The Town That Lives In One Building

This whole town lives indoors. Send this to the person who complains about their neighbours. In Alaska, on a cold grey bay, there is a town called Whittier, and almost everyone in it lives in the same building.

Cijeli ovaj grad živi u zatvorenom. Pošalji ovo osobi koja se žali na susjede. Na Aljasci, na hladnom sivom zaljevu, nalazi se grad zvan Whittier, i gotovo svi u njemu žive u istoj zgradi.

The building is fourteen floors high and was built for the army long ago. Now it holds flats, a shop, a post office, a police station, a small clinic and a church. The mayor, the doctor and the person who sells you milk all live upstairs from each other. When it snows, and it snows a great deal, nobody has to go outside at all. The children reach the school through a tunnel under the ground.

Zgrada ima četrnaest katova i izgrađena je za vojsku davno. Danas u njoj su stanovi, trgovina, pošta, policijska postaja, mala ambulanta i crkva. Gradonačelnik, liječnik i osoba koja ti prodaje mlijeko svi žive kat iznad drugoga. Kad pada snijeg, a pada ga puno, nikome ne treba izaći van. Djeca do škole stižu kroz tunel ispod zemlje.

Getting into the town is stranger still. Cars come in through one narrow tunnel cut straight through a mountain, and that tunnel is shared with trains, so everybody takes turns. At night it closes and nobody drives in or out. The town simply stays where it is, warm and lit, one tall building standing in the snow with mountains all around it.

Ulazak u grad je još čudniji. Automobili ulaze kroz jedan uski tunel probušen ravno kroz planinu, a taj tunel dijele s vlakovima, pa svi čekaju svoj red. Noću se zatvara i nitko ne ulazi ni izlazi. Grad jednostavno ostaje gdje jest, topao i osvijetljen, jedna visoka zgrada usred snijega, okružena planinama.