On Our Bathroom & Hot Water

The view of our bathroom from the doorway. There are a few things to notice in this picture:
1-Below the black travel kit is a little door with tile on it and barely visible to the left of it (on the tub) is a door to the tub. There is actually one more door on the far side of the tub. I believe the doors on the tub are for maintenance and the door below the sink has a gauge on it which I assume is to track our water usage. We are charged for both our cold and hot water usage... both come from the city. That's right, no water heater for us, the hot water comes from boilers somewhere in town. (And more on that later...)
2-Our sink has no water faucet.
3-See the knob on the top of the toilet? Pull it up if you need to flush.


I'm not sure if the pipes are purposefully built in this way for this purpose, but the hot water pipes are commonly used as towel warmers (Chris says it is on purpose, so there you go). My favorite feature of our Soviet bathroom.

So, I'm not sure if this a generational thing or Soviet thing, but if you look at the top picture and then check this one out again, you'll see why there isn't a faucet on the sink... the faucet for the tub and the sink are one and the same... just rotate that to the ceramic bowl (sink or tub) of your choice and you are set to go!
These may not be landmark discoveries here in KZ, but I've been really interested to see the differences in a very familiar room.

Anyone for the rest of the story on the boiler issue?... well. If you're "in" for a story read on...

The first few days after we arrived here we woke up at about 3:30 a.m. ate leftover dinner, got settled in (ie. unpacked/cleaned/etc), then napped, walked around the city (to a grocery store), went home, made dinner, dropped like flies in our bed by 7:00 p.m., you get the idea. Well, the Thursday of our first week was probably the point when our schedules really started to normalize. We woke at a normal hour, ate breakfast, the usual. We were busy doing things around the apartment that morning and I took a late shower around noon. Lucky thing! That afternoon when I went to do some dishes there was no hot water. We called our landlady to make sure the bill had been paid and she said there was some kind of problem with the boiler(s) for our area. Friday we asked our neighbors (had to make sure we weren't just gullible Americans) and sure enough there was something wrong downtown/uptown/somewheretown and we (and everyone else for probably a 12 block radius) wouldn't have hot water until Monday, possibly Sunday evening.

**Let's reflect a moment, shall we?**
The hot water and cold water come from different pipes. That means the hot water must be really hot, and the cold water must be really cold. How cold is really cold, you ask? So cold that it turns your hands red and makes you lose feeling in them after about 10-20 seconds? So cold that it makes you yelp with shock when you wash your face with it in the morning? YES.

So, by late Friday morning I had become a new woman. I had become... a pioneer woman.

It started when I lit "a fire" (the gas burner), "hauled" water to a big pot on the burner (repeatedly filled a smaller pot with water and dumped it into the bigger one until the bigger one was full), and waited until the water was piping hot. True story.

We were able to get by with cat baths until this girl had to wash her hair. My hair is long enough to put back so I went without washing it for much longer than I care to admit to, but there comes a time when a girl needs clean hair... I'll skip the gory details, but suffice it to say it was something of an ordeal to accomplish that feat (I bet you didn't realize that washing one's hair was 1-an accomplishment or 2-a feat, but it really was).

This incident is directly related to two strong feelings: 1-a great love of warm water, 2-a great need/desire for conditioner (ran out before we left and was unable to purchase more... can't find any here... possibly because I can't read the language and don't know what the word is in Russian anyways). In case you wondered, I don't recommend washing your hair in a tub without conditioner. Combing it out afterwards is actually physically painful. =)