The Russian Home

A few days ago I moved to live with a new host family. I will miss my first family; they were so good to me. Their home really became my home, and they were really my family. I appreciated how they welcomed me in and just made me another daughter. It was a privilege to be treated as their child, and I grew very close to them. The day I left, my host dad read me a fairy tale, and even sang a song. It was touching to see this burly Russian man bashfully saying I should just stay with them for the whole year. Anna gave me a big hug, but we both knew we would see each other often. Irina piled my plate higher that night (Russian for "I love you"). Thus I left to go to my new home.

I had really grown comfortable in the area where I lived. It was convenient, everything was close, and it was a lively place. My new neighborhood is a different world. It has the usual Russian apartment blocks, but here they are built on the side of a mountain. All the nice trees of my former neighborhood have been replaced by steel grey rock. Wind howls here all day and all night, and there's not a flat piece of ground anywhere. Trekking the hills is treacherous as the sidewalks are - well we don't actually have sidewalks here, which proves tricky when it snows and there is no place to walk. The buzz and liveliness I was used to has become silence, and people are scarce. A good number of people I see here are drunk; even early in the morning they stumble about with bottles of alcohol in their fists. 

My apartment building is backed up against a steep hill. Skirting the hillside are row after row of garages, many of them empty. From the bottom of the hill they look like giant concrete steps marching up to the top of the mountain, with black gaping holes looking out over the city. From the top, the view would be spectacular, but the summit of the hill is crowned by barbed wire. There is nothing in my district, just apartment buildings. It's what they call a "sleeping district." People come here only to sleep; there is nothing to do, no stores to shop at. People leave in the morning and don't come back until they are done with their day. The vans that take people down to the city are crammed with people in the mornings. The low ceilings force people to bend over, or even sit on other peoples' laps. The windows are always plastered with arms, faces and bags, as the loaded vans roar down the mountain side. I remember seeing these kinds of busses at the bus stop near my former home, praying I would never have to ride in one. Funny how things work out sometimes. 

My apartment is on the fourth floor of a very old building. It was, in fact, military housing during the communist times. Even now, many of the families are still here, and all the neighbors are uncommonly social. The apartment has a small hall with all the rooms opening off of it. To the right is the kitchen, a rather large room, with the majority of it filled by a table. In the corner is a stove and a refrigerator, with a microwave perched on top. All the food ends up in the refrigerator or the table, so the table is often crowded with all sorts of things to eat. A balcony opens off the kitchen, and is strung with lines to dry clothes on. 

Next to the kitchen is the living room, which is where I sleep. A couch and armchair occupy one wall, a TV stands against the windows, and a large armoire lives there too. Next to my room is my host mother's room. It is small, with enough room for the pullout couch, a TV, and a low table. The last two rooms are the toilet and the shower. Between the two doors, in the hall, is a washing machine. 

I live with a widow named Natalia, and her cat Kseina. Natalia is a language physiologist, and I have already learned so much from her. She's told me about how the brain works when learning a language, and how to interpret what people are thinking about, based on where they look in a conversation. She studied English at University and in America. She has traveled all over the world for her work, frequenting Europe and Asian countries. She has multiple degrees: English teacher, physiologist and interpreter. She is also qualified as a military interpreter, which means she knows every kind of tank, airplane, battleship and gun there is in the Russian military, and could tell you the specifications of any piece of artillery and weaponry in an instant. Her primary work now is as a language physiologist, helping groups of professionals and students who are having trouble learning English. 

She is a wonderful woman, with a great sense of humor. She loves her travels and our home is filled with beautiful things from all over the world. Our house is also filled with toy tanks and pin collections that were her late husband's, who was a tank driver in the military. Natalia has a son, who lives with his wife and small daughter in a town nearby. Her brother works near us, and she once told me of a time where all of the family lived in our apartment. Her, her husband, her son and his wife, and her brother, all here at the same time. 

Natalia does not stand for any nonsense. This has led to a few confrontations with rude people, the most memorable of which took place a few nights ago. A group of very drunk men were blasting music from a car parked outside our apartment building at three in the morning. Natalia opened the window and shouted at them to be quiet. When they continued, she took some plates from the cabinet and started throwing them like frisbees at the offenders. They left pronto, and her only regret was that the odd shape of the plates made them curve in the air, thus missing their target. She also told me how to get back at unruly neighbors by putting grain on the top of their car, and the pigeons will flock to peck up the grain, thus badly scratching the paint. She's a funny gal, and I'm very glad to be living with her. 

There is a lot here in our house that are unusual in American Houses. There is no sink in the kitchen, so we wash all our dishes in the bathtub. The toilet is broken, so to flush it, we have to reach into it and pull up on the stopper. It is always a bit chilly as there is a hole in a window we have scotch taped over. The TV plays about five very fuzzy channels. I sleep on a pullout chair, with the chair cushions as my mattress. The wallpaper is faded, and peeling in the corners. The plastic floor has tears in it. The rugs don't match the wall colors; the ceilings have cracks and stains. The furniture is old. Nothing matches. 

I love it. It doesn't feel uncomfortable; it doesn't feel rundown. It's normal. It's a regular old Russian apartment. And what an enigma this is: the Russian Apartment. In my opinion, it is a huge window into the Russian culture. So much can be seen in them.

Russians do not live in houses, unless they are very rich. Thus, housing in Russia is not as varied as in the United States. In American, we have duplexes, apartments, motor homes, manufactured homes, bungalows, farmhouses, A-frames, etc. In Russia, we have apartments. Everyone lives in apartments. The size varies, but a basic apartment is a kitchen, a toilet, a bathroom and one or two bedrooms. Living rooms are not very common, but if there is one, it is usually converted into a bedroom. The common "open area" approach we are used to in America is not so common here, with a room being a "room," meaning you can close a door on it. People do not paint their rooms, they use wallpaper. Generally, the wallpaper is extremely beautiful. Of course, how people choose to decorate their homes varies, but some things never change. For instance: beds. Russians generally do not have beds; they all sleep on pull-out couches. Drying machines do not exist here; therefore every apartment has a nice balcony on which to hang clothes, and to grow house plants. Every apartment is heated by a boiler system that gets turned on in October and gets turned off in June. Since there is no way to adjust the heat, they cool the apartments by opening the windows. This is a chilly practice when it is twenty below out. The boiler system that heats the apartments also heats the water, so when the heat is turned off in the summer, there is no more hot water.

Some apartments I have seen have been very modern, with Ikea-style furniture, and dishes that match. However, the most "Russian" apartments are very mismatched. This is because people buy things a little at a time. They see something in the market, they like it, and they buy it. It often doesn't matter if it goes with anything they already have. In my apartment everything is different: our dishes, our rugs, our towels. But for however mismatched everything is, it all seems to flow. Nothing seems out of place. It's something I've noticed in every apartment: everything belongs. Everything has meaning. It doesn't matter how many knickknacks they have tucked away, each one of them has a story, and they are happy to tell you about it. Every refrigerator is covered in magnets, and a typical house visit in Russia involves getting steered to the fridge and being told about each and every magnet on it. 

The Russian apartment is really private territory. Perhaps this is why café culture is so big here, because people generally do not meet in their homes. 

While in America it is common to invite people into our homes, even if we don't know someone very well, one is rarely invited into someone's home in Russia. It's almost sacred. People become completely different when they are at home. As soon as they walk in the door, they go to their room and change into house clothes, they put on their house slippers, and rest. Their "street face" is gone, and there is no better way to see who someone really is, than when they are at home.

Russian homes are filled with things of sentimental value. While all apartments are in essence the same (a product of the socialist era), it is very important for them to make their homes "their own." The apartments are almost like little nests where people go home at night and feel comfortable, and safe. On the streets, everyone is always on alert, and their heightened awareness only fades when they are home. 

This is one of my favorite parts about being on exchange: being in people's homes, not just living in a hotel or dorm. In order to know a culture, you have be in the homes, because that is where people become themselves. I have learned the most about the Russian culture at home, not in the city center or at school. Home is the heart of any culture. Home is where the family is, where people are the most transparent.