A View from the Seventh Floor: A click away from Izhevsk

Привет! (read: Privet!)

Wandering around Izhevsk is not a difficult thing to do. All you need is your destination(s) and the Internet. When you want to visit a monument or a museum or any places in Izhevsk, you can go directly to the web www.igis.ru. This website provides the map of Izhevsk, along with its points of interests, bus stops, tram stops. The map also shows the name of the streets, the numbers of the buildings as well as their photos. Unfortunately, this site uses Russian so at least you need a short course in studying Cyrillic letters to read the name of the streets. For the rest of the information, hmm… you can always make use of Google translator ;))

After you find the location of your destination, now you can search for the nearest bus/tram stops. These stops are marked with two colors: red for tram stops and blue for bus stops. To get the information about which bus/tram/mashrutka (Russian angkot) that stops at those bus stops, just click on one of these boxes. Voila! You will get the bus/tram/mashrutka number. Keep the number(s) in your mind or take a note for that and… be ready to see the beauty of Izhevsk ;)

If you decided to take trams, you don’t need to waste your time freezing in the middle of Russian winter. Open your browser then go to www.izhget.ru. You’ll see a yellow box with the picture of a tram. Next, click that box and go the newly opened tab. Here you can find the time schedule for the tram arrival. To be able to get the nearest tram departure or arrival, you need to know your departure and arrival tram stops. Again, the list of Cyrillic letters or Google translator will help you :p

Not satisfied? This website will help you to have a view of Izhevsk and Russia: www.yandex.ru. It’s Russian search engine, so it provides more information about Russia than other search engine (IMHO). You can get the search results, images, maps, even translator. The translator is quite reliable to translate Russian words to English and vice versa.

Haven’t got the chance to visit Izhevsk? No problem. You will be able to see Izhevsk through these sites. Like I mentioned before, there are a lot of pictures to help you visualize this city of arms. 

A View from the Seventh Floor

Yes, the post(s) with the title a view from the seventh floor will be about the sweet and bitterness of my travel (and internship) in Russia. I will start my stories with the introduction with my buddy as well as host family and the reason why I use the title "A View from the Seventh Floor".

After a very loooooong journey, finally I arrived safe and sound in Izhevsk Train Station on January 31, 2013 at around 10.00. Anna, my buddy from AIESEC LC Izhevsk, picked me up and we went to Anna's flat by taxi because the host family was not ready yet. They were still at the office and asked me to come to their flat around 19.00.

Flat? Yes. The price of land is sky-rocketing here. After someone purchased a land, he/she must spend some amount of money (and that's a lot of money) to build a decent house that will protect him/her and his/her family from the extreme weather..ehm the temperature in winter is usually about -30C and in summer is about 30C. So, rather than spending a lot of money to build a detached house, people usually prefer to live in a flat. They can buy it or just rent it.

Anna lives with her mom on the fifth floor and there's no lift! Please imagine how two girls tried to bring the heavy luggage to the fifth floor using the stairs... (breathless..). It was really an exercise *showing biceps and triceps*. While waiting for the host family coming home, I spent the whole afternoon with Anna sharing some stories and experiences..err, of course after I took a shower and had home-made tortilla for the late lunch.

At 19.00, Anna received a call from the host family stating that they are at home and ready to welcome me. Then Anna said: "They are ready. Let's go there". Wew...to be honest, I was a bit nervous. What kind of family will I have for the next 3 months? How many people are there? How many children do they have? Are they strict or easy going? etc..etc.. *while bringing the heavy luggage downstairs*

Well, on the taxi to this family's flat, I was still thinking about many things ... and suddenly, we arrived in front of a flat. Anna was a bit confused because she didn't know which flat to go. She made a call, and a few minutes later, a young girl around 20 came to us and talked with Anna and asked us to come to the flat. Luckily, this flat has a lift, so we didn't need to have another practice bringing heavy luggage upstairs. Until that time, I was still thinking that the girl is one of the family's children. 

We were in front of the door number 62 and somebody opened the door. I thought it would be the parents but I was wrong.. It was another girl and she's also around 20. Ok, maybe this is also one of the daughters, I thought. 

So, the girl who picked us up downstairs left because she had a date and the girl who opened the door welcomed us. Here's the surprise!

There are only two girls who live in the flat, no other people..and they had a cat! (Now, they adopted another one, so they are two cats in the house!) So...there's no conventional family with father, mother and children. I have a host family : Two best friends with cats!

Later, I know that the girl who picked us up is Nadeshda (Nadya), a shop assistant. She's 25 with long blonde hair and she always make fun of her blonde hair : I'm blonde so I don't have logical thinking LOL

The girl who opened the door is Maria (Masha), a consultant in a school near the flat. She's 24, sport addict,   has brown shoulder-length hair. She loves rock music (yeah!) and watching serials (Castle, Bones, Dexter, etc)

The best thing are ... both of them love watching movies, any kind of movies, and they have a pretty good internet connection so they already made a plan to watch movies in English with me :))

Err.. not enough description about Nadya and Masha? I'll share the pictures later ;)

So, I have my cool host family here :D

Now, why seventh floor? Do you still remember their flat number? Yes it's 62.

Usually the flat numbers are given based on the floor, rite? For example, 16 is on the 1st floor or 410 is on the 4th floor. But this flat is unique because the first number of the flat is a number lower than its floor, so number 62 is not on the 6th floor but.....on the 7th floor. Guess now you know the reason why I use the title : "A View from the Seventh Floor"