It’s not unpleasant to live in such an apartment complex, not at all. I wonder how children feel about it. I also wonder how much of my sentiments is due to the fact that “here” looks completely different from where I grew up, from where I played as a child.
I spent my childhood in a big, old, shabby house, then just outside of Klagenfurt. We shared it with my grandmother, her cousin, my uncle and his family. There was not much sympathy between my parents and my uncle, and that was the main reason, why the house was left deteriorating: lack of cooperation.
For me it was fine. I played with my cousin anyway, and the house and big garden were in all their negligence a magic wonderland. Everything was old, everything was marked, everything was different. It was a landscape, not an arrangement of shiny building blocks with regular edges. Everything was individual and unique.
But then: this was my childhood, the one that I’m yearning back to. It’s marked with my experiences and passions and pains. It may be completely irrelevant to everyone else.