I guess it's safe to say that the majority of people live in an apartment. There are houses too but I'd say the apartment is the most common form of residence.
While this has been explain before by probably many people on the internet this is my take on it. Most apartment complexes have some sort of business at the ground level. It can be a grocery store to a bakery or even a store that sells shoes. Heck you can have some sort of educational institution or office on that first level. Above those businesses are where people live.
So how does one get into the apartment? Through the main entrance of course! But there's no main entrance to the whole building -- you got many entrances and not all of them lead to the same place.
Apartments in North America, well in Canada at least, usually have a main entrance that leads into the whole building and a couple entrances that can only be accessed by the residents of the same building. In Russia there are many entrances and they only lead to one part of the building. You'd think that there would be some secret passageway that would take you from one part of the building to the other? You're looking at drilling holes into the next apartment if you want to build something like that. Even my apartment style-dorms back in my uni years, which had separate entrances for certain parts of the building, had a balcony on the second floor in which people can go from stairwell to stairwell.
The term used for these entrances is called a подъезд. If your friends are coming to visit you for the first time (or maybe they've been there before but forgot) you tell them your house/building number, you're apartment number, and the entrance (подъезд) number. The reason why you tell this is because if your building is 200 with 8 подъездов apartments and you're in apartment 32, you can't go through подъезд 1 because that only serves as an entrance for apartments 1-25. Even if you're in an apartment building that has 2 entrances to your stairwell, that still won't let you get to the other blocks in the same building.
Then there are the elevators. A building will have one depending on the number of floors. If the building is only 3-4 stories plus the ground level (I believe) the building won't have one and if you have heavy luggage make sure that there's someone there to help you or by a stroke of luck you live on the first level. If the building does have an elevator then here's hoping it doesn't go out when you need it.
As for what's inside an apartment? I'll cover that in a separate post.
While this has been explain before by probably many people on the internet this is my take on it. Most apartment complexes have some sort of business at the ground level. It can be a grocery store to a bakery or even a store that sells shoes. Heck you can have some sort of educational institution or office on that first level. Above those businesses are where people live.
So how does one get into the apartment? Through the main entrance of course! But there's no main entrance to the whole building -- you got many entrances and not all of them lead to the same place.
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| One type of apartment building. The entrances to the apartments are on the other side of the building. |
Apartments in North America, well in Canada at least, usually have a main entrance that leads into the whole building and a couple entrances that can only be accessed by the residents of the same building. In Russia there are many entrances and they only lead to one part of the building. You'd think that there would be some secret passageway that would take you from one part of the building to the other? You're looking at drilling holes into the next apartment if you want to build something like that. Even my apartment style-dorms back in my uni years, which had separate entrances for certain parts of the building, had a balcony on the second floor in which people can go from stairwell to stairwell.
The term used for these entrances is called a подъезд. If your friends are coming to visit you for the first time (or maybe they've been there before but forgot) you tell them your house/building number, you're apartment number, and the entrance (подъезд) number. The reason why you tell this is because if your building is 200 with 8 подъездов apartments and you're in apartment 32, you can't go through подъезд 1 because that only serves as an entrance for apartments 1-25. Even if you're in an apartment building that has 2 entrances to your stairwell, that still won't let you get to the other blocks in the same building.
Then there are the elevators. A building will have one depending on the number of floors. If the building is only 3-4 stories plus the ground level (I believe) the building won't have one and if you have heavy luggage make sure that there's someone there to help you or by a stroke of luck you live on the first level. If the building does have an elevator then here's hoping it doesn't go out when you need it.
As for what's inside an apartment? I'll cover that in a separate post.
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