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How I Rented an Apartment in the Moscow Region



Moscow Region  Moscow Region

Drivingidea.ru LogoArrow Student life should not last forever. Any university should be graduated sometime, so as not to be an eternal student.

Flying past Tomilino

Sometimes it seems that "this" is forever, and therefore completely "unexpectedly" you see a diploma in your hands, and after a couple of weeks you understand that it is time to leave the student dormitory that has become home for five years and find a new place to live, and quickly and cheaply. Having learned from a classmate that in Tomilino near Moscow you can rent an apartment for 800 rubles, I happily cast aside thoughts about an expensive room in Moscow and cheerfully headed to the Kazansky railway station.

The first disappointment was that trains stop at this station once an hour, or even less often. Having bought a ticket to Tomilino, I saw it only from the train window. The Dachny restaurant and small private houses by the road flew past. The train carried me at full speed in the direction of Golutvin. I still don’t know what kind of settlement it is, but then they explained to me that the city of Voskresensk appears under this name. Well, okay, I’m no longer surprised by oddities. After leaving the walls of my alma mater, everything changes so quickly that for a while you stop understanding what’s happening to you.

Low prices - only for our own

Having driven about fifty kilometers from the capital, I got off at the first station I came across. “Sovkhoz,” I read and was very surprised. People walked along the path past huge summer cottages, more like wooden mansions. Soon I found myself among the squalid and shabby five-story panel buildings. The entire Moscow region seems to be built up with these card houses, as if as a punishment for the proximity to Moscow and the "cheapness" of the area. But I would not want to live in such a place.

True, they did not let me in. Long questions about whether anyone was renting out an apartment here did not give a positive result. One kind girl practically led me by the hand to the door of the apartment that her brother had once rented. A cheerful woman of about thirty opened the door for me. "No, this apartment is already occupied," she answered. I did not break down strangers' doors any more and went to the station. 600-700 rubles a month is, of course, an interesting price, but it only exists in whispers, and is inaccessible to strangers.

The complex logic of Moscow suburban electric trains

My second trip to the Moscow suburbs took place a week later. Without hesitation, I bought a ticket to Golutvin itself, expecting to rent an apartment there at a low price - after all, at such a distance from the capital, few people would especially haggle over a hundred rubles, which was why I started saving. But this time I got off the train at the Bronnitsy station. That's where my tourist patience snapped. The residents of the village located at this station responded sluggishly to my questions, and only two teenagers volunteered to take me to possible rental housing locations. They actively participated in my research and sympathized with my failures. All the "village dwellers" seemed to have conspired and answered "no, we don't know." From there I went my own way.

And finally, about a week later, on Saturday, I set out on a new search. This time I ended up in the village of Trofimovo. The train, as it turned out, stops at this platform once an hour, and so there was no point in rushing back. One woman also got off there by accident, but another lady on the opposite side of the platform warned her about the "danger" of hanging around for half a day in vain, and she, seeing an electric train approaching from the other side, ran across the tracks and got on it, so that from the Konobeyevo station they could return to Golutvin much faster than directly in an hour.

A decisive refusal with a gloomy look

I went in search of adventure. A flat field stretched out before me. Birds sang in the sunny heights and green grass swayed around. In the distance, a village stood mysteriously, where, I felt, success awaited me. But it was not to be. Two old women and an old man pointed to a house, which, according to them, was empty. They said that they would certainly rent me a place to live there. I went there. A dog barked loudly. Soon a young woman came out and stared at me with obvious hostility and undisguised suspicion.

I told her the purpose of my visit. "Oh, no, the conditions there are bad, there is no gas or electricity, the floor is rotten, and I will not let you into the house." Soon her mother came out, and then two completely sullen men. They looked at me so angrily and hostilely, as if I was some kind of terrible danger, and therefore, wanting to prevent it, they were preparing for defense. Naturally, I preferred not to irritate them any more and went where they pointed - to a village of "apartment" houses - or rather, old long two-story boxes, which today can probably only be seen in such a terrible wilderness.

Another failure and obvious mistrust

Nothing new awaited me in this settlement: all the same refusals and instructions that it was impossible to rent anything. By the way, that unfriendly woman suddenly started asking me informal questions: "Do you really want to rent a place here? And why in Trofimovo?" They and their family clearly suspected me of having a criminal intent, such as wanting to rob them. And this despite the fact that I was wearing a decent jacket and relatively new jeans, and also with glasses on my face.

The electric train to Moscow was taking me away from the inhospitable village. I no longer wanted to rent an apartment in these parts and did not get off at Konobeyevo to return to Voskresensk - that was the name of the city listed under the name Golutvin, as the woman explained to me on the platform. I simply did not want to spend an hour and a half on the road one way, and therefore I completely lost the desire to continue this enterprise, the success of which was increasingly in doubt.

Very peculiar landlords

Despite this, I got off in Bronnitsy and tried to visit a woman I knew who asked me to call her on Sunday about possible options. She was not at home, but I spent the time unexpectedly cheerfully. The girl on the bike, who had flashed nearby last time, said "hello" to me. I greeted her back, somewhat surprised that she remembered me.

Then, wandering around the already familiar railway station, I met a very drunk young lady who seriously declared that she would rent me a room in Moscow or half a house here for one thousand two hundred rubles. Her equally drunk husband noted that this was not true and "Lyuda had mixed something up." He turned out to be her age and looked about thirty years old at the most.

Unexpected help in finding housing
and payment of a "realtor's" fee

Together with him, we walked to a long one-story house in which, according to him, something could be rented out. But soon the owner arrived in an ancient Moskvich-2140 and said that he was not renting anything out anymore, since he already had "your people from Ukraine" living with him. It was even surprising that this elderly man was able to recognize my Ukrainian accent, which had almost faded over five years of living in Moscow.

The new "comrade", who had managed to get very tired during our short joint movements along the village streets, completely unexpectedly demanded that I thank him for this hard work, and I gave him as much as twenty rubles, which was a very pleasant surprise. The drunk "realtor" clearly expected to get five rubles from me at best. In the end, he left me his phone number and asked me to call - suddenly he would find out where and what could be rented at that station.

We parted as the best of friends, and I went to Moscow. I got a good tan that day, since I spent a lot of time walking in the open sun. Moreover, I had a great rest and later recalled this unusual adventure with pleasure. Drivingidea.ru LogoArrow

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Check icon-1   Thanks for the background photo of the electric train
to Golutvin to Алексей Чижов from Pixabay
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