View from the Window

No matter where I have traveled one of the first things I often do upon arrival is set up my desk or small work station. Space is important to me because I often lose or forget things - an organized area helps keep me on track and maintain some sense of familiarity amidst the extraordinory. The most important aspect to a good desk for me is a window with a good view nearby. I still remember several of my desk spaces at Notre Dame (the best being my senior year and a good view across sports fields that are now becoming homes to new residence halls). My desk in Turkmenistan looked through the veranda into our enclosed court yard and modest garden. Unfortunately my desk in DC is rather limited in view since I reside in a basement apartment. Here in Nizhny Novgorod, on the 11th floor of an old Soviet apartment building, the Volga stretches across my view.

Posted here are two pictures from the view of my window. You can see the large apartment buildings, which one friend on this trip commented look as if they are falling back into the earth. Or that the earth is reclaiming them, vines and trees growing into the cracks of deteriorating cement.

Regardless of what is happening along its embankment, the Volga River continues to flow past. Thursday I will have the opportunity to take a boat ride and observe Nizhny from a distance. More to come from that....