One Potato, two potato…

The sad face of deteriorating Ukrainian Architecture

As most of you know, people in the cities in Ukraine live in large, communal apartment complexes some of which with the recent building boom are thousands of apartments per building. While this is true in the USA in some of our major, high density population metropolitan areas like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the street number and building arrangments are quite different (more on that next) and the buildings are generally kept up pretty well. Most of the ones here are old, often dilapidated, and left over from the Soviet Union. Many are in terrible condition and sadly falling into decay and ruin, literally falling down. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, many are government owned buildings in the 60 to 70 year old category (The Soviet era was 70 years). Many are in the very heart of the city and on land that would command staggering real estate money were it not for the badly faltering economic conditions here. Nonetheless, they are sad to see and remind us that, even given the overt and terrible oppression of the Soviet regimes, many things in this country did get improvements. Add to that the fact the economy IS in the toilet here, many arguably say that the days of the SSR were not always all that bad. I can see their point..

Who numbered these buildings anyway, and how long were they drunk?

Taking into account that a typical city block of land here is about on kilometer, or 6 tenths of a mile square, (sometimes much bigger) you can figure there are a lot more buildings on a block than just the ones that may be facing the streets bordering it. In fact, very often there are dozens of building in the “interior” regions of a block, some with offices, businesses, kiosks, margazins (stores) groceries, and aptekas (pharmacies) on the bottom floor, along with parks, even maybe a lake, or other complexes. There are advantages to building 9 to 25 story buildings and cramming all the people into them…it leaves room for “amenities” all around.

There is a very distinct problem however, regarding the building numbers. That is, figuring out what number they are, and then what street they are numbered for. A lot of these buildings were built AFTER the ones facing along the streets, and they face all kinds of directions, not towards the street for which they are numbered. THEN add to that, the fact that streets often start and stop in the middle of a block, not necessarily at an intersection, and you have a REALLY BIG PROBLEM!

I was trying to find the office for a business client of mine the other day, LG Electronics Company. They are listed as being on Ulitsa Geriov Dnipra building number 3b. That can mean that it is the second part of the number 3 building, or a second building from 3a. Now, for those of you who have been reading my editions of the “Chronicles,” or have known me for a while, you will remember I used to LIVE on Ulitsa Geriov Dnipra (Geriov Dnipra Street) for about a year and a half. I know the street pretty well from one end to the other. I lived on the north end in the apartment building numbered Geriov Dnipra 62. Building number 3 should have been at the south end of the street, some three blocks down. I couldn’t find this freaking, idiot LG office building to save my soul….I looked for over half an hour and finally, by an absolute miracle of God, found a nice young man who spoke English well enough to help me look for it. We looked another 15 minutes and never found it outright, only by "coincidence."

Now, three important things to consider here. First, all streets are named in Russian, but the signs for the streets, along the street, are in a combination of Russian and now Ukrainian. Russian was required under the SSR. Ukrainian is required by the Ukrainian Government. So, someone can give you a street name in Ukrainian and it may, or may not, be the same or similar to the Russian name. The other thing is that while buildings are numbered all odd numbers on one side and all even numbers on the other, where they start is never consistent. Just like the street names starting and stopping in the middle of the block, BUILDING NUMBERS DO , TOO! It’s insane. The only small “saving grace” is the fact almost all the buildings have at least one number sign on the end of them and it also has the street, in Russian, for which it is numbered.

Now, back to the LG building story…if I ever find the drunken idiot who numbered Geriov Dnipra, he or she will surely be DEAD! We also have a third element here, that is somewhat of a typical European roadway item at intersections, which I call “roundy-rounds” or “go-arounds” where everyone driving takes there vehicle into a common circle drive around intersection and exits at the desired street and direction. What you don’t realize on foot is that these “go arounds" also COUNT as the end of a block. That means the buildings on what you would normally consider the cross street at the end of the street you are looking on, are really on THAT street, not the cross street! Are you confused?

Hey, try it over here, not just reading some coo-coo guy’s blog like this one. That means that Geriov Dnipra 3 b was not on Geriov Dnipra. It was really physically located across the intersection from the roundy-round, next to the bus stop on the cross street, at the corner of the first side street, some 100 meters from the rest of the street. Listen, my Russian is good enough now I can ask anyone where just about anything is, and I have even figured out the difference between a street name given to me in Ukrainian and found it in Russia…. I would NEVER have found this building without extreme help. Never!

How did we find it? I happened to mention that I was really looking for the LG Electronics main office and the young man helping me knew where it was since LG is big with computer stuff here…otherwise, I would still be looking for it..AHHHHHHHHHHH! Drunks! Keep them out of the streets numbering department!