[SpecialEd]

(12-14-2013 08:53 AM)JohnQPublic Wrote:  

I was in Kosice twice and everything just sort of fell into place. If you can hookup with somebody who lives there you can find good places. Women are very hot and it's a big student town, maybe they are more conservative, but that makes for better relationship material. I'd like to take some time and get to know a city in Slovakia, but maybe a month would be too long for Kosice.

To tell the truth, your description of Kosice is how Czechs describe Ostrava. Not to rain on the parade, but they say that in the winter the industrial pollution is so bad you can't breath and it's the Gypsy central for Czech Republic (I've never had any problem with Gypsies, but Czechs love to talk about them). The bar street has a few high points. There's a reggae bar there with a cloud of pot smoke and a bunch of hipsters, some even with dreads. All boogying, smiling and having a great time. I was so surprised to find that I wanted to stay around and check it out, but the girl who was showing me around was like "let's get out, now!". LOL

I was there in the winter, the pollution wasnt too bad, imo. There were gypsies but nowhere near as many as Kosice. I do know Ostrava had a bad reputation in the past. But in recent years, the Czech government has poured a lot of money into the city and it is rather prosperous now. Many Slovaks go there to find work. The place is easier on the eye too.

Maybe I ought to give Kosice a second trial-run. Even Czech guys in Prague told me the place was legendary for the women. The Tantras mountains are nearby too...

[JohnQPublic]

Good luck with the job hunt. Prague will be good right up til the month before Easter. It can still snow, but the city is made for that.

[Greek kamaki]

The best place after Russia is deep Russia.Russia is the ultimate Slavic experience it cannot get better.

[Akula]

(12-14-2013 05:16 PM)Greek kamaki Wrote:  

The best place after Russia is deep Russia.Russia is the ultimate Slavic experience it cannot get better.

After being in Moscow so long I think that's right. As any Russian will tell you, "Moscow is not Russia" so it's a different animal. I'm working on getting a 3-year visa which I'll try to do when I get back home so that I can come back and forth from Russian whenever I want, but figure that I'll be spending Spring/Summer somewhere like Tallinn/Prague for a bit and then traveling around as well. Kosice looks pretty enticing but it's such a small town and I assume most of the students would leave for the summer and it would be fairly dead. Would prefer to spend a month at least in each destination so as to get to know it better and whether, or not, I could see myself living there at some point.

[Greek kamaki]

In Kosice they are mostly Hungarians.Not even Slavs. If you want the Hungarian experience travel to Hungary itself.

[jimukr104]

curious what kind of work you did?You said stressful.....so obvious you aren't working like a RUSSIAN LOL

[Greek kamaki]

Some of the best areas are across the borders of Slavic countries like western Ukraine,western Belarus etc where interslavic mega fucks took and still take place producing amazing specimens.Also all over the polish-Czech-Slovak border.The quality there is top class although some mongers sacrifice on the Slavic-Germanic ass on the western part of the Slavic world.

[BigDave]

I'm living and working in Moscow now and I gotta agree, this city is crazy expensive and the daily grind can be really rough with commute, finding decent groceries, etc. I don't blame you at all as I enjoyed living in a regional capital here in Russia for six months, as well as spending time in Kiev, Minsk, Lviv, and Kharkiv. Moscow has all the money-making opportunities that those lack, but I'm not sure the benefits are worth it.

Russia has in the past decade become about the worst place in the world in terms of cost of living to incomes. Moscow salaries are like 1/3-1/2 of New York but the prices are mostly the same, sometimes higher. The regions are cheaper but the salaries are even lower. In almost all Russian cities the rent for a 1-bedroom apartment is more than the average salary. Imagine if that were the case in the USA. Basically it means normal people can't live and rent an apartment on their own.

I have a bunch of international friends here working at everything from teaching to i-banking, to heavy industry sales. None of them are making insane money ($70-$80k/year tops) and when you factor in the prices pretty much all of them would be better off with a job in NYC given their experience.

The women are great, but unless you are really at the top of your game and looks the clubs here are not easy, you will get numbers aplenty but it's hard to advance from that without really impressing a girl.

There are lots and lots of 6-7s though who are looking for a good time, in that range it's way better than the US. But most of the model-quality chicks are unavailable. The number of people with nice cars is just staggering and I don't see how they afford it. I think the only way to make money is through some kind of scheme, and to do that Russians only trust other Russians, so you are shut out of those opportunities as a foreigner. And in Moscow money is king.

Still I've had some good contact with normal women who are overlooked by other guys. If you are happy with second pickings then your dating schedule will be overbooked here. And second pickings here really are quite solid (real 6-7 objectively). But abandon the idea that you will land on a plane and start dating model-quality girls.

I have mixed feelings, I need to spend some more time here to be sure, but it ain't the Moscow I remember from the early-mid 2000s.

[arnoux]

Many expats do good money in Moscow, the top tier makes more than 250k usd a year.
My daily rate in Moscow as IT contractor in Banking was 1500 usd a day, so 30k usd a month so around 26k after tax. This is contract by the way and not comparable with regular job in term or risk, insurance etc.

However I agree with you that I ve never seen an expat with the top quality moscow girls, I say really never. I scored at maximun 7/8 and always get frustrated in places like Kalina bar, whitte rabit or Aist etc etc when seing the stunning girls with the Russian guys. It seems that we cannot compete with those guys, they have not only money but a specific behavior that cannot be imitated

[Menace]

This just confirms my impression of Moscow fr when I was there. Fun to visit and lots of attractive girls but QOL is not great if your income is coming from there and you are not making decent money. $80k in Moscow is peanuts if you want a good life.

[SpecialEd]

(12-16-2013 04:11 PM)Menace Wrote:  

$80k in Moscow is peanuts if you want a good life.

^I find this hard to believe. The average salary is around 35K in Moscow. If you are earning 80K, you should be doing pretty well.

I think the competition is being overblown. I mean, how many oligarchs could there be? Even if there are thousands of guys with more money than God, there should be plenty of top tier women to go around. It is the biggest city in Europe for crying out loud.

[arnoux]

Average salary is around 35k but russian people usually dont rent apartment, a lot of them own apartments (given by communist gvt in old time). so the 35k is for cars food and leisure. They dont save money at all.
With 80k you will make 5k after tax, so at least take 2k for your rent if you want to be in center (and this is not going to be a fancy place at this price) . Then 3k for the rest so this is going to be OK but not the big life at this price. Invite a girl in a decent place for a dinner will cost you in general 300 usd with wine.

I dont know how many oligarchs are there but in fancy places the numbers of ferrari / roll royce etc parked is just amazing.

As you say its hard to believe but the situation in moscow is just crazy, there are a big numbers of guys making real crazy money and this make the competition (for the top quality girls i repeat) very hard.

[rudebwoy]

Arnoux/Big Dave - you are dropping good intel on Moscow.

Curious as to what a 6 or 7 looks like in Moscow? Would you say that would be an 8 in North America!

[presidentcarter]

(12-16-2013 06:52 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  

Arnoux/Big Dave - you are dropping good intel on Moscow.

Curious as to what a 6 or 7 looks like in Moscow? Would you say that would be an 8 in North America!

I've come to the conclusion that it's about a solid 1-point differential. So yeah, a Moscow 7 is an 8 in USA. My mind still gets blown on the metro where I'll see four or five 8+s within a 10 second period. This happens about every other day during my commute.

[rudebwoy]

@presidentcarter - I figured that would be the response, I love the way these guys are saying these gals are overlooked.

[Caveman]

(12-16-2013 04:29 PM)SpecialEd Wrote:  

I think the competition is being overblown. I mean, how many oligarchs could there be? Even if there are thousands of guys with more money than God, there should be plenty of top tier women to go around. It is the biggest city in Europe for crying out loud.

I think it's not overblown and this is quite normal in any part of the world (disclaimer: I've never been to Russia). There are always many more top-tier women than oligarchs. However this doesn't stop the women from overvaluing themselves and have unrealistically high expectations.

The result is that if you're a top oligarch you'll always have many top women around you and plenty of them from rotation, while they will get oligarch dick only from time to time, and be on the search most of the time.

This model of pussynomics can be put in other words:

• 20% of men get 80% of women
• Most women believe that they deserve a man which you and I would probably rate about 1-3 points higher than her on a 1-10 scale (this difference being more pronounced in the Anglosphere countries). That means your typical 6-woman believes she's a 9 and deserves a 9-man and all men below that are not worthy for her.
  

So to correct you, even if there are many more top-tier women than oligarchs and she realistically doesn't stand a chance of landing one for marriage, she'd still rather keep searching and hopping from one oligarch dick to another, than give YOU a chance.

[jimukr104]

(12-16-2013 04:29 PM)SpecialEd Wrote:  

(12-16-2013 04:11 PM)Menace Wrote:  

$80k in Moscow is peanuts if you want a good life.

^I find this hard to believe. The average salary is around 35K in Moscow. If you are earning 80K, you should be doing pretty well.

I think the competition is being overblown. I mean, how many oligarchs could there be? Even if there are thousands of guys with more money than God, there should be plenty of top tier women to go around. It is the biggest city in Europe for crying out loud.

Actually that accounts for the top earners...MOST regular folks one sees probably earns at most 1k a month. But they live in a fully paid for flat with other family members(seniors get the energy bills subsidized).
Most places in FSU they prefer locals so of course NOT enough to go around. But the mini oligarchs probably skew the ratios...these wannabes have mini harems. But since most of you are not getting 8+ in Anglo land ..its kind of silly to think it be otherwise in FSU. But blame westerners...soviet men didn't like the western standard of female beauty. They basically developed a taste for skinny heavy made up gals to actually imitate US. Back in the day..since most FSu GUYS didn't have the same taste as westerners...it left a lot of these hotties with only love from Westerners. That accounts for some of the past excesses.

[paninaro]

(12-16-2013 04:29 PM)SpecialEd Wrote:  

I think the competition is being overblown. I mean, how many oligarchs could there be? Even if there are thousands of guys with more money than God, there should be plenty of top tier women to go around. It is the biggest city in Europe for crying out loud.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog...llionaires

64 billionaires (#2 in the world), 101,000 millionaires.

It's a big city, but that's still a lot of wealthy to go around.

[Caveman]

(12-16-2013 11:48 PM)jimukr104 Wrote:  

...soviet men didn't like the western standard of female beauty. They basically developed a taste for skinny heavy made up gals to actually imitate US.

@jimukr104 could you post some pics as typical examples of these western vs soviet standard of female beauty? I have no idea what standards you're talking about, but I'm neither from FSU nor the USA.

[Akula]

(12-16-2013 04:11 PM)Menace Wrote:  

This just confirms my impression of Moscow fr when I was there. Fun to visit and lots of attractive girls but QOL is not great if your income is coming from there and you are not making decent money. $80k in Moscow is peanuts if you want a good life.

Too true. Even with a 13% flat tax rate I don't think 80k goes very far here. I pay $3000 a month in rent alone, and everything is expensive if you live in the city - sort of London-style prices for the most part.

@jimukr104 I'm in finance, and made some pretty good money here, but the word now is that the good times have really slowed down especially with only 1.4% growth for 2013. Many people are sort of wondering what will happen next - that sort of growth sure isn't typical of an 'emerging market.'

Also, it sure seems like Russia is at that tipping point where they no longer value expats. Seems like the CEOs and senior managers here think that there are enough Russians who've worked abroad for many years who can just do the job - for way less money. That's a false reality, but they believe it anyway, and thus perception becomes reality.

I was eating with a bunch of expats over the weekend and we all discussed how most of our expatriate friends in the finance/legal and oil industry have left over the past few years and how the trend is continuing and even intensifying. Firms like Renaissance Capital are basically done and dusted (at one point they had 1000+ bankers here), the bigger law firms are struggling to find work and cutting people here too (or sending them back to London or the US). And guess who gets the chop first if they fire employees? It's usually the more expensive expat.

Moreover, the effective 're-nationalization' of many companies (e.g. Rosneft buying TNK-BP, the big banks buying up a lot of the smaller banks,etc.) also creates less opportunities and more cost-cutting/consolidation and job losses at the top too.

[Akula]

(12-16-2013 04:57 PM)arnoux Wrote:  

Average salary is around 35k but russian people usually dont rent apartment, a lot of them own apartments (given by communist gvt in old time). so the 35k is for cars food and leisure. They dont save money at all.
With 80k you will make 5k after tax, so at least take 2k for your rent if you want to be in center (and this is not going to be a fancy place at this price) . Then 3k for the rest so this is going to be OK but not the big life at this price. Invite a girl in a decent place for a dinner will cost you in general 300 usd with wine.

I dont know how many oligarchs are there but in fancy places the numbers of ferrari / roll royce etc parked is just amazing.

As you say its hard to believe but the situation in moscow is just crazy, there are a big numbers of guys making real crazy money and this make the competition (for the top quality girls i repeat) very hard.

+1000

It may be hard to believe but yes there are thousands of rich guys here and they throw money around left right and center. And they are not just dating one or two girls but many so all these women get used to big expensive dinners, fancy cars, trips abroad, etc. And remember, most of the married guys here cheat, so they have 1 or 2 mistresses as well who are also benefitting from their largesse. That is not an insignificant amount of men or money being thrown around. Expectations have risen accordingly.

Russians don't save either, so it all goes to 'the good life' and, inevitably, the women. Plus, it's not just about the money, but also what you can provide a girl here in terms of a comfortable life, protection, a nice apartment (which many guys just inherit from granny, for $0, etc). Thus, even if a guy is only making as much as or less than a foreigner, he 'shines' more bc he's connected, or has some kind of guaranteed income from a government job, or knows how to skim a little off the top here and there until eternity, or is well connected and gets lots of perks and/or has a great apartment he inherited from his family. That's always going to be worth more to a woman than some unknown expat with no connections, no home and little understanding of Russia.

But Moscow is still awesome for women, not saying it isn't, it's just that somewhere in the past 5 years expectations have gone through the roof and a lot of these girls now expect you to provide them with all the stuff the rich guys do and spend all your money on them! So I've been using 'min-relationship' game when I start out small and buy then a few small things after a few months but if they go into full 'gold digger' mode then I just drop them - not worth it.

[Akula]

(12-16-2013 07:04 PM)presidentcarter Wrote:  

(12-16-2013 06:52 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  

Arnoux/Big Dave - you are dropping good intel on Moscow.

Curious as to what a 6 or 7 looks like in Moscow? Would you say that would be an 8 in North America!

I've come to the conclusion that it's about a solid 1-point differential. So yeah, a Moscow 7 is an 8 in USA. My mind still gets blown on the metro where I'll see four or five 8+s within a 10 second period. This happens about every other day during my commute.

For me, I was thinking more like a point in a half last time I was in the US and thought about this - just for the slim bodies alone. But I've been in Russia for a long time so harder to compare now (and I'm so down on US girls and the fattitude that I don't ever bother gaming much during the short breaks when I'm back. I'm literally disgusted and shocked by the obese women (and men) in American when I go back now).

I rarely see a slim white girl in the US anymore unless it's a very high end area or she's a fitness freak or it's in NYC or Florida, or she's Asian. Many Asian girls seem to still have tight/slim bodies at least in my experience, but I'm sure that's changing too. Since I value the body/@ss more than the face on the whole my scale moves up more I guess. It's subjective but IMO it's at least a point and probably more.

FYI, in the past year or so I've noticed that Cinnabons and Dunkin Donuts are opening up all over Moscow now so maybe that will ruin this place fast? G*d I hope not...

[arnoux]

(12-17-2013 03:50 AM)Akula Wrote:  

(12-16-2013 07:04 PM)presidentcarter Wrote:  

(12-16-2013 06:52 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  

Arnoux/Big Dave - you are dropping good intel on Moscow.

Curious as to what a 6 or 7 looks like in Moscow? Would you say that would be an 8 in North America!

I've come to the conclusion that it's about a solid 1-point differential. So yeah, a Moscow 7 is an 8 in USA. My mind still gets blown on the metro where I'll see four or five 8+s within a 10 second period. This happens about every other day during my commute.

For me, I was thinking more like a point in a half last time I was in the US and thought about this - just for the slim bodies alone. But I've been in Russia for a long time so harder to compare now (and I'm so down on US girls and the fattitude that I don't ever bother gaming much during the short breaks when I'm back. I'm literally disgusted and shocked by the obese women (and men) in American when I go back now).

I rarely see a slim white girl in the US anymore unless it's a very high end area or she's a fitness freak or it's in NYC or Florida, or she's Asian. Many Asian girls seem to still have tight/slim bodies at least in my experience, but I'm sure that's changing too. Since I value the body/@ss more than the face on the whole my scale moves up more I guess. It's subjective but IMO it's at least a point and probably more.

FYI, in the past year or so I've noticed that Cinnabons and Dunkin Donuts are opening up all over Moscow now so maybe that will ruin this place fast? G*d I hope not...

I guess spending years in Moscow have seriously increased my standards because from my point of view, there are no 8+ in the metro. Max in the metro is 7, at the level of 8 and more girls dont take the Moscow metro anymore. Keep in mind that taking the metro in Moscow means that you don't have car, to not have a car means that you don't have enough money to buy it. Very different than any other western capital city from this perspective.

The top quality girls I wrote about above and who are not accessible to expats are the girls you will never see in the metro, in the parks or in the streets. Only in high end clubs and restaurants or being driven in a bentley or maybach. Even in clubs its quite rare to see them to be honest.
Good place to have an idea about this type of Russian is to go to Barvikha hotel or the shops and the restaurants around.

Having said all this I agree with Akula that Moscow is still a very good for dating multiple 6/7 (that might be 8 or more in USA obviously) and sometimes 8. But going to the next level will be hard, and for the top its not possible in moscow I think. To be young or good looking will not help a lot, only top level russian connections will make it. Its obvious that the expat groupies girls who go to the expat party like internation etc are not the hottest.

It is still possible to get the top of the top in deep Russia, got one in Ufa. Ufa is one of the best russian city outside moscow for girls and there is a good night life also with some solids clubs with real 80/20 ratio, that you dont see so much in moscow now. Russian language skills necessary though.

[jimukr104]

lets NOT forget that there are many others with a million net worth that are hiding it.
Interestingly i did a google search of Ukrainian millionaires and all that comes up is number of those over 1 mil grn incomes Not net worth.I'd like to know how superior i am there lol,jk

Believe it or Not Russia and Ukraine already has an obesity problem. In America 70% overweight , in FSU its 55%. I think you guys just don't notice them because they are ashamed to go out. but Slubu was in a city where they all hit the streets. As they get old pass 30 the weight comes on as well.I notice the older people look better in Brooklyn than FSU do the fact here they can afford good food and fitness plans while in FSU they can't.

[samsamsam]

Akula, what are you up to these days? Didn't want to sideways the TLC 90 day fiance thread. Hope you are doing something fun.