Hate the idea that building codes and neighborhood covenants keep you from using your property as you like? Many Muscovites in this Christian Science Monitor story would disagree.
Nina Dimshitz lives under a cloud. Literally. Wealthy upstairs neighbors recently installed a swimming pool in their apartment, and now the ceiling of her book-lined living room sags and creaks ominously under the strain.
“I am beside myself over this, but there seems to be nobody who can do anything about it,” says Ms. Dimshitz, who occupies a modest three-room flat in a five-story apartment block near Moscow’s Pushkin Square. The middle-aged film critic says she used to love the 1920s-era building’s old-fashioned 4-meter-high ceilings. Now she’s afraid to look up.
“I’ve tried to talk to the neighbors about this, but they simply refuse to even open the door,” she says.
Other stories abound, including stone fireplaces, ventilation shafts torn open and blocked to add space, and people grafting added rooms to the outsides of multi-story buildings.