[Pilgrim37]

(12-17-2011 08:42 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

(12-17-2011 04:50 AM)Layercake Wrote:  

Great Diary iknowexactly.

One question - I want to rent a cheap but clean double room or studio apartment in Lviv but I don't want to pay "tourist prices" - can you provide some good sites for this please? Thanks.

I'm happy you're enjoying it. I'm really starting to like the Ukrainians, they aren't plastic but with enough Murkan influence we could certainly plastic coat them in time. Also, even on a $1200/month income it's just so cheap, you can just get everything you want in the grocery store and not worry.

About housing, I pretty much took it on the tourist chin because I won't stay in a hostel at all while searching. All the following is for stays of a month and up, although there may be some way to maneuver for shorter stays. I wanted to stay a month but not longer because (1) the 90 day limit (2) I want to receive my household shipping in Italy because I'm not a citizen here and I think they might freak at a small container load of MurkaClutter.

Lodging still took up a considerable amount of time setting up. I had a contact who set me up with a Lviv local, who then negotiated with a real estate agent and even went out and looked at apartments for me.

This is the background: Nothing personal to real estate agents here, but it is the most parasitic profession that does nearly nothing and collects a huge percentage for [not] doing it.

They are just like that here as they are in Murka. I wanted to rent an apartment for a month. True or not, the agents claimed that this was the high season as Christmas ( Jan 7th or 8th here.) and New Years ( The biggest holiday of the year here. ) were coming and apartments were in demand. She asked her usual fee of 50% of a month's rent, but my contact got her down to $150.

I got a nice one-bedroom (nice inside, the streets and outside of the building are run-down looking) with wood floors fully furnished for $900. My contact said this was bizarre for her because the average Lviv resident makes about $200 per month.

The 900 broke down as:

Landlord got $750
Agent got $150

My contact refused payment for looking for me.

Astute students will remember landlords were done away with here 90 years ago, and there was a reason for that. However, the other aspects of totalitarian communism were even worse then having landlords, I guess.

If my contact had known someone who was renting their own apartment, I might have gotten a better deal.

I can ask my contact if she would like to sort of start a service for people visiting, she is very accommodating and having someone on the ground is unbeatable. I would still tell her to charge something like $50 bucks if she finds something you like, I don't know but I bet she makes under $400 per month for a full-time job so $50 for a couple hours looking at apartments would probably be a win-win for her and someone coming here.

I can't help a whole lot since my Ukrainian is awful and I haven't got my GPS working here yet.

Hey ,

Nice write ups...are you there just looking for poontang?

How about you throw up some pics of the general surroundings you're in and some of the women if you get the chance.
What's the temperature at the moment.

Thanks