Things I Can See From Our Apartment

The view from our apartment.

Our apartment is on the fifth floor of a massive apartment building.  The building is built as two U-shaped sections (nine stories) joined together by a central section (fourteen stories), which from the air would look something like this:  ]—[.  Our apartment looks out onto a courtyard formed by the “bottom” of our U, the central section, and the mirror side of the other U.

In the courtyard are a number of deciduous trees, the largest of which is a birch whose upper branches must reach nearly 25 meters.  Bare now, their black branches are flecked with snow, and stand out against the beige color of the apartment building and the white of the snow on the ground.  The trees stand silent and many birds rest in their branches.

Flocks of pigeons dominate the bird population of our courtyard: now perching in the branches of a tree, their feathers puffed against the cold; now looking sideways at me from the ledge outside the kitchen window; now soaring up above the roof of the building; now flocking around some seeds someone has scattered on the snow.  There are other birds as well:  Hooded crows, looking as if they are wrapped in a grey cloak, and sparrows and other small birds.

At the foot of the trees, about 70 or 80 small, rectangular sheds made of corrugated metal set in something roughly resembling rows.  They are not spaced evenly, and some аре at odd angles.  The sheds are just large enough to squeeze a sedan inside, and it seems that serving as garages is their primary purpose.  They have hand-painted red numbers on their front doors, and more than a foot of white snow on their roofs.

A green chain-link fence marks off an area between some of the sheds as a place where people exercise their dogs.  When it is very cold, the little toy dogs wear coats.  Yesterday, I saw a German Shepherd jumping back and forth over a section of wooden fence (also painted green) in the dog park.

In the very center of the courtyard are two dumpsters and several small receptacles for trash.  People, including me, often toss a small bag of trash into these upon leaving their apartment, and orange-coated workers push little carts with trash from the apartments to the dumpsters.  I also see people stop at the dumpster and poke around for interesting things; yesterday a woman carried away a large piece of wood, painted green.

Our windows face to the southwest.  On clear days, we can see part of the enormous main building of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, or MГУ, for short.  Built on Sparrow Hills, it is the largest of the “Seven Sisters” (or, as they are known in Russian, “Stalin’s high-rises”); it was the tallest building in Europe until 1990.  At night, the entire structure is lit up to rather stunning effect.

Across the street from our apartment is a ballet school.  Through two large windows on the second story, you can see young ballerinas practicing their poses.  Wearing black leotards, they gracefully raise their arms.