1. Explain the meaning of the words and expressions in bold. Use them in your own sentences.

2. Find English equivalents in the text:

двор, отопление, сервант, зеркало, завтракать, кафель, раковина, пылесос, стиральная машинка, фотографировать, с другой стороны, соблазн, лень, скучать, побережье.

3. Choose the right answer.

1. In the flat where Vivien lives there…

1. are no old couples b) are no stairs c) is no lift

2. In London Vivien was freezing because…

1. there was no bed b) there were no friends c) there was no heating

3. Vivien usually has breakfast and supper…

1. at a big table b) on the balcony c) with her boyfriends

4. What leaps around all over the bathroom in Vivien’s flat?

1. A washing machine b) A cat c) A vacuum cleaner

5. What can be seen from the windows in Vivien’s flat?

1. A hotel b) A wall c) A park

6. Vivien’s flat is right …

1. in the middle of the city b) in the middle of a park c) in the middle of an island

7. Vivien would like to have…

1. a house with a big fountain b) a house with a garden c) a house in the centre of a city

8. Vivien misses…

1. being in Hungary b) being near the sea c) being with her parents

4. Say whether the following statements are true or false. In case they are false give the right answer.

1. Vivien lives in Budapest alone in a flat.

2. Vivien has to pay only electricity and gas bills.

3. Vivien and her flat mate have no washing machine.

4. In England a vacuum cleaner is called a ‘Hoover’.

5. There’s no balcony in their flat.

6. The flat is in the middle of the city.

7. Vivien wouldn’t like to have pets in her ideal house.

8. Vivien would like to live close to the seaside.

5. Each paragraph of the text is an answer to a certain question. Ask these questions and let your group mates answer them.

6. What is Vivien’s idea of an ideal flat? Does it have anything in common with the flat of your dream? accommodation by Thomas

We used to live in a medium-sized de­tached house, in a village which, as I said, is in the suburbs of the city, and borders onto the countryside. There were maybe 20 houses in our small street, each of them with the same ap­pearance and construction. I remember that we had about 8 rooms: we had a big living-room, a kitchen, a small room be­side the kitchen, a small square garden behind the house, and my brother and I had a bedroom each, but when we were really young, we used to share a very large bedroom. The garden was always in a state of chaos, as nobody ever did any work on it, so it just grew, and grew, and grew... There were a couple of trees and long grass everywhere with little insects living in it, but that was nice for the dog to go and run around and get lost in.

The house was centrally-heated with good kitchen and bathroom facilities re­ally, and we always had hot water on tap. It was a good all-round family-sized house, really. When I was very young, I remember that we used to keep our car in the garage, but for most of my life the garage was so full of things that we never used, really didn't need, and should have thrown away, that the car always sat outside, even in the snow and the rain. In the garage it was more important to keep boxes and boxes of old electrical equipment, and things like that. We had a coal-fire, which was a very nice thing, we used to be able to sit at night in the winter and watch the real fire burning in the mid­dle of the room. We had a beautiful 3-piece settee, which was very comfort­able. I think we spent an awful lot of time watching the television. We never had a video-recorder, but from the age of about 11, there was always a compu­ter in the house, so we spent a lot of time playing computer games.

We had green carpets in most of the house and, as I remember, we had green curtains to match them. All in all we had a fairly comfortable life. There were normally clothes hanging out on the washing line, which we could see from the kitchen window at the back of the house. My mum spent an awful lot of time in the kitchen really, cooking for us, of course, cooking bread-and-butter pudding, or spaghetti bolognaise, or some plum crumble, or... Oh, I fondly re­member a lot of the nice things that she used to cook then.

I've lived in many different types of ac­commodation really, many different types of houses. In my travels - in the last few years most of the time I've been away from England. I remember one very beautiful place where I stayed was an abandoned village, in Italy in the mountains, and for 15 years some people have lived there. They moved into this village, renovated it, and made an al­most self-sufficient community there, growing all of their own food, apart from oil, flour, and other things that they didn't really need like wine and tobacco. I very much enjoyed living this way, in contact with the elements, in contact with the Earth, living in harmony with the animals and plants, and the weather around us.

I feel a little bit lost in the city amongst all of these squares, all of the noise, all of the concrete everywhere. Everywhere there are many, many, people in a very small space, and a lot of cars. However, I'm getting used to it. I'm finding a way to survive here.

At the moment I live with my girl­friend, Maria, in a 4-room flat, in Budapest. We have one room which we spend most of our time in, which is our bedroom. We have a big double bed, a couple of very comfortable chairs, and a lot of storage space for us to keep our books and music. Maria is also a musician. She plays the cello and viola da gamba. So we have the in­struments here, and we can prac­tice - it's a very good place to prac­tice because we have no neighbours on 3 sides of the flat, and the place where we practice is really at the other end of the flat to the side where we do have neighbours. So we can even practice in the middle of the night, if we want to, as no­body is upset or offended by the noise. It's wonderful for me, be­cause I'm learning to play the vio­lin at the moment, and this is not as fun for others as it is for me.

We're very lucky to have a telephone. The flat's quite warm. We have a couple of gas heaters which, if we turn them on, heat the rooms up very quickly, but as soon as they're turned off everything becomes cold again. We have a very good water boiler which keeps hot wa­ter for us all day long, and isn't too ex­pensive. We also have a little hot water heater in the kitchen so that we can do the washing-up after eating. We have a fridge. We don't have a washing-ma­chine, unfortunately, so we have to do all the washing in the bath. The kitchen is OK. It's a bit dark but what I like about this flat is that the ceilings are very high, so there is quite a sense of space in here. Also, for practising music, it's very good acoustically.

However, we're quite a long way from the centre of town - it usually takes us at least 20 minutes to get into town in the morning. My girlfriend has to go to school in the morning most weekdays, so we wake up early, I make porridge and then we go to­gether on the tram. Normally, we read to each other on the journey, which eases the distance problem a little bit. Another great advantage of our flat is that we aren't next to any big roads, so we get virtually no noise from outside. Well, there are two lay­ers of glass separating us from the outside world, a kind of double-glaz­ing, which is great.

Our windows look down on a playing field or football pitch, which is occa­sionally used by schoolchildren. If we get really bored, we can sit on the bal­cony, and look out over them playing football in the daytime. A lot of trees are visible from here, and we can see the tops of two churches. One of them is very beautiful. We can also see, very close by, a large synagogue, which looks like a great Turkish building with a dome roof, with little towers around the edge of it and many round windows. I think it no longer functions as a synagogue, it is maybe used as a church now.

Our immediate neighbours are a very nice, kind, gentle elderly couple. I can't really communicate with the lady because she doesn't speak English, and my Hungarian isn't so good, but her husband speaks many languages, so when we need to talk about house bills and things like that, I can communi­cate with him. We have quite a pleasant relationship with them.

The walls of our flat are a little bare. It's been quite difficult to make our flat homely, really, because there are such big white walls and we don't have many pictures or things to put on them. It always seems a little bit empty. We've tried to solve this prob­lem by moving most of our things into one room of the flat. One room remains almost unused. But we don't really want to sublet this other room, even though we don't use it, because we like our sense of space and privacy. We always try to keep some fresh flowers in the house. I like flowers very much and so does Maria. They make our home feel alive somehow. I would really like it, though, if we had a few large plants growing in the house, although we haven't really had the time or money to be able to get any.

In Maria's parents' flat, however, there are lots, and I think they are happy, as they're watered every day and well taken care of. It's almost like a little jungle. Their flat is about the same size as ours but for some reason it seems so much larger, maybe because they seem to be able to get so many more things into it. I suppose it is from having been there for so long. They seem to have eve­rything there. There is a little cor­ner where the computer lives, they have a video, a very good hi-fi sys­tem, and a fantastic television, with a three piece suite gathered around it. They spend an awful lot of time in front of the television.

The room where Maria stays when she is there has two beds, and many, many books around on the walls. All of the walls seem to be filled with books. There are shelves and shelves of Hun­garian poetry, anatomy texts, books about different countries of the world, literature, and many other subjects, as well as files and files of written music, and CD's and cassettes.

` Their hallway doubles up as a din­ing-room, as the table opens out and is big enough to eat around. They al­ways have fresh flowers as well. Their kitchen is also quite high-tech. They have a microwave oven, a sandwich maker, and many electrical appliances to help with the cooking. Their pantry and refrigerator seem to be constantly full of food.

They also have a piano. Maria's fa­ther used to be a pianist, and Maria is now learning to play the piano. Her standard is improving very, very, quickly - actually, she seems to be very talented at almost any instru­ment she puts her hand to.

There always seems to be delicious food ready to eat. But I don't know how, because I never seem to see Maria’s mother in the kitchen. She is also a successful career woman, as is Maria's father, in software design. There's always a very nice family at­mosphere there. In some ways, every little touch makes the place feel warmer. Every little detail, every little picture on the walls, every little vase of flowers gives the place a homely atmos­phere. It's something really special.

My ideal house would be situated in the countryside, well away from any large cities, maybe even away from roads if possible. I would love to live somewhere near running water, or near to the sea. Also, it would be nice not to have to rely on the central water system, but to have a well or a stream nearby with fresh drinking water. Maybe this is a bit too much of a luxury to ask for. I like trees very much, so I'd like to live near a for­est, too, and I could imagine living with a lot of animals - cats, a couple of dogs, maybe a horse if I had a time to look af­ter it, chickens for eggs and, who knows, maybe even a goat for milk. I'd like to live in a stone farm house with little steps going up the out- side of the house, wooden doors and shuttered win­dows, and a good view of the sun going down in the evening.

I like rooms with interesting shapes, so I like living in rooms which have maybe one wall which is a little bit rounded or has the corners smoothed off. The nic­est room I ever stayed in was in a farm­house near Glastonbury, in the south­west of England, in Somerset, where I lived for quite a while. This room was the attic of the house, so it was at the very top of the house, and there was no ceiling but two sloping, triangular-shaped walls instead, which joined at the top, and a little place by the window where I could sit and play my guitar, and look out at the people working in the garden and the children playing, and watch the farmer in the field next to us. I loved this room very much. Every night I spent there was so peaceful, and I always had good dreams. It was very atmospheric. When I lit it with candles in the corners, it was the cosiest little home that anyone could ever imagine. I used to love inviting friends up and we would sit around and talk very inti­mately in these nice surroundings, listen to music together or play some music, or simply sit and enjoy the silence. This was a very happy time of my life. Be­cause it was at the top of the house there was no door, so it joined the rest of the house by a flight of stairs which led down through a hole in the floor. There were wooden beams running along the roof, which were black, and the floor was wooden as well, with a few big, old Turkish carpets. I didn't really have a raised bed there, but slept on a mattress on the floor with a few sheets and my sleeping-bag. I liked it so much that if I ever get my little dream house in the country, I will put the bedroom at the very top of the house.

I like living high up, because a lot of light comes in. Once I stayed in a flat, at the base of a very big block of flats, surrounded by many more blocks of flats, and no light from the sun could reach us. Even in the middle of the day in the summer, all of the rooms were dark. I like to have some sun­light, I think it's healthy for the spirit.