundreds and hundreds of people and the heater is on full blast. It is at least 85 F but you have no space to take off your jacket, plus it would be quite the ordeal to remove your hat, scarf, gloves, jacket, etc... Thank goodness they keep it warm, but geeze, its quite uncomfortable. And that is why A likes the potential to walk to work....

Now on to my apartment title.....Apartment 2 appears to be in a large residential area. I am not sure how zoning works in Moscow, but this area of town seems more residential as opposed to our temporary apartment, which is much closer to the city center (aka Red Square, etc). The actual gated area (one door buzz in) has two playgrounds in it, and they are perfect for my kids ages. Most playgrounds here have your usuals you see in the US - swings, slides, climbing objects...but they also have sand boxes and merry-go-rounds! For those of you who are at least my age, you probably remember the little merry-go-rounds at school and park playgrounds. We would spin each other around around around to see how dizzy we could get. For some reason they seem to be a thing of the past, probably because too many kids got hurt and there were lawsuits, etc. But here in Moscow they are alive and well! My kids LOVE them! K mostly likes to push them around, but S loves to go faster, faster, faster, or as the kids here shout "speena, speena, speena", which actually just translates to spin.

On a side note, I was spinning my kids around and a couple others walked up and got on. There was a little girl laughing and yelling "speena, speena". I assumed she meant faster, faster so I went faster and faster. There were some parents that walked up to me and gave me a face like "whoa there be careful" even though the kids were smiling. So I slowed them down and let someone else spin the kids while I got out my handy dandy translator to see what they were actually yelling. Luckily it wasn't "slower, slower". It was simply "spin, spin". I should have guessed...the word speena is not too far off from spin ;)

Ok, back to the apartment....I am not too thrilled about the sand boxes due to the mess, but oh well, the merry-go-rounds sure are fun (A and I have been getting our spinning time in too!).

When we saw the pictures of the apartment before seeing it in person, we weren't very thrilled. It looked pretty plain and it was hard to see the "whole picture". When we walked in, we both had smiles on our face. It was an open floor plan, bright and light, similar to the zoo apartment. It had the entry way with the closet and warming tiles too :) It had quite a large living room area, open to the kitchen and open to an enclosed balcony. The kitchen was recently re-done with all its faux wood clad appliances and there was lots of counter space. It also had a full-size dishwasher - yay! There was a table in the corner with a missing leg and only one chair...interesting. This apartment was also a 4 room apartment. All 3 bedrooms were in an area separated by a door from the living room. One bedroom was the master bedroom, with another enclosed balcony, the second bedroom was pink with "girly" paintings still hanging on the walls and the third bedroom was all blue - walls, couch, chair, curtains....all blue. Wow! Perfect for our family! There was also a second bathroom in this area with a tub, just not a spectacular jacuzzi tub, like we had seen at many other apartments. There was also a storage closet that the land lady told us she would turn into a walk-in closet...perfect!

Again, there were a couple negatives - no bed for K, a small washer with no dryer, no microwave and the dining room table with 3 legs....again, negotiable items.

After seeing the apartment, we walked around outside to make sure there was a grocery store near by. During our grocery store hunt we saw two more playgrounds. This part of town seems to have playgrounds on every corner! One thing was for sure, if we chose this apartment we would never get bored with the same playground! We also found the grocery store close by - only downside is that its one of the stores that won't take our credit cards....still trying to figure out what the problem is there.

Another huge plus with this apartment is that there are no stairs to get into the apartment and I can get to the nearest metro station without stairs. Its on the fourth floor, but there is an elevator on the bottom level and the elevator is big enough for a stroller! This is huge for a mom, two kids and a stroller! As I mentioned before, Moscow isn't friendly to strollers, so being able to get in the metro station without stairs is a big deal! Big deal! Now stairs at the metro stations that I head to is another story :)

Stay tuned for the last installment of House Hunter's International Moscow. It will feature a bonus apartment because there are two more that are worth talking about  and I actually have pictures of one of them :)