Andrey A.

And so, after 5 days of living in Kyrenia (Girne), here are my first impressions.

1. Was the trip useful? Of course. The main goal, to like Kyrenia, to have a desire to move here, has definitely been achieved. And this means that I can “sell” my desire to my family.
2. How justified is it that such a desire appeared after only 5 days of visiting (not even living)? Isn’t this adventurism? After all, there are persistent “stereotypes” (;-)) that in order to get to know a country, you need to live in it for years and eat kilograms of salt. Well, as life experience shows, you can live in a country for years, and still not get to know it completely, not know the local language, not get everything you expected from it. My desire to live in this country is, of course, based on intuition, but I gave my intuition the content it needed. The signals it needed, based on personal, immediate impressions. And my impressions tell me that I could live and work in this country no worse than the way I live now. And certainly no worse than if I moved to Crimea (as some of my friends did) or to the Black Sea coast of Russia.
3. But what about a foreign language and a foreign culture? Well, knowledge of the language depends only on me, and not on the place where I move. If knowledge of the language is not necessary or there is no desire, then you can live in Tatarstan all your life and not know Tatar. And if necessary, then Chinese at a conversational level is a matter of 2-3 months. And the culture in Northern Cyprus is very similar to Russian, sometimes even in not very good habits. With the culture, adaptation will be easy. It seems to me.
4. And what about isolation from family and friends? Here, I think, it will be difficult to notice the difference. Living in my hometown, I see many of my old friends no more than once a year, although there seems to be a desire to meet more often. But there is no opportunity. Well, it means that the desire will remain at the same level, and I will use Skype more often. And as a rule, you quickly acquire a close circle of acquaintances in any place, unless of course you are a cannibal or a deputy.
5. What did you like most about Northern Cyprus? First is the feeling of inner peace that arises on the third day. Well, somehow it is calmer than at home, for some reason. Second is the attitude of others. No one looks at you with prejudice, seeing that you are a Slav, and upon learning that you are Russian, they even smile more openly and demonstrate friendliness. Third – I liked the housing for sale. Although I do not have a goal of choosing a specific one now, Ilya still showed me a lot of interesting things from those available for sale. All this is better than what we buy in Russia for the same money. Fourth — an amazing number of “niches” for your business. It would take a long time to list them, and Ilya has already written about many in his newsletter. At least my head is already “boiling” with ideas. And I want to try some of them before moving. Perhaps Ilya will be interested in this too.
6. What didn’t you like about Northern Cyprus? There are some, but I didn’t find anything that wasn’t present in my life today. And therefore I can’t consider these shortcomings purely “Cypriot”. Therefore I don’t want to cite them.