A little USSR nostalgia: Hotel Buryatia

Yesterday I referred to some of the bureaucracy I’m dealing with, some of which is connected to my hotel. This situation is partly of my own making, as I’m staying at an old Soviet hotel that is still owned by the central government, and so holds on to some of the old practices that are probably no longer required by law. In the past I’ve stayed at Soviet hotels that had become badly decrepit, and some that have been nicely updated. But this one is unique (in my experience) for being a well preserved Soviet relic. It’s in decent shape, but it doesn’t look like a single thing has been done to renovate it in the last twenty years. And it’s kind of a fun blast from a past I never experienced. So I thought I’d share some photos.

A detail from a huge wooden wall sculpture in the lobby:

Below is the desk where the dezhurnaya sits, the woman who monitors the floor and to whom I have to show a little slip of paper every time I come up. The one working when I took this photo didn’t want me to take her photo:

The view down the hallway:

More after the break…

Each floor also has its own little mini-lobby:

The elevator:

It’s really a fast elevator. The door closes, hard, as soon as you push the button of the floor you want to go to, and when it starts to go up I feel like I can feel a little g-force. I get from the ground floor to the fifth floor in just a few seconds.

I couldn’t get a good overall shot of the room, but here’s a little flavor, the refrigerator:

and an intercom (appears to be connected to the dezhurnaya’s desk):

A detail from the bathroom:

Hot water from 7 am to 11 am and 6 pm to 10 pm. Tonight I move on to Irkutsk, more updates from there….