The Keys to Success

...A brief flashback post from the week of February 25, 2013, when I first got back to Moscow

My first week unfortunately got off to a rough start. Once again I had a problem with the front door - me and Russian doors are just not friends!! - basically I put the key in the wrong lock (there are two locks on the door but we only use one). Well, this key is some fancy-schmancy italian key so it has a little piece of metal on it that swings out for "extra security" so once it went in, it literally got stuck inside the door.  So not only can we not get the key out of the keyhole, we can't lock the door!

We already had a handyman coming to take a look at our shower drain the next day so I asked him to get the key out of the keyhole as well. Well I really should have asked our realty company (we use them as the liaison for managing stuff in the apartment) to call a locksmith and not just a handyman, because in the process of yanking the key out, he BROKE it! He got it out and came over to me saying, "No use." The thing is, we only had those 2 keys. I told him he needed to get me a new one since he was the one who broke it.

When he tried to make a new copy (I'd borrowed Scott's key for the day so we had a "good" one for him to work off of), it turns out to be too fancy to have it made at a normal hardware store. And only the landlord can make copies by special order from Italy!! ARGGGHHHH! So at this point we have just one key that we are sharing. Had we called a locksmith, he wouldn't have broken the key, I'm sure of it. Why? Because Scott did the SAME EXACT THING the first week we lived in this apartment and the locksmith made short order of the problem without damaging the key.

Oh, and after 2.5 hours of tinkering, the same not-so-handyman wasn't able to fix the shower either! Double argghhh.