Our Elevator in Москва September 23, 2011

I’ll be putting a few pictures of the elevator in our apartment here in Москва on my Web site. As you’ll see, it dates back to the Soviet era when the building was first put up, I’m guessing in the 50’s or early 60’s. This thing is a man eater or limb snatcher and seems to have a mind of its own.

Its floor area is about 1 meter by 1 meter (actually a little less) and a little over 2 meters high. So it’s about the size of a coffin which is appropriate because when you get in it you sometimes, often times, feel like you might die – this just might be your last day!

I used to think it was some wise guy in the building who’d push all of the buttons (we have 9 floors in our building; we live on the 5th) making you stop at every floor. We realized that every so often, for no apparent reason, when you push the button for your floor all 9 light up making it a local. Sometimes only a few light up. Sometimes when you push the button to go to the ground floor it goes up. This happened to us today. We pushed the button to go down to the parking lot and it ascended to the 9th floor and just stopped. It seems to like hanging out on the 9th floor for some reason. It does this quite often. When we stopped nothing happened. The doors didn’t open and when we pushed a button to go down nothing happened either. Thinking that we were trapped we realized that neither one of us had our cells phones so it might a while before we got out. This happens in all 9 elevators in our compound and we know of people who’ve been trapped. We then pushed the door open button and to our surprise (and relief) they did! We decided to walk down the 9 flights of stairs grateful that we weren’t going to have to spend the night there. About 20 minutes later when we returned we pushed the button to call for the elevator, got in and pushed the button for the 5th floor and were delivered there – no problem. This happens often. Sometimes you’ll push the button to call the elevator and you’ll hear it groaning but it never stops at your floor...to the stairs again.

The doors of the elevator that Nancy refers to as a cranky bitch, are equal in size and come together in the center. Sometimes, but not always, when you’re half-way in the doors snap shut quickly kind of like the jaws of a man-eating shark. Sometimes it grabs your whole body, and sometimes a leg or arm gets caught. There isn’t a sensor like in modern elevators that make the doors open if something or someone gets pinched between the doors. Once you’re stuck you have to push off the doors with your full body weight to force them to open. And then there are other days when you push the button and the doors open giving plenty of time for even 2 people get in. One of these days were going to get in, see a pool of blood and wonder “Which one was it, an arm or a leg that was devoured?

About a third of the time it just stops working all together. No lights, no groaning, no nothin’ When this happens 2 guys in blue overalls come with a crowbar, force the doors open, use the crowbar to giggle something inside and everything is back to normal - no problem.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that life here is Москва is tough when you’re new and don’t know the language. We knew this when we signed up to come here. What we didn’t know was that we’d have to do battle almost daily with an old, cranky, mind of its own, bitch of an elevator. Always the unexpected…

До следующего раза ...

Борис (Boris)