There is something very _____ about the new apartment I just moved into, and in which I will reside for the remainder of my time in Bishkek.
So very ______.
I'm just searching for what "_____" is.
By training I want to employ "ironic," but as I think Alanis Morisette has shown us, the improper application of this literary device just makes the speaker seem less intelligent.
It's like Rain on your wedding day? Isn't that just inconvenient? bad luck? At most an ill-omen?
Anyway, the point is that describing my new apartment involves several, not directly contradictory, but certainly unusually-allied, concepts. I will attempt to explain through photography, and barring success, will resort to textual communication of expressionistic dance.
The big point is that the interior is so radically different from what the exterior suggests. In a less crass way, the "curtains don't match the drapes." It's just any other concrete slab soviet-style apartment building, built into a quadrangle like basically any other soviet apartment building in Bishkek (or anywhere else that I've seen). The exterior is dirty, the concrete is chipping away, and the paint is peeling. Inside the front door, there is no lobby, just tired concrete stairs, a busted iron railing, and the kind of dimy-lit Soviet elevator that is more likely to take you to meet Maimon or on a bizarre Hogwarts field trip than to deposit you at your place of residence.
But somehow beneath this (rugged seems inadequately kind) exterior exists a small palace of comforts - past the wooden door with #21 on it, everything is remarkably... soft? The colors, the textures... it's all warm, friendly, not extravagant or luxurious per se, but... kind?
The apartment consists of a front hall (pictured at top) way which connects one bedroom, a living room, a kitch, and no less than two bathrooms (one for showering, one for the less-clean business). It is built into the center of a narrow building such that both sides (east and west) have windows, and my back-wall-mate is only accessible from a separate stairwell.
The living room is the centerpiece of the flat, and contains not only a beautiful mirrored hutch, but also a sofa and two matching plush chairs - covered in a loose, white faux-fur something. I'm not saying it rivals Buckingham on class or style, but it is comfy.
The entire West wall is windows, and the room even allows for a dining table + 6 chairs, with room to spare for a flatscreen TV (not pictured) in the corner. To reiterate: I have a flatscreen TV in my apartment. That has never been true before in my life.
Sure, it only gets Russian & Kyrgyz channels, but sometimes they just over-over-dub (leaving the English original beneath and shouting Russian louder), so I can still sort of follow-along.
The next room of note is the kitchen - and what a note! Easily 3x the size of my NYC kitchen, it practically rivals the great cooking station I had when living with Davey in San Anonio. Oven, stovetop, microwave, fridge, freezer. I've even got a waterpot. Better yet, it came fully equipped with eating ware, pots & pans, etc. It even has a dishwasher (though I was told it probably doesn't work, and I shouldn't experiment).
The breakfast nook is adorable, but isn't likely to do me much good. Breakfast is a chunk of cheese and some biscuits (my excuse for eating cookies for breakfast) on the way out the door. Then again, I do need someplace to sip my juice (I love juice - especially Cherry).
For the sake of argument, we'll proceed next to the Bedroom - oh yeah, where it all happens. Understand by "it" that I mean sleeping. Here's what's weird - I've been there 2 days now, and I'm still not 100% sure if the walls are actually tinted pink, or if it's just the reflection of those CRAZY PINK window shades that make it appear such. At first I assumed, no, of course they wouldn't go with a subtle pastel pink wall color, but now... I'm not so sure. The bed is very cozy (and large), and the room even comes equipped with its own (fabulous) dresser and armoir.
It's a silly thing to obsess over, but the ability to not live out of a suitcase/backpack is something I will take with no hesitation. I love to unpack the relatively small number of things I brought with me and just spread out. This became practically necessary on my first night there, but we'll get to that in a minute.
The final room is the bathroom, and while it doesn't seem like there's too much to mention here, it doesn't go without saying that I have abundant hot water, clear facilities, a sturdy tub, AND a washing machine. No, those are all special-bonus-extras, and I'm quite happy for them. One downside of the washing machine was Not learning how to operate it (it's one of the fancy modern ones, what my dad calls Semi-sentient, but the manual is only in Chinese, Russian & Korean), but more practical. I was in bad need of some laundry-time when I moved in, so I promptly stripped down (sorry for the visual) and threw basically everything I own into the washing machine.
Now I didn't have any soap, so this was already an exercise in near-futility, but even some cycles in a wet bath would have eased the encroaching odor.
It took a long time - some 2+ hours? - for the cycle to complete, and only about 1/2 that long for me to realize this wasn't a Genie wash-and-dry mechanism; it was wash only.
So it's 9 pm at night, the sun is down, and I'm (not quite) naked with a pile of wet clothes. It was at this moment that I was very thankful for three things.
- A pair of pants I hadn't yet worn, thus not in need of washing.
- Flip flops, alleviating the need for clean/dry socks.
- The electric iron that (also!!!) came with the apartment.
I won't lie - there was no magical solution achieved that night, but in the time it took me to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (in real Russian over-dub), and admittedly a little bit of The Rundown (in over-over-dub), I at least had clothes that were dry enough to proceed further on their own.
so now I'm all moved in, still stocking up the fridge and trying to get comfortable with the neighborhood. Not sure where the closest full grocery store is yet, and I still get lost by one or two streets on the way home. But "home" it is, in so far as I will have one during my stay in Bishkek: a generic grey concrete tower with a plush, expansive interior tucked inside.
I believe my first apartment was a good look at what "home" was like during the high-Soviet period of the 1960s-70s, and this new place may represent what the all-beautifying forces of capitalism can accomplish with such a place since the 1990s. I'm not sure. This could just be a better pad to begin with.
Time to get back home. My next adventure will be using the (non-self-lighting) gas stove.
Don't worry, I'll open a window. Tyler Durden will have to work much harder to send my (new) flaming shit out into the night. I don't even own condiments.
Then thousand spoons, and all I need is Life.
Weber (on the lamb)
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