Don’t read this

This will be boring.

I filled my backpack with my dirty clothes and headed upstairs to the office. Fortunately, the one clerk who knows English is working, she takes me back to the communal bathroom and shows me how to operate the clothes washer.

It is so small, I only put in half of my clothes, socks, underwear, and 2 of my pants.

It takes half an hour, so I drop my pack in the room and head out. But I realize, by the time I get to a place and order, the laundry will be done. It’s already 10 minutes just to get down and out the door.

I kill a few minutes, just watching the traffic and people. Then head up, still time on the display, so I sit in the kitchen.

Some Russian cop show is on. One of the officers holds up his hand to stop a car, flashes his badge and jumps into the passenger seat. In a real scenario, as soon as he stepped to the side of the car, the driver would’ve taken off.

Also, the dialogue doesn’t match the mouth movements. The text on street signs is Cyrillic, but maybe not originally Russian, maybe Estonian or Kazakh.

Finally, the machine has finished. I swap the loads and restart the machine. Then I head to my room, I now have to hang everything up to dry, because there is no dryer.

One window pane opens wide and I’m able to drape everything over the bed frame. Periodically I flipped everything over. There are hangers, but they don’t reach well enough to hook on the 2-by frame, resulting in frequent drops. The windows are cool, twist the lever one way and they open like a door, but twist the lever the other way and they tip inward from the top. The latter would allow fresh air, but prevent rain from entering.

My socks and underwear are now blueish. I had 2 new pairs of jeans that must have bled a bit. Oh well, it could have been worse, I have two red shirts.

Because of the wind blowing in from the courtyard, I was forced to put on my jacket.

After all wash was done, I headed out to a supermarket. I bought a 350g of sausage, yogurt drink, cheese sauce and BBQ sauce, and a loaf of flattish bread. Made this morning, it was so soft.

I grabbed a plate and knife from the kitchen and ate half the bread with sauces and half the meat. Saving the rest for tomorrow.

Not the healthiest meal, or the normalest, but it filled me and it was good.

All day I’ve had the pants in the open window but still damp.

See, I warned you it was boring.