The baby house in Kotlas, illustrated

In the Russian system, children under four, like Elena, live in what are known as "baby houses."  Older children live in "children's houses." Here's a photo of the baby house in Kotlas where Elena lives:

Very dorm-like, but notice the broad expanse of windows that let in a lot of light in the main rooms-as you can see in the pictures. Structurally, the buildings are very solid, with walls about 2 feet thick to keep out the subartic cold of winter time.  I'm not sure how many kids live here (I found a reference that said about 80 kids; that sounds plausible, but we saw only Elena and, later, seven of her dorm-mates), but there's room for plenty.

If you want to know exactly where Elena is right now, here's the baby house on Google satellite view.  Zoom out to see the rest of Kotlas--the city center, and our hotel ("the" hotel, actually), is about a mile due south of the baby house.  The giant river that the orphanage overlooks flows north to Archangelsk, and the White Sea.  If you zoom out a few more notches you can see the amazing subarctic "taiga" geology of the area-much as it looked from the plane from Archangelsk to Kotlas.  Wild rivers, flooplains, forests, and many swamps and small lakes.  Small towns, woodlots and fields dot the riverside.

Click through here to view a larger map.

Here's a view of the playground in the rear of the building.  You can see the three blue-roofed playhouses on the north side of the building in the Google satellite view above.

If you look west, you can see the river.  The landscape is still brown in what is early spring in Kotlas.  The terrain is flat, generously crisscrossed with streams, rivers large and small, oxbow lakes and bogs.  It reminded us of the Seney section of the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Dimitry, our translator and main guy who gets the most imporatant things done fondly described this exact same view, as "FLAT! Flat as a table", (with his arms outspread).

Pictures of the inside after the jump:


We didn't really see a lot of the inside; just the director's office, the large room where we met Elena, her playroom/sleeping room, and the public areas in between.  Here's a picture of the first floor hallway (Elena lives on the second floor):

 The stairs up to the second floor (note how low the handrail is):

 And the castle decoration on the landing:

All these pictures were taken from about two feet off the floor.  Can you guess why? (Humor me--I'm practicing my teachable moment Socratic technique here.)

If you've seen earlier pictures, you might remember something of what the large meeting room looks like.  This is where we played with Elena:

There are rows of shelves filled with toys off-camera to the left.  To the right, through the doorway, is a larger open area, the far end of which is something of a solarium:

We also visited Elena in her...dorm suite, I guess you might call it.  It's really two large rooms, a playroom and sleeping room, with what I think is a bathroom and a cloakroom connected.  Here's one view of the playroom.  There's quite a bit of space behind me, toward the window.

Elena's seven dorm-mates are gathered just off camera to the left (I've cropped them out to respect their, and their future parent's, privacy).

Finally, this is the sleeping room.  The picture is taken from the foot of Elena's bed, which is again off-camera to the left.  That's co-incidental, and not meant to respect the privacy of the bed.