Where in Russia would you like to live?

sepheronx wrote:From what I am told by residents who worked in Russia in renovations/architecture, the outsides usually look like shit due to weather and lack of repainting, and inside can look amazing. Many have purchased two or three flats, and have them renovated and made a big condo.  Many do look like shit though.  But as KVS has said, concrete beats out the fake wood we use (used in my $400K home as example).

In Serbia everything is built from concrete, concrete blocks, brick, stone, reinforced with metal framework, only inside walls are sometimes in newer buildings made from plasterboard panels, and only between rooms. Had friend from Canada staying here for a month, he said that everything looked like bunkers.

But srsly, here we always laugh how tornado in US destroys whole city... here it would probably rip the tiles and smash the cars... and if someone has metal garage or shed that would get destroyed but actual houses and buildings...no way. Also for 400.000USD you kinda can build real house from solid material... even in Canada, here you could probably build a small building.

kvs wrote:

Werewolf wrote:

kvs wrote:

Regular wrote:When will Russia start to renovate all those shit khrushevkas?  

When America starts to renovate/demolish the shit apartment buildings that dominate its
landscape.   I know the "quality" of US apartments by living in them and I was paying in the
$1000 per month range back in the early 2000s.  

Khrushevkas may not be great, but there is no analogue of the concrete apartments built
during the 1970s and 1980s.   It is almost impossible to hear noises from the adjacent units,
unlike in most recently built apartments in the USA and Canada, and the ventilation systems
are also vastly superior to whatever you can find the self-anointed western utopia.  Many
modern apartment and condo complexes in this utopia are drywall crap where you can hear
your neighbour breathe.   The construction standards were much higher in the USSR.

Well what can i say, i hear every morning my neighbour beneath me sneezing or coughing.

I feel your pain.  I could never get used to this sort of life.  One of the main pluses living
in North America is that it possible to live in a detached house.   Europe including Russia has
a different mode, it is mostly apartments/condos.  I thought European standards were higher,
but then it depends on the type and age of building.  The 1970s and 1980s Soviet buildings were
built as if they were intended to survive nuclear blasts.

I tried to find a good link via Google but instead dredged up retarded western propaganda
excrement about "brutalist" architecture and "drab facades".  This pap may taste like nectar
to the average western resident, but it smells like ripe shit to me based on my experience.

What can i say the building i live in is not the usual german standard of living blocks. I only found out about it after 2 years renting the apartment that it was prior an office of some company that went bankrupt and some old widow of some rich guy bought several blocks up and is now renting them for ridiculous prices, she literally is money greedy. That old lady is like 165cm tall but dare you do not pay your rent on the 1st, she will be there on the 2nd standing like loanshark and ask you in person what the hell is that about. Creepy old lady.

Usually apartment blocks are better quality than that, you hear from time to time people laughing or talking but you would need a cup to actually understand what your neighbour is saying, in my apartment however i can hear people having chats, sex, coughing, sneezing and so on. It does not feel private hear, more like a public space with walls in between.... and speaking of walls, the walls to seperate the rooms are just Sand with pepple. You can't hang up a damn picture on the wall because as soon as you apply some weight on a nail it starts to desintegrate.

Houses in the US are generaly made of wood and are worse than European houses and many apartments. I had a chance to sleep in a wooden summer house several years ago and I would never do it again - at daytime it gets oppresively hot and at night it gets so cold that I would sleep under a blanket.

Having some square meters of yard really doesn't help. Poor folks in Florida...

Walther von Oldenburg wrote:Houses in the US are generaly made of wood and are worse than European houses and many apartments. I had a chance to sleep in a wooden summer house several years ago and I would never do it again - at daytime it gets oppresively hot and at night it gets so cold that I would sleep under a blanket.

Having some square meters of yard really doesn't help. Poor folks in Florida...

Wooden houses in Europe are actually built from Wood, not planks and isolation.

higurashihougi wrote:

As far as I know, Communal Apartment is something rare in the U.S., because, most of common pepople in the U.S., even in urban areas, bought a private house with small yard/garden. U.S. skyscrapers and apartments are mostly for homeless people or are rented for working offices.

Living conditions in the USA have changed. What you describe is the 1950s and 1960s. Today about 41% of American
households are in rental units. This includes renting rooms in condo or apartment blocks and rooms in houses.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/a-bleak-future-for-renters/406453/

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/02/the-rise-of-renting-in-the-us/462948/

Here it's more of reinforced concrete everywhere
the more the better

The main problem about apartment blocks in Russia is that... they expired. No matter how much more You put money into them. If USSR was alive by this time there would be few of them standing and they would've been replaced.
And wooden houses rock! Especially the newly built ones like the ones You see in Finland. Or even modern Russian Izbas

If i had the money i would build a wooden house ontop of a Pyramide. I love things that are forever.

How about Vorkuta or Dagestan?

Yaroslavl looks like a nice medium-sized city to me, with population around 600K and not too far from Moscow (I guess I can handle 4 hours of train travel if I need to fly somewhere since its regional airport barely has any flight). At the same time I'm not sure about the crime level and pollution, consider that there's an oil refinery on the outskirt of the city. And hopefully the spring flood wouldn't be so bad. The bonus is my favorite hockey team is based in this city.  

Or if my heart can handle it (due to possible natural disasters like volcano eruption or earthquake), Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky would be on my list, too. Still, I have heard that the living expense especially food price is really brutal there. But being a submarines fanatic, I'd really love a chance to see Borey subs though I'm doubting I'd be that lucky.

I've only been to Moscow a few so far, stayed in Begovoy district. Walking around and exploring both the center and that area, well the place is so easy to move around, I know traffic gets bad, but you expect that. Subway runs smoothly, super markets have everything with respect to groceries. Prices are OK, for me anyway. Moscow's great, I was surprised (negatively) to see a Jamie's Italian tho, what a gigantic tw@t.

PS. What's up with oriental asians and gigantic lines at immigration control at the airport? wtf, took me 1+ hour to go through after I landed.

KiloGolf wrote:PS. What's up with oriental asians and gigantic lines at immigration control at the airport? wtf, took me 1+ hour to go through after I landed.

I guess what you see is possibly included my fellow countrymen (Thais). The recent few years there's an agreement of visa exemption between Russia and Thailand; meaning Russians can travel to Thailand without needing visa and the same for Thais traveling to Russia. Basically with Thai passport, we can stay in Russia up to 30 days without visa and many, many Thais are taking advantage of that for a week long trip in Moscow and St.Petersburg (because majority of them hardly know that other cities DO exist in Russia XP). Also, a lot of Thais often complain that they're being mistaken as Chinese while in Russia.

I also did a quick check and it seems that Koreans can even stay up to 60 days without visa. And China has visa exemption for 15 days for tourist groups...so the influx of thousands of Chinese tourists is to be expected.

If I have to chose, it would be a tough one...I probably would go for the places I have actually visited; Moscow, Suzdal, Ivanovo, Nizhni Novgorod, Cheboksary, however from pictures I have seen , Kamchatka in Siberia looks an awesome region...