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Author Topic: Crappy exterior, pristine interior  (Read 8200 times)

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Online krimster2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #25 on: November 05, 2018, 11:10:34 AM »
you are quite correct!
local sewage is also directly discharged into the black sea (you don't even want to set foot in this water-you better know where it is!)
that's why marine charts with currents are a useful thing to have
you can find sections of water that aren't exposed to effluent
and instead are constantly awash with strong permanent offshore currents
this water is much colder though!
I only dive in this water for the scallops or wreck artifact hunting
and not for recreation
brrrrr no!

this summer I got some scallops once more (just mask and fins)
daughters thinly sliced them and fried them in garlic
I sat back on the lounge and they brought me a plate of fried scallops cooked outside on a wood fire
and a baltica #4
I wonder what you were doing that day?




Offline Donna_Pedro

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #26 on: November 05, 2018, 11:41:41 AM »
Over time, cultural reasons developed for the "crappy exterior, pristine interior" manner of apartment living.


In Soviet times you never really owned your apartment. It belonged to the State and could be lost easily. Some apartments were controlled by worker's unions and were assigned based on how many years one had worked at a job, and sometimes significant job promotions included a promotion to a bigger or nicer apartment. Any misstep, suspected criminal activity, or anti-Soviet activity could cause one to lose an apartment.


Since it was never really your property, there is reduced incentive to care for it and especially the exteriors which to this day are either managed by some cooperative or by direct city government subsidy. The exteriors are the problem of someone else and thus are usually neglected by residents. If the electric lock/buzzer doesn't work, or some drunk threw up in the stairway -- and in a few weeks, or a few days, someone else will eventually come and clean up the mess or make the repairs. Maybe.


With the failure of the great Socialist experiment, housing was eventually deeded to individual occupants. But the exterior maintenance remains the domain of some resident cooperative or more likely, some city housing authority.  Often the only contact you have with those responsible is a telephone number posted in the entryway in case of some repair issue, broken elevator, etc. It could be days before a response.


Most apartment entries have a stench of pee. That is a cultural issue, likely stemming from the high rates of alcoholism. You'd never see someone taking a leak on the grass or sidewalk during the day, but after the sun goes down....


Large apartments mean a lot of people, and lots of people usually means lots of pets. At all hours of the day or night there are animals either roaming freely, or being walked on leashes. They have to do their thing somewhere, and often it is along the frontage of an apartment.


This summer we noticed several male residents one Saturday replacing the wooden benches at our apartment entryway. It is a long building with several entry points and they only did our entry. It took several hours and they had them reconstructed and painted by the end of the day. It turned out that they had grown tired of the broken benches and took it upon themselves to do the project. That is unusual, but nice, and so we picked up some strawberries and raspberries at a sidewalk stand around the corner and gifted each of them with some nice fruit to show our appreciation since they were not asking residents to share the cost of wood, materials and paint.


About once monthly a city crew shows up at our building. They pick up any tree branches, mow any grass that has somehow managed to grow, and use a water pressure tool to clean the interior entries and exterior walkways.


There are "big box" home improvement stores in the larger cities, and often these cater to interior items, from doors to door handles, paint, kitchen and bath items, etc.


This is all correct. THese days it all depends on the population of the houses. OLd and poor people still are not motivated to clean up and live like they used to years ago. Some people  understood that the priceof each apartment  goes up if the whole  building is kept up nicely inside and outside. In my apartment building people collectively did renovations to the building, replaced elevators, put a nice entrance door with locks and people even pay to to the attendand on the first floor who watches the entrance, and calls police if she sees smth suspicious going on. THanks to these effors the building looks and smells good inside and outside.
Kaplah!

Offline jone

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #27 on: November 05, 2018, 11:48:05 AM »
you are quite correct!
local sewage is also directly discharged into the black sea (you don't even want to set foot in this water-you better know where it is!)
that's why marine charts with currents are a useful thing to have
you can find sections of water that aren't exposed to effluent
and instead are constantly awash with strong permanent offshore currents
this water is much colder though!
I only dive in this water for the scallops or wreck artifact hunting
and not for recreation
brrrrr no!

this summer I got some scallops once more (just mask and fins)
daughters thinly sliced them and fried them in garlic
I sat back on the lounge and they brought me a plate of fried scallops cooked outside on a wood fire
and a baltica #4
I wonder what you were doing that day?

Dunno, but, hell, the next time you do it, call me up and I'll come right over.   Risk of food poisoning be damned.  Sounds like a great day.
Kissing girls is a goodness.  It beats the hell out of card games.  - Robert Heinlein

Online krimster2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #28 on: November 05, 2018, 11:56:57 AM »
"Risk of food poisoning be damned."

no risk at all, if you select the right spot



"Sounds like a great day."

about average....

Offline jone

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #29 on: November 05, 2018, 12:08:02 PM »
Like saying that mushrooms are not poisonous if you select the right ones.  LOL!
Kissing girls is a goodness.  It beats the hell out of card games.  - Robert Heinlein

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #30 on: November 05, 2018, 12:53:12 PM »
"Like saying that mushrooms are not poisonous if you select the right ones.  LOL!"

this is 100% true when I lived in Kyiv, I used to hunt mushrooms with my "sleeping dictionary" in the forests south of Kyiv
we even spotted a few Aminatas, she was a great cook and local naturalist
knew which mushrooms would be great in soup and which ones would kill your liver
nevertheless newspaper in Kyiv carried stories all the time people eating bad shrroms in the forests around Kyiv

I've eaten kilograms of Ukrainian mushrooms
and I'm just fiiiiiiiiiiiiii (cough, cough) ACK! ptwwwww




Online krimster2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #31 on: November 05, 2018, 12:59:44 PM »
this is the kitchen of my apartment in Sevastopol
weird looking device to the left of the refrigerator is a gas "on-demand" hot water heater

in a house in the USA of course you instead have multiple "hot water heaters" that typically have an 80 gal storage capacity
instead of an on-demand system, I actually like the on-demand more!!

you can tell this apartment belongs to a Ukrainian woman!  absolutely spotless (even with a guy like me around!!)


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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #32 on: November 05, 2018, 01:04:40 PM »
living in a Crimean village totally sucks
you have traffic jams in the mornings when the geese go back and forth to the river
they cut you off and then HONK at you
they're bastards all right, but tasty!!!
I appreciate being at the top of the food chain

this pic is in front of one of the outbuildings at my mega dacha

Rancho Del Krimster"

« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 01:13:49 PM by krimster2 »

Offline jone

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #33 on: November 05, 2018, 01:25:22 PM »
this is the kitchen of my apartment in Sevastopol
weird looking device to the left of the refrigerator is a gas "on-demand" hot water heater

in a house in the USA of course you instead have multiple "hot water heaters" that typically have an 80 gal storage capacity
instead of an on-demand system, I actually like the on-demand more!!

you can tell this apartment belongs to a Ukrainian woman!  absolutely spotless (even with a guy like me around!!)

USA houses typically only have one hot water heater.   Unless you're talking over 4000 feet of living space, multiple bathrooms, etc.

On demand water heaters are more common place these days in new homes.   ML might have better insight, but when we built some homes not too many years ago, we did that evaluation.  It was cheaper to put in the storage type water heaters then.  But 'on demand' was catching up as a cost outlay and was cheaper to run as an ongoing expense.
Kissing girls is a goodness.  It beats the hell out of card games.  - Robert Heinlein

Offline mendeleyev

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #34 on: November 05, 2018, 01:32:36 PM »
this is the kitchen of my apartment in Sevastopol
weird looking device to the left of the refrigerator is a gas "on-demand" hot water heater




Love these on demand water heaters, especially as city hot water comes from a central steam station and is shut down each summer for repairs.


I first saw such a heater in the country dacha of the man who was President Putin's communications director during his first term. I knew of their existence but until then had not seen many in Russia. Now they are quite common and most kitchen remodels add one, sometimes one also in the bathroom.
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Offline mendeleyev

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #35 on: November 05, 2018, 01:36:16 PM »
Jone, this is the toilet in the Moscow supermarket that I mentioned earlier.
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Online krimster2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #36 on: November 05, 2018, 01:37:53 PM »
Unless you're talking over 4000 feet of living space, multiple bathrooms, etc.

Yes, I am!!

"Love these on demand water heaters, especially as city hot water comes from a central steam station and is shut down each summer for repairs."

the building my apartment is in, is connected to the central hotwater system, all the Kryschouff building are of course
you have to do this on your own, and bribe officials to get permit, cuz gov doesn't want private citizens using their own heating and use central instead
since gas like electricity can be up or down, installed my own backups as well

Offline mendeleyev

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #37 on: November 05, 2018, 01:46:30 PM »
Sometimes visitors wonder about the pipe outside a typical Russian apartment building. The yellow pipes carry natural gas for cooking.


Most older apartments use steam heat supplied by a central steam station somewhere and then piped to apartment homes. Those pipes are larger in diameter and usually white or gray.
The Mendeleyev Journal. http://mendeleyevjournal.com Member: Congress of Russian Journalists; ЖУРНАЛИСТЫ.RU (Journalist-Russia); ЖУРНАЛИСТЫ.UA (Journalist-Ukraine); ЖУРНАЛИСТЫ.KZ (Journalist-Kazakhstan); ПОРТАЛ ЖУРНАЛИСТОВ (Portal of RU-UA Journalists); Просто Журналисты ("Just Journalists").

Offline jone

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #38 on: November 05, 2018, 01:59:30 PM »
Jone, this is the toilet in the Moscow supermarket that I mentioned earlier.

Hope you didn't go in there just to take that picture!
Kissing girls is a goodness.  It beats the hell out of card games.  - Robert Heinlein

Offline DaveNY

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #39 on: November 05, 2018, 02:03:22 PM »
Sometimes visitors wonder about the pipe outside a typical Russian apartment building. The yellow pipes carry natural gas for cooking.


Most older apartments use steam heat supplied by a central steam station somewhere and then piped to apartment homes. Those pipes are larger in diameter and usually white or gray.

Customer service in Moscow has improved in the last decade or so. Mosgaz one of the largest suppliers of natural gas in Moscow has a webpage in English and I'm told it's possible to get phone service in English, although maybe not all the time.

http://www.mos-gaz.ru/en/

Offline GQBlues

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #40 on: November 05, 2018, 02:55:18 PM »
USA houses typically only have one hot water heater.   Unless you're talking over 4000 feet of living space, multiple bathrooms, etc.

On demand water heaters are more common place these days in new homes.   ML might have better insight, but when we built some homes not too many years ago, we did that evaluation.  It was cheaper to put in the storage type water heaters then.  But 'on demand' was catching up as a cost outlay and was cheaper to run as an ongoing expense.

it's called tankless (point of use) water heaters...
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1. Because of 'man', global warming is causing desert and arid areas to suffer long, dry spell.
2. The 2018 Camp Fire and Woolsey California wildfires are forests burning because of global warming.
3. N95 mask will choke you dead after 30 min. of use.

Online krimster2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #41 on: November 05, 2018, 03:27:29 PM »
exterior means more than just facade of building Tovarische
but also nearby environment
living in my neighborhood in Sevastopol had many perks!
it meant every Sunday a stroll in the park with the kids with horseback rides and a piece of cake at our favorite cafe
or instead go to either "Quarantine Bay, or "Stony Beach"
all within a 5 min walk


« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 03:33:44 PM by krimster2 »

Offline Maxx2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #42 on: November 05, 2018, 04:30:41 PM »
Good thread! Thanks Mendy!

Offline SANDRO43

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #43 on: November 05, 2018, 05:20:05 PM »
mother in outlaw
A fugitive criminal parent :o ;D?
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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #44 on: November 05, 2018, 05:33:08 PM »
sorry, didn't know you could only do 1 pic at a time
No, you are not limited to 1 picture, either within a post or as an attachment to it ;).

Have a look at the section on Images in Posts in the RWD Help (http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?action=ezportal;sa=page;p=48) for details.
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Online krimster2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #45 on: November 05, 2018, 05:39:32 PM »
thank you Sandro!
operator error, mea culpa!

I gotta tell ya, I haven’t been entirely straight with you guys
I’ve done some BAD SHIT in Crimea!
seriously, I have!!!

for example, I smuggled in a BUNCH of cannabis seed packets from Amsterdam and planted them in the Rancho Del Krimster, soon enough ole Krimster had a nice harvest, will not post photos of that here, but damn they were tall, they loved the Crimean soil and sunshine

so, there’s a clifftop beach about 300 yards from my apartment that is “top optional”
In the summer, I take an inflatable mattress, towels and my stash and a 2 can cooler
and go sit next to an ancient Greek wall and listen to the rhythmic crash of the waves+ipod music after spending 4 hours designing VLSI video circuits.

soon as ole Krimster lights one up, the smell goes from one end of the beach to the other
I look sideways through my Dad’s 1940s aviator glasses, sure enough, I see a couple of “heads up”, “noses twitching”, and they ALWAYS come in pairs, there will be 2 young girls prancing towards me, small breasts bobbing up and down approaching me with big smiles (visually enticing to say the least!)
I scoot over to the far left on my mattress and sit upright and invite them a toke on a fresh joint
and a sip of piva...
I can see their "reaction" when their naked breasts are caressed by the wind
through the polarized lenses of my glasses
can smell the saltiness of their skin just inches away
their innocence and youth


that was once a typical day in my life
but it’s over now....
my wife and I shall never return to Crimea

“CliffTop and Greek Wall”
 
« Last Edit: November 05, 2018, 07:11:43 PM by krimster2 »

Offline SANDRO43

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #46 on: November 05, 2018, 06:09:29 PM »
operator error, mea culpa!
Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, sed noli iterare :D.
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Offline jone

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #47 on: November 05, 2018, 06:47:48 PM »
thank you Sandro!
operator error, mea culpa!

I gotta tell ya, I haven’t been entirely straight with you guys
I’ve done some BAD SHIT in Crimea!
seriously, I have!!!

for example, I smuggled in a BUNCH of cannabis seed packets from Amsterdam and planted them in the Rancho Del Krimster, soon enough ole Krimster had a nice harvest, will not post photos of that here, but damn they were tall, they loved the Crimean soil and sunshine

so, there’s a clifftop beach about 300 yards from my apartment that is “top optional”
In the summer, I take an inflatable mattress, towels and my stash and a 2 can cooler
and go sit next to an ancient Greek wall and listen to the rhythmic crash of the waves+ipod music after spending 4 hours designing VLSI video circuits.

soon as ole Krimster lights one up, the smell goes from one end of the beach to the other
I look sideways through my Dad’s 1940s aviator glasses, sure enough, I see a couple of “heads up”, “noses twitching”, and they ALWAYS come in pairs, there will be 2 young girls prancing towards me, small breasts bobbing up and down approach me with big smiles (visually enticing to say the least!)
I scoot over to the far left on my mattress and sit upright and invite them a toke on a fresh joint
and a sip of piva...

that was once a typical day in my life
but it’s over now....
my wife and I shall never return to Crimea

“CliffTop and Greek Wall”

Went down to Kazakhstan and was amazed at all of the Cannabis growing by the side of the road.  I was told by my S/O at the time that it was not harvest quality and that I could smoke it all day without getting high.  But seeing it growing there, like the normal weed it is, was  interesting, to say the least.
Kissing girls is a goodness.  It beats the hell out of card games.  - Robert Heinlein

Online krimster2

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #48 on: November 05, 2018, 06:51:46 PM »
technically hemp because active thc content less than .1
much preferred white widow seeds grown in organic soil enhanced with cow and chicken manure and a pump irrigation system
I coulda gone commercial, but the amount of payoffs would have been substantial and would have attracted too much attention
from folks I wouldn't want around my family

still as they say, "a good time was had by all"


Offline DaveNY

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Re: Crappy exterior, pristine interior
« Reply #49 on: November 05, 2018, 07:36:40 PM »
Went down to Kazakhstan and was amazed at all of the Cannabis growing by the side of the road.  I was told by my S/O at the time that it was not harvest quality and that I could smoke it all day without getting high.  But seeing it growing there, like the normal weed it is, was  interesting, to say the least.

It was probably hemp. Hemp is cannabis, but it has very low THC and you could not get high off it no matter how much you smoked. Hemp despite what the politicians would have you believe is not psychoactive because the THC is so low. Another advantage of hemp is that it can be grown in most climates with minimal attention whereas weed needs a more controlled climate and careful attention.


 

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