I live in a standard two-room Soviet apartment. The building is a 9-storey Khrushchevka, named after Khrushchev, who built them - though not personally, he was too busy banging shoes on podiums and arguing about kitchens. When I moved in a year ago, it was vintage Soviet, from the Soviet brown furniture (I swear all their furniture was this color) to the rug hanging on the wall, and the fifteen plants making the already small interior seems like a jungle. When I left this summer for my trip to (South-) Eastern Europe, my landlords decided to do a mini renovation. Basically, they put up new, lighter wallpaper, removed some of the cluttered furniture (like the 4′ by 5′ radio), relocated all but two of the plants, and took the rug off the wall. This was all very appreciated, and it really helped get rid of the dark and claustrophobic atmosphere so characteristic of Soviet flats.
Even with all that, I have been missing one key feature for the past year … a desk. I had my computer set up on a table, and either studied there or on the couch. Needless to say, this was suboptimal. I’ve entered the final stage of my degree, and will spend the next few months writing my thesis. The kitchen table and couch may be ok for exam-cramming, but they just don’t cut it if you want to do serious work.
To remedy the situation I visited my local Ikea and picked out a desk, a bookcase, and a hanging file folder contraption. All for about $100, and I hope to get most of that taken off my rent. The colors don’t match the rest of the apartment, because Ikea doesn’t carry Soviet brown, but I’m going for function over form. I got it all set up, and today I set out organizing the various electronics that will go on/around the desk (computer, speakers, light, teapot, etc.). As always, there’s a slight problem.
Europe has a standard size electrical socket. The Soviet Union’s were slightly smaller. Meaning that you can’t put new electronics into a Soviet socket. Well, when they did my mini-remont, they outfitted the living room with new sockets, but left the old ones in the bedroom. Of course, where does my desk go? In the bedroom. Near my desk there are two sockets, one a foot off the ground, and the other about four feet up. Wire clutter would be greatly reduced if I could plug my extension into the bottom socket, but it’s Soviet. The upper one, strangely enough, is Western, but it doesn’t work properly.
In the same way that I’m a lover, not a fighter, I’m a thinker, not a worker. Yes, I’m well aware that I do all four poorly, but I’m talking comparatively here. I decided that it would be simple enough to swap the fixtures on the two wall sockets, and set out find my handy screwdrivers. Well, I took them off, but the top fixture (European) wouldn’t fit on the bottom wall socket. I played around with it a bit, trying to force it in. Also, some of the wallpaper was sticking inside the socket, and I felt that was a bit of a fire hazard. After a few minutes, I realized that it wasn’t a good idea to be brushing the screwdriver and my fingers so close to live, naked wires. My apartment loses power all the time, so I happen to know where the power cutoff is, and I decided that it would be better for all involved that the electricity be turned off when I’m sticking metal tools into sockets.
Of course now it was pitch black, so I got out the flashlight and was holding it in strange positions trying to switch the two fixtures. To make a long (and awkward) story short, I couldn’t put the Euro fixture on the bottom socket as I had hoped. Though I was able to restore the top one to working order.
This past summer, when I was helping another intellectual set up simple Ikea furniture (we screwed it up several times), I made a comment that I have an instinctual respect for people who work with their hands. My friend laughed and noted that it was a very American thing to say. It’s certainly true that we respect blue-collar workers much more than Western Europeans do, and I suspect more than Eastern Europeans as well. In fact, I made friends with some of the Tajik construction workers at my university. I’m pretty sure I’m the only student to have done so. When I was setting up my furniture and playing with electricity I couldn’t help but think that the Tajiks would have done it in 5 minutes, and here I was fumbling around for an hour.
