In my life, I have traveled a lot, changed many cities, but I have never had a clear opportunity to talk about it, to share my experience. Let's get acquainted. My name is Olga, I'm 26 years old. She was born in Miass, in the Chelyabinsk region, went to school in Yekaterinburg, studied at the university there, and then got married.
My husband and I were classmates, we studied together at the Electrical Engineering Faculty of the USGUPS. There were few girls in the specialty, so we received special treatment. The guys didn’t give us any offense, they cared for us and cherished us in every possible way. Of course, everyone tried to court her. Probably each of my classmates showed sympathy for me. Some to a greater extent, others to a lesser extent; in the end, neither one nor the other got me. Maxim was not interested in me at all. He was dating my best friend and showed absolutely nothing to me; he was probably the only guy in the course who didn’t perceive me as a girl. I was his faithful friend, comrade and that’s all. Of course, women's pride was hurt. I wanted to teach him a lesson and show him who the real princess is here.
I won’t talk about all our relationships and stories; after all, this is not a love forum, but a forum about moving. I’ll just say that in the end Maxim and I began to live together, and then we got married. After university, we were assigned to Khanty-Mansky. Of course, in 2004 there was no such distribution as under Soviet rule. No one forced, forced or obliged anyone. It’s just that the diploma supervisor suggested that Maxim go build a substation in Khanty. Max said that he couldn’t do it alone, he was married after all. Then they took me with a trailer to the north. So we moved from dusty Yekaterinburg to the most luxurious city of modern Russia.
Khanty-Mansiysk
Khanty is an amazing, wonderful, small northern city. We lived there for five happy years. Three years have passed since then, but the emotions are still alive. I really want to visit Khanty-Mansiysk again, at least for a short visit, because I miss it very much. When we lived in the north, I didn’t understand at all people who dreamed of moving to the south. For what? For what? At first we came to Khanty-Mansiysk for a while. We thought - we’ll earn some money and come back. Not so. Our son was born in Khanty, new friends appeared, and the city itself became a friend. I remember our first day, when we, green graduates of the institute, arrived in Khanty-Mansiysk on an old Volga with two huge sports bags. It seemed that the road had been covered not just over a thousand kilometers, but six or seven thousand, which is how far it is to Switzerland. There is no special nature in Yekaterinburg. There are small mountains, and dirty ponds, add to this the dusty air - and you will have the capital of the Urals. Everything is different here.
No huge buses, no traffic jams, no railways. Small, cozy, clean, hilly, lost in pine forests. In big cities, what do you need to do to relax in nature? You need to plan a trip to nature during the week, leave early in the morning to have time to occupy a better clearing, etc. and so on. The process of unity with nature becomes relegated to business organizers, diaries, and the like. Khanty-Mansiysk is many times more attractive in this regard. On our first evening there, we went out for a walk, and after about fifteen minutes we found ourselves in the forest. Not in a park, not in a village, not in a grove, but in a real forest. Wild, if you will, because almost instantly we spotted a great white owl.
Forests are everywhere in Khanty-Mansiysk. It is adjacent to the city closely. In its first zone the forest is very refined. It looks like a big park there: paths, bridges over streams, ladders in places where you climb boulders, squirrels all around. Squirrels, by the way, are not afraid of humans at all. In Khanty, like pigeons in other cities, they run through the trees in the courtyards, they can even climb onto the balcony and eat from the feeder. It’s curious, but in the five years I spent in the north, I never saw a squirrel, for example, tormented by children, or a squirrel crushed by a car, or a horned animal run over. People here love nature. They are part of it, from their home to the wilds of the forest it’s a stone’s throw.
I discovered the Khanty-Mansiysk nature in late autumn, when you can spend hours watching the life of the forest. Half an hour walk from our house, I once met a fox and it was a real delight. I had seen foxes in the Urals, but they were all somehow skinny and shabby. This was a real forest beauty, with a huge fluffy tail, about which fairy tales and epics are written. It will probably seem strange to you that I begin my story about my beloved city by describing the forest surrounding it. It's important for me. You can take a taxi to a cafe or restaurant, you can make repairs and have dinner in the kitchen, but you can’t reproduce nature on your own. Roads can be broken and repaired, the same with large stores and business centers, which either disappear or appear. The forest is completely different. It is much older than the city and all those dubious benefits that man has created in it. Later I found out that my favorite cedars, which grow outside the city, are located in the Samarovsky Chugas. Frankly, when I found out, I was even disappointed. After all, the reserve is looked after, which means there is man-made beauty there. The real forest is probably no better than the Ural forest. But no. In the spring we managed to dispel all doubts. We visited 40 kilometers from Khanty-Mansiysk in a forest where there was no reserve. He is nothing, absolutely no worse.
Selecting a city or town
Many people who are organizing a move to the south and decide to go to the Krasnodar Territory will settle in areas where there is access to the sea. Someone may choose territories located near the mountains. Usually in such areas the climate is most favorable.
Watch the video: moving to the South of Russia.
If you go for permanent residence to the south and choose a village for this, then keep in mind that people usually come to it who want to have a high-quality and cheap holiday.
Villages, as a rule, are distinguished by their close location to nature, a minimum of intrusive service and a small number of people.
All these factors will help you organize a comfortable holiday and permanent residence. For permanent residence, you should choose the small villages of Dzhanhot, Krinitsa, Plyakho, Betta, Dederkoy, Lermontovo, Divnomorskoye.
Photos of villages in the Krasnodar Territory
If you are not satisfied with immigration and you decide to move to the south of Russia, then you can move to fairly large villages.
Here you will enjoy the clear sea, bright sun and a wide variety of entertainment. Usually in large villages there are water parks, dolphinariums, and shopping malls. Various excursion tours are organized here.
Villages such as Taman, Bolshoy Utrish, Lazarevskoye, Vityazevo, Blagoveshchenskaya, Arkhipo-Osipovka are suitable for recreation and permanent residence. It is very interesting to be in such villages.
Families with children and single people who decide to radically change their lives often move to these villages.
Do you prefer resort cities? In such places, as a rule, a full list of amenities and entertainment for tourists is provided (residence in these settlements will be calm and measured). At any time you can go on vacation at the seaside or get acquainted with the city's attractions. Typically, cities host cafes, restaurants, shopping centers, and children's complexes.
If you choose Sochi, Adler, Anapa, Krasnodar, Tuapse for permanent residence, then be prepared to face high prices. Keep in mind that the larger the settlement, the higher the cost of living there will be. The lowest housing prices are observed in places such as Agoy, Dederkoy, Makopse.
When choosing a permanent place of residence, you should pay attention to what kind of transport runs in a particular locality. Usually buses and trains go even through small villages. If you get bored while in the outback of the Krasnodar Territory, there is always the opportunity to easily come to a big city to have fun (to visit a dolphinarium, a shopping center, for example).
First winter
Winter came very quickly for us. It was sunny, dry weather, and then bang and that was it. Snow up to your knees. In fact, Khanty-Mansiysk receives a lot of precipitation. In winter there is always heavy snowfall. In the summer, it rains like buckets. I attribute this precipitation to the fact that thirty kilometers from the city two large Siberian rivers - the Ob and Irtysh - merge. By the way, at school we were taught that the Irtysh flows into the Ob. In reality, everything looks different; the Ob flows into the Irtysh. This is obvious at the confluence.
Rain in Khanty-Mansiysk, unlike the Ural rain, is a blessing. After the rain, the whole city is enveloped in the smell of a pine forest, as if walking into a clean, cold steam room. Since we left Yekaterinburg, this smell of wet pine needles has been my favorite scent. Maxim even jokes that if he finds pine perfume, he will give it to me.
Khanty-Mansiysk is located on sandy hills. They are washed up by the glacier; in the surrounding area, a few kilometers from the city, it is no longer possible to find a single hill. There are only lowlands in which swamps are located, and then there is a plain covered with forests. The presence of hills gives the townspeople a small ski slope, a place of pilgrimage for all local boys.
Khanty-Mansiysk slope
Another feature of Khanty-Mansiysk is the road problem. The city is good, beautiful, modern, but it is very difficult to get to. There has never been a railway in these places; the road enters the city only from two sides. There is a video camera at the entrances that records everyone entering and leaving Khanty-Mansiysk. This trick reduces crime to almost zero. All local residents are quite wealthy people and they do not need to steal or harm each other out of malicious intent. Another thing is evil strangers who are not averse to making money at someone else’s expense. It is almost impossible for tour guests to pass by the camera. It is not possible to enter Khanty via other roads than these two. On all sides there is forest, then hills, then swamps. You can, of course, walk. But how much can you carry on your own two feet?
Of course, security in the city is controlled not only by cameras. Every year, world-scale events take place here: sports competitions in biathlon, chess, and cross-country skiing. The 2008 Russia-European Union international summit took place here. In addition to the above-mentioned events, something is constantly happening in the city; officials, delegations visit it, exhibitions, competitions, and festivals are organized. In other words, sports, political and cultural life in Khanty-Mansiysk is simply in full swing. Thanks to this, the city authorities are trying to keep Khanty in proper condition, which is why it is called, by some, “Little Switzerland”, by others, the cleanest city in Russia. The city is constantly being swept, cleaned, washed, and landscaped. I admit that after Yekaterinburg I was simply in shock. Personally, I am ashamed to litter here on the streets. I want to take any candy wrapper or match to the trash can. Say a little thing, and from such little things the overall picture of the city is put together.
How Khanty-Mansiysk became Khanty-Mansiysk
If we had ended up in “Khanty” twenty-five years earlier, then, for sure, I would have wrinkled my face and started begging to come back. At that time, the city was dominated by wooden two-story barracks and private houses. The number of brick houses in the entire city could be counted on one hand. Nothing surprising. Brick could get to Khanty-Mansiysk, in the absence of a railway, only along an asphalt road. The paved road was conditionally paved. Still, concrete is more suitable for our climate; asphalt begins to deteriorate after a couple of years. Twenty-odd years ago, money came to the city from natural resources extracted nearby (oil and gas). Using these funds, a road was built, many houses were demolished, and modern buildings were built in their place. Of course, wooden buildings still exist, but they have been insulated and the facades have been sheathed. Almost 60 percent of Russian oil is produced in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. Before the arrival of V.V. Putin came to power and in the first years of his rule half of this amount ended up in the city. Local old-timers call that time golden. It was then that most modern residential complexes, administrative buildings, business centers, sports facilities, cultural centers, monuments, fountains and monuments were built. At that time, only 80 thousand people lived in Khanty. And for these eighty thousand, an infrastructure was created that any millionaire city could envy: ten swimming pools, a chess academy, a biathlon center, tennis courts, two ice palaces (now, by the way, the local team plays in the Continental Hockey League), a hockey school, more than two dozen restaurants, etc. and so on.
Currently, there are two museums in the city, located in buildings specially built for them. One of them presents the remains of mammoths, mammoth skeletons and everything, everything, everything associated with the former masters of the north. I personally met foreign tourists in this museum who came to Khanty-Mansiysk to look at mammoths. These people were very surprised by the general level of the city. They expected to encounter a village in the taiga, the city-forming institution of which is the mammoth museum, but in reality they encountered a modern, developed city.
In general, Khanty-Mansiysk gives a somewhat ambiguous impression. On the one hand, it is a young, expensive, promising, developing city, where it is quite difficult to meet people over 45 years old. On the other hand, when you live here for a while, you realize how short-lived this beauty is. Every brick here was built with oil money. The whole life of Khanty-Mansiysk depends on money. Let's assume that it is not enough for our lifetime. Why not be happy then? Why be sad? Every year money is taken from Khanty-Mansiysk. They are taken to the capital or to some shadow structures, it doesn’t matter. It is important that they leave here. Every year social programs fade away, budgets are cut, and the fairy tale ends. There is no live production in the city. Only administrative, sports and cultural buildings. When the oil runs out, Khanty-Mansiysk will simply die. In fact, the issue with black gold is broader. Okay, Khanty-Mansiysk, not many people live there and at the very least they will find something to do in Russia. What will happen to Russia when oil runs out or becomes cheaper? She can't be expensive forever. We went through cheap fuel, we know how bad it can be for all 140 million residents.
Farewell to Khanty-Mansiysk
It was very sad to leave the city. Still, five happy years... Probably in another five years, I would have been fed up with him. I already knew the city like the back of my hand. Where to buy food, where is fresh milk, which clearing in the forest is more picturesque, where there are more squirrels, etc. Thanks to the fact that Khanty is a small town, in five years we managed to become truly local. There are very few truly indigenous people there. Usually people come for a short period of time and then go home. Pensioners try not to stay here either. Still, it is very difficult to live here on a regular pension.
Of all the cities where I have ever been for a long time, Khanty-Mansiysk will always be in my heart and it will occupy the largest place there. But where to move from the north? Before St. Petersburg, we returned to our native Yekaterinburg for a month. Noisy, dirty, fussy. The climate, of course, is milder, but this is one of the few advantages. Thank God, we didn’t have to wait long for our fate. My husband was invited to work in St. Petersburg. Although I could also work in this company in my specialty, I was refused. In principle, there was money, so we set out to conquer the Northern capital without fear. What we had to face there is another story.
Where to move to Russia for permanent residence from the north?
Don’t be surprised – this request can be found quite often on the Internet. Soviet-era people, who gave the best years of their lives to the country, want to move closer to warmth and sunshine, preferring a milder climate in their old age.
One of the largest population declines over the past 25 years has been the city of Murmansk - located above the Arctic Circle, this city is famous for its fishing, commercial, and naval enterprises, where they pay very high salaries. It was because of the “northern” or, as they say here, “polar”, that people went to Murmansk to work - there is a very high regional coefficient and it is easy to earn a preferential pension for working in the Far North.
On the other hand, the harsh climate, Polar night, Polar day, low average annual temperature - force people who have earned an early pension to look for a warmer climate.
Here are the most popular destinations in Russia for moving from the north:
- Rostov region
- Krasnodar region
- Belgorod region
- Voronezh region
- Stavropol region
- Volgograd region
- Saratov region
As you can see, all these regions are located in the south of the country - in the Black Earth Region or in the North Caucasus in the Black Sea region. It is also worth mentioning a new direction - moving to the Far East, which is subsidized by the state (Far Eastern hectare and cash subsidies - a million for those moving).
Below we will look at individual localities where people of pre-retirement and retirement age most often want to go.
Grad on the Free Neva
We went to St. Petersburg almost without hesitation, fortunately, at the dawn of our life together, we made a promise to ourselves - not to settle down with unnecessary junk. Therefore, one car was enough for us to move – a roomy Subarika. In St. Petersburg, Maxim was immediately given a week's leave so that we could settle into the new place. The host party offered us a one-room apartment on Pribrezhnaya Street. Of course, the area is quite nice, but I wanted a larger living space. After all, there are three of us, and taking into account the cat, there are all four of us. As a result, after negotiations with the management, the service apartment was replaced with monetary compensation, which is also very, very good. They began to pay us an additional 17 thousand rubles every month. My heart tells me that renting the same one-room apartment that we were offered before cost more, but oh well. Even though they gave us that kind of money, we generally thought that we would have to rent a house with our own money.
They searched for an apartment for six whole days. All this time we lived with our future colleague Maxim, who lives in the historical part of the city, on Ligovka. The surroundings there, I’ll tell you, are still the same. I understand that the place is historical, etc. etc., but people definitely can’t live in such houses anymore. For fifty years, these buildings were real sweets, imagine for yourself, each apartment has its own garbage chute, a huge kitchen and a bath. Not an apartment - a dream. Having been pushed around and completely despairing, I accidentally learned from a friend living in St. Petersburg that her friend was renting out a two-room apartment on Rybatsky Avenue. Just three to five hundred meters from the house where we were initially offered an apartment. We immediately liked the accommodation. Not an old house, large bright rooms, warm. The money came out to 28 thousand. In general, they asked for thirty, but thanks to Svetka (that’s her friend’s name), they knocked off two thousand. We then laughed for three weeks at our frugality, how we bargained for two thousand.
In general, renting an apartment in St. Petersburg is very difficult. There are scams and scams everywhere on ad sites and in newspapers. The scheme is flourishing: “Come to our office, sign an agreement, pay the money first, and then we will select an option for you.” In the end, it turns out that you pay money, but all the options are not suitable for you, because they obviously offer you something that will not suit you. Normally, renting an apartment is possible only in two ways: through a normal real estate agency or through friends. Through acquaintances, too, not everything can go smoothly. As they say, it’s better not to have anything to do with friends, otherwise moral problems are inevitable. With a realtor everything is much simpler, but also more expensive. For the absence of moral problems, you have to pay in rubles: you need to give the realtor 100% of the monthly rent, pay a deposit in the amount of 100% of the monthly rent and pay the actual monthly rent. There is no other way. As a result, to rent an apartment for 25 thousand rubles, you need to have 75 thousand rubles on hand. The amount, of course, is not large, but for young people who came from the provinces after college, it is very impressive. Young people cope with this situation in the following way: for the first month, or even two, everyone lives with their fellow countrymen. The community in St. Petersburg, as in Moscow, is highly developed. Sverdlovsk residents help Sverdlovsk residents, Rostov residents help Rostov residents, etc.
If you try to break through on your own, you might even break your teeth. Sveta herself told how they moved to St. Petersburg. Back then, no one was expected here, so they looked for housing through advertisements. He says that you come to look, and the door is already opened for you by new tenants who arrived half an hour earlier and immediately resolved all matters with money and the contract.
We were lucky that the apartment already had everything we needed: a kitchen set, beds, upholstered furniture, a refrigerator, a washing machine, wardrobes. We only bought a wi-fi router and all sorts of cozy little things like curtains, blankets, etc. In our family, both Maxim and I have a laptop, and we also have all sorts of gadgets, tablets, phones, so wi-fi is a real salvation, and there are fewer wires. Soon my son will grow up and he will also have a computer. While Sasha is little, we try to keep him away from technology. It will still have time to ruin your health. Of course, maybe in 3-4 years we will no longer live in this apartment, and maybe even in this city, but still we can’t live only for today, we have to think about the future.
Things were difficult for me at work. No one was interested in my previous experience. Typically, during interviews, managers opened their resumes and questioned every line. For example, that is, at the age of 25 you worked as deputy head of the supply department. Of course it worked. There were 5 of us in the department. Two girls who are very far from production, the boss, me and a very drunk middle-aged man. Who was to be appointed besides me? Often they did not refuse me outright, but did it in a veiled way. They promised to call in a week or introduce me to the general director in 3 days. Every day was a disappointment for me. And then the St. Petersburg weather was annoying. This is not the fabulous Khanty-Mansiysk, where the kind Morozko can be hiding around the corner of every house. Here, around every corner there may be Dukalis or the main character of Gangster Petersburg, but not a good character. As a result, I cried in the evenings for almost a month. It was hard for Maxim too, he calmed me down as best he could. Only Sasha was not upset, he really liked the early development school (kindergarten with in-depth study of applied and cognitive disciplines) and every evening when he returned home, he told us about how wonderful the children were in his group. To be honest, we even thought about returning. And not to Yekaterinburg, but to our beloved Khanty-Mansiysk. Find a job there, even if it’s a smaller one, and live happily. Probably, this would have happened if I had not been invited to work one day. And two at once. An engineer at an electrical measurement laboratory or a surveyor at a design institute. I chose the latter because project work is much more interesting than daily checking of instruments and gluing tags on them.
Since going back to work, life has almost returned to normal. We are less and less surprised by the reality around us. We are still far from being true Petersburgers, but we can no longer call ourselves provincials.
During our entire life together, there are hardly more than a dozen joint photographs with my husband.
St. Petersburg vs Khanty-Mansiysk
The last thing I like is to compare my cities. It's like comparing first love with a man with whom you have to live out of necessity, because of money or promises. St. Petersburg has a greater variety of products than Khanty; it’s a real paradise for those with a sweet tooth, and for gourmets too. Restaurants for every taste. In supermarkets everything is very accessible and there is a very large selection. Of course, there are no problems with food in Khanty, but still the north, it is the north. You won’t find such sophistication as in the Northern capital.
There are traffic jams in St. Petersburg. For us, after the luxurious roads of Khanty, any strike on the highway is a traffic jam. It’s our luck that we didn’t go to Moscow; in general, they would probably have gone crazy there. In St. Petersburg, something strange is happening to our cat. He behaved well both in the north and in the Urals. He was obedient and calm, but here he completely got out of hand. Constantly runs away from the apartment, destroys furniture, snorts at furniture for no reason. Maxim says that the Marquis sees spirits. Maybe this is so, but so far these perfumes do not bring us any discomfort, they only scare our beloved cat in vain. We tried to fight the signs of the cat's shocking behavior with vinegar, but it didn't help. Colleagues advised washing up puddles with enzyme powder. The results are excellent so far, no relapses.
I can’t complain about the housing and communal services system either in St. Petersburg or Khanty-Mansiysk. Everything works like a clock. If we had settled not in a new house, but in an old one, somewhere on Zayachy Island or on Vasilyevsky, then there might have been interruptions in hot water. Residents there are complaining about her. In old houses, centralized hot water is not provided, so there are boilers on the house or at the entrance. Some people install a boiler separately in the apartment. Of course, this is a way out, especially if you live alone or together, but when there are many people in a family, then there is not enough water heated by a boiler. We have to wash the dishes first, and then, at intervals of an hour, everyone takes turns taking a shower.
Where is it better for an investor to emigrate from Russia?
There are states whose immigration legislation provides a special status for those foreigners who honestly make a labor or financial contribution to the economic development of their second homeland.
An excellent option for emigrating from Russia is the UK, where there is a visa category for investors that allows even those who do not know English to move to the shores of Foggy Albion if they have invested at least 2 million pounds in the share capital of companies registered in the country. Applicants for business visas to England are usually subject to more requirements. But both investors and entrepreneurs have the opportunity to obtain a permanent resident card in a few years, and after 5-6 years of living in the Kingdom, apply for a British passport.
In Latvia, Spain, Portugal, Montenegro and Malta, a foreign investor can count on a “Golden Visa”, which is actually a full-fledged residence permit obtained for investment. Similar conditions can be obtained in Switzerland: there a residence permit is provided in exchange for payment of an annual lump sum tax.
After one year of residency in the Republic of Malta, you can make larger investments in the economy and apply for citizenship. Passports for investments in Montenegro are issued 6 months faster.
