Relocate in old age, where to?

[Maxx2]

Georgian wine is really good. Maxx, what some of the single guys want to know is how are the women there? I know it's a small nation and I rarely see any Georgian ladies on dating/marriage sites but would it be a good place for a guy to get to know a Georgian woman or are they too patriotic to leave their country?

I'm really tired (have a chest cold) so I'll give my opinion on this tomorrow.

[Maxx2]

To answer you Billy I don't know where to start. I guess it is best to say I have been in contact with Georgian women better than a year. None of these women were openly in pursuit of a Western man. I just got to know things about how they feel about 'this and that' in our chats and PM exchanges. We discussed the cultures of Georgia and the US and relationships between people. I was of interest to them not romantically or as a future spouse but because I said my intention was to immigrate to Georgia and retire there. In short they were well aware of my being well out of their age range and having no interest in them romantically. Even now as I am here I am somewhat of a curiosity to the neighbors and I have been told I am subject to a lot of their discussions. Living alone as I do is very strange to them. At the same time I am watching them.

Also I've been in internet contact with expats from here. Some who are school teachers that teach English. In chat they candidly agree with each other what Georgians are like. From my observations I tend to believe their assessments.



Where I celebrated New Year's with my new Georgian friends, Givi, Alvina and Anna.



One expat wrote that Georgian society could best be understood by viewing the film 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' That the society is patriarchal through and through. A big influence on Georgian society is from the Middle East. Women are expected to remain virgins until their wedding night. The males in the family form what is called a 'Padroni' and protect their women. Of course the big city girls are more liberated but still keep these values to one degree or another.

The women I've come in contact with are careful not show themselves as being interested in men. Joining a MOB site (very few GW have) is probably something they would not do or want their family to know they had. So I would say their reluctance to hook up with a Western man is less about patriotism and more about family and society peer pressure. Georgian women are hard to get to know just ask 2tallBill. He wrote a trip report called 'Georgia Peaches' where his WOVO decided to be a no-show. After a few days he decided he would try meet someone else. After a few days of considerable effort it was TOTALLY unsuccessful. Not even for tea at the corner cafe. I seem to remember he spent the next 10 days wandering the streets of Tbilisi doing food reviews.

As Givi told me his favorite period of time in America as portrayed in the movies is the 1950s. The reason because it reminds him of Georgia.

[Faux Pas]

My wife and I have some very close friends who are Georgian. We have both since moved from the town where we met and lived but still stay in close contact. A couple with a son and the woman's mother and 3 sisters. I'll have to say it is one strange dynamic. They are some of the nicest folks you could meet. Very generous and open. The wife and a sister are gorgeous and very intelligent. The mother and other 2 sisters, not so much.

The wife is the breadwinner. The husband has not worked since coming to America and his English is very bad yet, he seems to be the patriarch and they all follow his instruction. One of the sisters (the attractive one) is finishing up med school and going to be a cardiologist. The wife is a CPA with a major corporation and makes a very nice salary. Even when they have the most subtle conversations it appears they are mad and screaming at each other. I didn't know what they were saying because it's usually all in Georgian but it appeared they were ready to attack each other at any minute. I eventually got use to it and learned to ignore it. Great people yet it always seemed as if there was a secret between them that nobody else could know. My wife felt the same way.

[Maxx2]

They are some of the nicest folks you could meet. Very generous and open.  Great people yet it always seemed as if there was a secret between them that nobody else could know.

I get the same feeling from the Georgians I know. They are so nice and helpful I wonder what is the angle? Perhaps it is what some people say that it is just the Georgian custom to be hospitable to outsiders. Yet if you've been burnt in the past as I have been it is difficult to not be somewhat suspicious.

[krimster2]

I plan on publishing here details of how I built a self-sufficient homestead in Ukraine for $45,000. Includes vegetable gardens that provided most of the fresh fruit and vegetables for the extended family table.  Includes a barn that held as many as 4 cows and 4 pigs (so yes, by Ukrainian standards I am really rich) and as many as 4 sheep.  Unknown number of chickens and geese and rabbits.  I'm a city boy, so my father-in-law taught me how to care for the animals and when the time came to butcher them.

this homestead consist of 3 separate dachas consolidated into one property, unfortunately Ukrainian and now Russian law doesn't allow me to merge them into 1 legal entity, but they are physically one property.

You see the farm house still under construction in the photo shown above.

I also included redundancy in the heating, water, and electrical supply.

The boiler is normally fired from gas, and I added a "T" valve to use LPG if gas was cut-off, which it was whenever Russia created a gas crisis, and also can be coal fired ("oogle!), one ton of coal used to cost about $70 delivered and would easily last the year

municipal water supply was augmented by our own well, you have to go deep to get good water, surface water is highly contaminated, so this means an in-ground pump and we have a 2,000 liter cistern, we have a homemade water treatment system that I built myself and brought the components over from the USA.
I have a 1500 watt Honda generator, and a UPS I made myself from components from the USA with 4 deep cycle 12V marine batteries I bought in Ukraine

This farm was able to supply about 80% of the food we ate each day, I could've caught fish from the nearby Alma river, but it is too contaminated by agricultural chemicals, so we'd buy fish, etc, oranges, bananas, but we had our own apricots, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, corn, potatoes (kartoshkie), and every other kind of vegetable. my wife baked our own bread in a charcoal fueled brick oven that I built myself and we could bake pizzas there as well. and I had a freezer full of steaks, mutton, pork and chicken and we had a hand operated meat grinder to make "gamburger", my wife also used fresh cream to make cheese, yogurt and kefir.  I brought over a classic hand-cranked ice-cream maker and I became the most popular person in our village.

anyway if there's interest I'll post details about buying and building such a property

[fathertime]

I plan on publishing here details of how I built a self-sufficient homestead in Ukraine for $45,000. Includes vegetable gardens that provided most of the fresh fruit and vegetables for the extended family table.  Includes a barn that held as many as 4 cows and 4 pigs (so yes, by Ukrainian standards I am really rich) and as many as 4 sheep.  Unknown number of chickens and geese and rabbits.  I'm a city boy, so my father-in-law taught me how to care for the animals and when the time came to butcher them.

this homestead consist of 3 separate dachas consolidated into one property, unfortunately Ukrainian and now Russian law doesn't allow me to merge them into 1 legal entity, but they are physically one property.

You see the farm house still under construction in the photo shown above.

I also included redundancy in the heating, water, and electrical supply.

The boiler is normally fired from gas, and I added a "T" valve to use LPG if gas was cut-off, which it was whenever Russia created a gas crisis, and also can be coal fired ("oogle!), one ton of coal used to cost about $70 delivered and would easily last the year

municipal water supply was augmented by our own well, you have to go deep to get good water, surface water is highly contaminated, so this means an in-ground pump and we have a 2,000 liter cistern, we have a homemade water treatment system that I built myself and brought the components over from the USA.
I have a 1500 watt Honda generator, and a UPS I made myself from components from the USA with 4 deep cycle 12V marine batteries I bought in Ukraine

This farm was able to supply about 80% of the food we ate each day, I could've caught fish from the nearby Alma river, but it is too contaminated by agricultural chemicals, so we'd buy fish, etc, oranges, bananas, but we had our own apricots, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, corn, potatoes (kartoshkie), and every other kind of vegetable. my wife baked our own bread in a charcoal fueled brick oven that I built myself and we could bake pizzas there as well. and I had a freezer full of steaks, mutton, pork and chicken and we had a hand operated meat grinder to make "gamburger", my wife also used fresh cream to make cheese, yogurt and kefir.  I brought over a classic hand-cranked ice-cream maker and I became the most popular person in our village.

anyway if there's interest I'll post details about buying and building such a property

all very interesting...I guess you didn't have very much electrical items, if you got by with the little 1500 watt generator.


Fathertime! 

[ML]

I'm very lost Krimster.  I thought you gave up on Ukraine (not just Crimea) and moved to Texas.

[krimster2]

the Honda was only for use when power was cut-off, and is actually being used at this very moment!  it would be enough for the freezer and heater controller which produced heat and hot water and to power these devices during a black-out period is what the Honda was mainly for, we had flash-lights, camping-lights, even a kerosene lamp for black-outs, I can't remember a time when Crimea didn't have black-outs

[krimster2]

Hi ML,
   I did give up on Krim, and this is the only property I owned in Crimea that I didn't sell, for the reason that my wife's family live there and would have no where else to go to...

[krimster2]

here’s a closer look at this 4 story house, I have a complete lack of architectural design ability! and I did have a few constraints because I wanted to keep a nearby out-building that’s in the back, so I had to build upwards.  pre-poured concrete floors and the local limestone for the walls, you need to add a facade to the exterior because this rock erodes under weather, you can just barely see the opening to the garage next to the pile of stone on the left.  there was a main kitchen on the first floor, each additional floor had a sub kitchen and bathrooms with tub, toilette and shower, this allowed for an extended family to occupy the house simultaneously with each woman being master of her own kitchen, this was the only way to have peace in my family

the blonde in the photo is my neighbor’s 18 year old daughter who used to follow me everywhere I went like a cute little puppy until my wife put a stop to it (but she was really a sweet girl though)

[krimster2]

You want some ham with those eggs?  my youngest daughter’s chores included gathering eggs in the morning for breakfast, this was about daily average for what the chickens would give us, enough to feed my family + father/mother in-law + sister-in-law and her family which constituted our extended family



this is the house at about the 90% point, later added stair cases to each floor, garage door, air conditioning for me, and cleaned up and tore down old buildings on left and right!! 

when I bought the dachas, the previous owners had not privatized the land, so I had to do this 3 times for 3 properties, tedious to say the least.

since every property owner must OBVIOUSLY KNOW how much property tax they pay, under the new Russian system I currently pay zero for the next 3 years, but after that I’ll have to pay, how much is not clear, will probably depend on the bribe I suppose, under Ukraine I had to pay a small amount, because I bribed the appraiser to put a smaller value on our sq footage, my total Ukrianian bill for all 3 properties was 587 hryvnia/yr in 2013 which now would be about $20!

total cost including paperwork was $45,000

before we moved to Sevastopol, we'd come here in the summer for a few weeks, my kids spent part of their summer here until the Russian takeover, when we lived in Sevastopol we'd usually come here 2-3 days once a month.

this was a small village of a few hundred people, I used to like to go on hiking trips with my wife and children or fly fishing in the Alma, or go to the Black Sea which wasn't far away

[krimster2]

Here are photos of my main residence purchased in Sevastopol.  I purchased a completely bare apartment, by that I mean the floor was bare concrete and there weren’t even any rooms or interior walls only a few retaining load bearing columns.  purchase price was $45,000, it cost another $45,000 for a contractor to 100% finish the interior.  this 2287 sq ft property was located about 300 meters from Chersonese, which are the ruins of a Greek city founded in the 5th century B.C. and destroyed by Ghenghis Khan’s grandson in the 13th century.  average monthly cost for this apartment including all utilities was about $50





this is the kitchen, the wall mounted device to the left of the refrigerator is a combination hot water heater and radiator heater



living room, fireplace is functional



this is a view of the apartment building from Chersonese, black sea is less than 200 meters away

In 2007, I sold this property for $270,000 after selling all but one of my other properties and returned for good to the USA

What I've shown here is representative of what an ex-pat can expect for this area, if anyone else living in any other area of the FSU would care to put up their photos here, please feel free!

[alex330]

anyway if there's interest I'll post details about buying and building such a property

#veryinteresting

Thanks and keep it coming.

[LAman]

#veryinteresting

Thanks and keep it coming.

Possibly looking at some property abroad?? Maybe Odesa Oblast??

[krimster2]

LAMan,
 Odessa is a pretty nice area, especially now that Crimea is Russian
are you single or married, kids or no?

[alex330]

Possibly looking at some property abroad?? Maybe Odesa Oblast??

Da, you caught me 

We have been toying with the idea for a few years now. Might be a good time to pull trigger with current situation.

[krimster2]

Odessa prices are 2nd only to kyiv's, you probably don't want to buy on Arcadia!  inside the city the prices are cheaper in the Moldavanka region, I actually like this area, very picturesque has some original 19th century buildings, great place in the summer!  prices are much lower now, but much riskier now, if Putin takes the land bridge from Donbas down to Crimea, things will be bad, if the USA/IMF bails over Ukraine corruption things will be bad.  try renting for awhile first and see what it's like if you already haven't done so, living there takes quite a big adjustment in attitude, also factor in if you're going to have a car or not, if yes, 100% you cannot park on the street at night so you either have to buy a separate garage and walk back and forth or if you're really lucky it's part of the property, usually a house if this is the case, live outside the city for a cheaper price but then do a lot of driving for groceries, etc

[alex330]

Odessa prices are 2nd only to kyiv's, you probably don't want to buy on Arcadia!  inside the city the prices are cheaper in the Moldavanka region, I actually like this area, very picturesque has some original 19th century buildings, great place in the summer!  prices are much lower now, but much riskier now, if Putin takes the land bridge from Donbas down to Crimea, things will be bad, if the USA/IMF bails over Ukraine corruption things will be bad.  try renting for awhile first and see what it's like if you already haven't done so, living there takes quite a big adjustment in attitude, also factor in if you're going to have a car or not, if yes, 100% you cannot park on the street at night so you either have to buy a separate garage and walk back and forth or if you're really lucky it's part of the property, usually a house if this is the case, live outside the city for a cheaper price but then do a lot of driving for groceries, etc

Wife's girlfriends are buying apartments for around 30k right now in the neighborhoods bordering downtown. But yea, some of the apartment prices on the beaches shocked me my last visit out. I do love the area near French Blvd....

You bring up many good points. As mentioned somewhere earlier it would be something we would need to be willing to walk away from should we need to.

[AnonMod]

Okay fellas, cut the crap. The trolling and attempts at flaming. Stay on topic or STFU. You know who you are

[krimster2]

alex330, that's a pretty good deal, if you do end up going that route, you need to make the acquaintance of "Meest" which is a shipping co. to Ukraine, being able to ship household items from your own country will save you a lot of money and hassle

[alex330]

alex330, that's a pretty good deal, if you do end up going that route, you need to make the acquaintance of "Meest" which is a shipping co. to Ukraine, being able to ship household items from your own country will save you a lot of money and hassle

Yes, definitely familiar with Meest, have used them. Their port if exit is in NJ though I believe, so we had to ship there first. Not sure we would ship much over to start, as we may want to be light in order to travel a bit.

Furniture was always an important selling point by by landlords I noticed. I thought most of it garbage though, even the imported stuff. A memory foam bed would be a must I think....

For those who have lived in or recently moved to Ukraine what items are better shipped over or what do you wish you had shipped?

[krimster2]

meest has local offices, I have used the ones in San Jose, CA and Houston, Texas, they even picked-up if you had larger amounts
I've shipped probably two tons with them, super-reliable
If you can ship a US bed and mattress, do it!  household kitchen items, silverware, good quality pots and pans, furniture might be kind of a "wash" for 2 bedroom size
you may want to get a large power inverter to run some usa elec things like a laptop, etc
a while ago finding a good clothes dryer was impossible in Ukraine, don't buy the little european jobs that are combination washer/dryers

[LiveFromUkraine]

anyway if there's interest I'll post details about buying and building such a property

Absolutely.  Much better than the anti-Russian article dumps.

[krimster2]

LivefromUkraine,
   if you don't mind me asking, what part of Ukraine?

[LiveFromUkraine]

LivefromUkraine,
   if you don't mind me asking, what part of Ukraine?

I'm back in the states now.  I did live in Odessa for some time.  I enjoyed the city quite a bit.  After some time, it became more of a grind and I was happy to leave.   I can't imagine buying property there based on the little stuff I had to deal with.