new flat

Okay, okay...but it's not as exciting as you are making it out to be.

Here's my building again.

But, instead of having the top four windows on the left-hand side, now you go in through the center gate (under the middle balcony) and enter the courtyard. (It's too narrow between the back of the part of the building I used to live in and the center part of the building for me to take a picture of it all. It's a narrow, rectangular space. Below is about one-third of the courtyard.) These doors used to belong to the stable. (Obviously, they're being restored as we photographed.) I walk through the tunnel to the right of the doors.

Coming out of the tunnel, the courtyard greenspace we were teased with is on the left (I didn't take this picture--the realtor did in November. There were people on the benches the day I did this photo-essay for you, so I didn't photograph it. I am not suitably dressed to go out of the house and re-take this picture for you today.) but I go to the right, through this little tunnel

into my courtyard, turning right again after the tunnel. That's my door on the far right. Can you see that my flat is below ground-level from these pix? You go two step down from the entry level. Nice security bars. And I really do have the nicest windows. The door on the left, under my bedroom and beside my living room, has a loud beeping security system. And, as we can tell by the white plates, neither of those cars parked right outside my flat is mine.

And these are my noisy upstairs neighbors. I can hear e-v-e-r-ything that goes on up there. Seriously. Sometimes I wake up thinking there's someone in my room. (That hasn't happened in a while. I must be acclimating.)

This is what you see if you stand with your back against my door. (Remember, it is my own door. That's very nice! It's one of those little things that ex-pat living makes me appreciate.)You can't see this much sky from inside the house. Wasn't it a beautiful sky this day?

This is looking up, to try to show you the well-like quality of my courtyard.
See what I mean when I said that I went from the family's rooms to the working part of the house? I bought a shopping cart (I call them babushka bags) to get groceries from the street to my door--with a hand still free for d2b. In the winter I'm going to use a sled. ;>

I don't really have before and after pix of the inside of my new flat...because I never saw it "before" and I don't know if I'll ever make it to "after". But, I do have pix of "boxes" and "later" (which I just took for you today). I'll post those for you tomorrow. I'd do a slide show, but I think I need to commentate.