This is the entrance door to the apartment. You walk into a rectangular hallway and from there you go straight into the kitchen or the living room/bedroom on the right.

I know it by heart. First when you walk in, there was a closet on the right side and a bathroom on the left. And this here was a large hallway. It opened like this. Right here was a built-in closet.

A small, white table with two chairs is in the hallway. And this is where the table was. Here, I think, or maybe on the right, was a small cabinet or something similar to a coat rack where you could hang up your coat. It was a square table, but when it was folded, it would fold like this in the middle. The table was on the right side. It was white and later on, we had it on the balcony of the new apartment. You could fold it, the white, small table. White table and chairs. I remember it. It was standing like this and you could fold it. The table was here and the two wooden chairs here. It had X-shaped legs and two small plates on top. And two white chairs that you could also fold, with bars across.

On the wall was a big circle. There was also a coat rack that was on the round wall tapestry. A circle made out of carpet with a coat rack in the middle. There were about six, seven knobs on the coat rack. And the closet door was also covered with the same carpet. Maroon. The door trim was also maroon.

The floor was covered with a carpet. The carpet had a pattern.

There were three doors leading to other rooms from that hallway: to the bathroom, the kitchen and the bedroom. And to the living room on the right. Straight to the front wall and then right. And the kitchen was on the left.

And then from that hallway you could go into two different rooms.

The door to the bathroom was on the left. Right here was the bathroom. Here is the entrance to the bathroom. I know that when you entered it this way, the bathtub was on this side. This is where the tub was, not all the way to the end. On the left side. I think they put a radiator in here later on. Like this. This here was the tub. I built the frame for the bathtub, it didn’t come with it. Next to the tub was the sink. The bathroom sink was just attached to the wall. Underneath was an empty space. Actually, all of this was not that big. It was smaller. This is where the toilet bowl was. Right here was the washing machine. Across from the bathtub. And right here was the sink. This here was the toilet bowl. And right here was the washing machine. The floor was covered with these colorful stone tiles that I painted maroon.

Right on this wall was a mirror. And the phone. The phone on the shelf for the phone.

The bedroom was a large room, shaped like a rectangle. Straight ahead was the bunk bed, orange with white. In the beginning, your bed was here. A kid’s bed. And on the right a three-seater sofa, beige with brown, and a two-seater sofa with an armchair and a coffee table. The sofa was brown with stripes in the middle. You could convert it into a bed, a queen-size bed. But you would have to move everything towards the bookcase. This is where it was. This was a three-seater sofa, and this here, a two-seater. This was a sofa that you could convert into a bed. When it wasn’t converted into a bed, this here was a table. And in front of the table was a footstool. Just like this. That was when we just had you.

And on the other wall was a large bookcase, beige with brown. A bedroom in which the closet was on this side. It matched the furniture. And here next to it was the closet.

I think the closet or the bookcase was white. Or beige. With brown knobs. Closet with a bookcase. It was all attached together. It was large. I think it went all the way from floor to ceiling. It was covering that whole wall. I think it was about half a meter wide.

And then in that same room… The bunk beds were L-shaped. This was the bunk bed, but this lower bed was going into this other one. And then here on this side, right next to mom and dad’s bed, were our beds. That was that. Our beds were almost touching. Actually, when we bought your beds, we still had our sofa bed. The bottom one was Aida’s, the top one Dana’s. And then I moved the sofa bed here, and the bookcase there. And this bed was next to this bed.

But then we bought a queen-size bed and I sold those sofas, the three- and two-seater sofas. No. It was beige. You could lift one side and we were storing the bed linens underneath. You could only lift one side of it. The wardrobe must have been here, next to your beds. I don’t think that anything else could fit in here. It was a pretty tight space.

Actually, I can’t remember how much space there was in between.

Here on this wall was your wardrobe. And the cabinet stayed here. Or maybe this wardrobe was here. No. This wardrobe. This wardrobe was along this wall. Or maybe here. I don’t know if it could have fit there. And the bookcase stayed here. Actually. One portion of it was next to your bed, and the other part of the bookcase was here. And here, the other part of the bookcase, along this wall. Yes, the bookcase was made out of four parts.

There were windows along the whole wall on the right. With long curtains. The windows were here. There were large windows towards the end of the room. And the radiators were right underneath. Mom and dad’s bed was right next to the windows.

None of this here was ever changed.

The living room was square shaped. Three meters by three meters.

To the left was a small opening for the kitchen. The kitchen. It had a small opening into the kitchen. Peach color. And this here was the kitchen. Here in the corner of the kitchen was the sink. And on this side was the kitchen. There was a fridge, the top and bottom cabinets, and a stove. Yes, I do remember that there were cabinets above. And on the left was the stove with cabinets right above it. White I think. I don’t remember. This here was the stove. Right here was the kitchen counter I think. And right here the stove. I know because we burnt the milk on once. And then there was a fire. This was the sink, and this here, a small counter. This is where the sink was. The sink was in the corner. Mom was standing here when she was doing the dishes. I know that the fridge was right here. And here when she was cooking. All of that was quite small. This here was the sink. And the fridge was here. The fridge was pushed right next to the sink, the sink pushed into the wall. Right next to it was the fridge. The space was too small. Here. This fridge was a bit bigger. My grandmother, mother and mother in law could never squeeze in that space to do the dishes. It was all so tightly pushed together that I was the only person who could squeeze in there to wash the dishes. Between those cabinets. And your father was in the corner, watching TV. That’s how tiny the space was. I had to do the dishes with a tilted head like this, do you remember? And this here was maybe longer. Yes, your father was in the corner, watching TV. I was washing the dishes like this. The whole time. Eleven years. Nothing else could fit in there.

In the kitchen, the sofa was the same one that we had in our room later on. This was the corner sofa with pillows. Wood on the bottom and those pillows with small flowers. This here was white. And this is the flower design that was on the sofa. The sofa had three, four, five pillows I think. Square pillows that you could pull out. Yes, one in the middle. I think they looked like this. I know we played with them a lot. This here on the bottom was like a white square. And on the top was this seating pillow. This was the flower design. It also had these small knobs. Grey, I think.

Right here was the L-shaped corner sofa. In the middle was a round table with four chairs. The table was square. I mean round. And a round table with chairs. The table was standing on four legs. Four chairs. And around it was a corner sofa with five seats. The table was white. And the chairs were also white with pillows that had the same flower design as the sofa. Each chair had four legs. I don’t remember that area quite well. This here was a round table with chairs. The table was right in front of it.  Four chairs around it like this. No. Yes. Four chairs. That chair would always be there and we would move it when it was needed. I always had to move that one chair, so that I could push the table closer to the sofa.

And right here was your small, red table with a chair. Do you remember? And right here in the corner, I remember, was my small table with a chair where I was always drawing. The red one? There was also a small kid’s table. And right next to it was the door to the balcony. One small chair. Next to that small table. It was right by the balcony entrance.

That other room had a bookcase on this side that ended up being part of our room in the new apartment. And here, along this wall, was the bookcase with the shelves. There was also a TV. And this is where the TV was. Yes, the TV was here. This bookcase here was white with metal brackets. This was a white shelf. On the right wall were shelves with metal brackets and white shelves, and this is where the big TV was. Dark, metal brackets with white shelves and cabinets. This is where the books were. And these were the dark brackets.

On that wall between the fridge and the sofa was a furnace that exploded. And this is where the radiator was. First, it was an oil furnace, but then it exploded. The furnace was shaped like a rhomboid. It had six sides. It was an oil furnace and then it exploded. And it had bars. And this was the chimney. A chimney that was used for heating in the past. Later on, we had radiators. But we never used it for that. We had the electric heater. And then, after we renovated, we had this electric heater. This is where the electric heater was. Later on, they put in the radiators. Luckily after that, we had radiators and no more troubles with the furnace. The radiators were exactly underneath the windows. Squeezed in between the windows and our sofa.

The floor was covered with a carpet. Everywhere. In the bedroom we had a beige carpet like the one you bought.

(Interview with dad, mom and sister – 20 years later)