Our Apartment

Several of you have asked for more detail about where we live. As I mentioned, we are staying in the apartment where the Calvin professors have lived for the past three or four years. This picture shows our living room. The inside of the apartment is lovely, but I need to show you the outside and entry first to really appreciate the interior.

From the outside it looks quite gray and unattractive. This is largely due to the dark dust that seems to settle on everything. I imagine it comes from the use of diesel fuel, but who knows?



The outside door is barred as all others are. You have to use our key or enter a push button code to unlock the door. On either side of our door you find a men's clothing store, a manicure place, and a grocery store. There are restaurants on the corners to the left and the right. It is a typical urban area with lots of shops on the street level and apartments up above. In the apartment next to us is a dentist. Apparently it is his office as well as his home.

Once inside, the lobby shows the wear of many years. The building appears to have been built some years ago--we can't tell the date. The floor is marble tiled set in a quilt-type pattern, but with some tiles missing.

It may be that our 'common fee' provides only enough for the garbage pick up and basic repairs, since the walls in the lobby and most of the stairway have not been painted or repaired for some time. The plaster has a lot of holes in it. I keep reminding myself that cosmetics here do not have the same priority as they would in the States. Sections of the walls in the stairway have been repainted and look very nice.

The lift is to the left as you enter and as you can see in the picture above, the open stairs to the floors above are straight ahead. There are light sensors that turn the lights on just as you think they are not about to. When you go down the stairs in the dark you need to push a light switch (really it's a push button) every couple of floors or you'll be in the dark.

The lift says it has room for 4 persons, but that is a very tight fit. So we always take the stairs down and even take them up sometimes! I make sure to climb them at least once a day. I know you're shocked! We did use the lift for our luggage and we use it for bringing bags of groceries home.

The building is a sort of U with a courtyard in the middle. People hang their wash out on the railings to dry and also put drying racks out. The folks at the bottom have a nice spot for flowers. Our door is to the right at the end with one more apartment next to us. The dentist's door is just before ours. It's the one with the mat and you can just see a ceramic name plaque on the wall to the right.


It's a very spacious place with large rooms and very high ceilings (about 10-12 feet). The apartment has been remodeled in the last ten years or so, since it has new-looking ceramic tile floors in the kitchen, living room and bathrooms. The floors in the study and the bedrooms appear to be the original oak parquet--all in a herring bone pattern.






There is no air-conditioning but there are windows on three sides that keep us very comfortable along with two fans. There are no screens and no bugs. Amazing!

There is a modern automatic clothes washer in the pantry and we have a microwave. There is no dishwasher, but so far washing the few dishes we use hasn't been a problem.

The language teacher for the students will be coming to our apartment soon. She and Corwin will plan the Hungarian classes for the students. They have these early on to help them adjust in Budapest. I get to attend also, so hopefully I'll learn something.