Welcome to Odessa on a glorious October's evening here and the topic of this video is actually not
really congruent with the beautiful evening we have which is five things that really suck
about living in Ukraine and no that's not a clickbait title where I'm going
to say everything is amazing there are some drawbacks to living here so in today's Tip
Thursday with me Conor Clyne we're going to dive deep into those five. Поехали!
So this guy here is Taras Shevchenko and he is the national poet of Ukraine he is relevant to
the first thing that sucks about Ukraine and that is language because he actually wrote in
the Ukrainian language he wrote a lot of great poetry but as much as I love українська мова Ukrainian language
you might have to be learning a lot of it when you come here to Ukraine especially that is difficult
if you first move here and you haven't learned either Ukrainian or Russian before because the
level of English language skills in Ukraine is still incredibly low compared to the rest
of Europe it has improved pretty dramatically in fact in the last say five five to ten years
Me teaching Ukrainian girls how to speak Irish how about that so hello and Irish is dia duit.
- Dia duit! - Oh, this is difficult - Try again, try again! Dia duit! - Dia duit! - Very good, and to say 'how are you?'
One of the variants is 'conas atá tú?' - Conas atá tú? - Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú? but 'Conas atá tú?' is probably easier
Now I don't want to exaggerate of course you can go to the touristic areas that go the center
of Kyiv or here in Odessa obviously gets a lot of international tourists
so they do have menus in English you will be able to find someone in every restaurant who
can probably understand basic English but if you are planning to move here and you think you can do
everything like you could say in Amsterdam or even in a city like Prague or Budapest nowadays
not going to happen here so definitely my advice is to invest in learning basic Russian
and or Ukrainian before you move to Ukraine obviously if you spend your time in Ukrainian
speaking city majority like Lviv or somewhere else like I said Ivano-Frankivsk then you definitely gotta
invest in that language but if you are coming here to Odessa then the language spoken in daily life
is still Russian here even though of course I know Ukrainian is the national language of Ukraine so
if you're coming to Odessa obviously the practical thing to do is to learn Russian first and then
Ukrainian but that is the first thing that sucks if you are a foreigner moving here and you don't speak
the local languages you are going to struggle outside of those very touristic central areas
So second thing that really sucks about living in Ukraine and that is the state of the road I'm on
a very nice path through Park Shevchenko here but in general state of the roads is pretty diabolical
I've traveled a lot around Europe I've traveled around the world but we'll keep it Europe-centric
for the moment and I have to say I have never seen consistently such bad roads as I have in this
country I took some trips out into the countryside we'll say to go to some more remote parts and
basically had to abandon because I was going to smash the car already got two flat tires
on the trip already and that was enough stress as it was getting that fixed also you need to
be able to speak Russian or Ukrainian to be able to deal with those situations in the countryside
like there wasn't a number to call you are fine if you are traveling say between Kyiv and Odessa
or Lviv and Kharkiv is probably okay even Kyiv to Lviv was terrible so normally I would recommend
flying between those cities or taking the high-speed train they're better alternatives
but if you are taking a car be prepared for one of the roughest experiences possible in Europe
So another thing that sucks in Ukraine and it's a real inconvenience a bit like
the skateboarders who are here from town hall making lots of noise when I'm trying to film
it's actually the bureaucracy in Ukraine now they did inherit this bureaucratic mess
that really makes life really really tricky for the citizen or the resident like you
but man yeah Soviet style basically they have been trying to reform it but it is still only
at the beginning of being reformed becoming like say other parts of Central or Eastern Europe that
have been reformed have made it into the EU like let's take Estonia for example where you have
like e-residency and there's definitely been huge emphasis on digitization and making things
streamlined and simple for you but that has not really arrived yet in Ukraine so you're gonna
have to get used to dealing with older style more bureaucratic processes when you're dealing with
the local or national government unfortunately for now fingers crossed they get that
improved moving forward but yeah bureaucracy who enjoys it really really pain in the ass and of course
when you have a lot of bureaucracy and things are tricky then of course in a country like Ukraine
which doesn't have very strong rule of law then that opens the way for lots of corruption and
people trying to get around the bureaucracy by you know making it rain to officials
unfortunately as well I have another I have a vodka vodcast about corruption you can I'll link
it up above in the card and down below in the description if you want to know more about that
So probably the biggest thing that sucks for foreign guys whether they come to live here
or they're just visiting is trying to avoid the scammer girls those romance scams unfortunately
that's sully the name of the entire country I have tons of other videos about it how to avoid
them all the different types of scams I'll link a few of them down below in the description up
in cards there if you haven't already watched them but basically they are probably the biggest danger
some of the examples are the meal plan scam where you're just basically seen as an ATM
to fund someone's trips to restaurants and taking instagram photos or it's a little bit more serious
it goes up into the restaurant/nightclub scam you're actually getting done for about a thousand
bucks of average scam value it's about US$1,500 in those on top of that can be really really serious
where maybe you're actually even drugged and assaulted and all that stuff those are pretty
rare but in general romance scams you see so many of them please avoid them like the plague
So the fifth and final thing that really sucks about living in Ukraine is the service
service can be really really poor here you're not going to get that North American type of
service especially the US where you know it's like hey welcome and they spend their entire time
kissing your ass that is definitely not the case here in Ukraine it is not really the Soviet-style
stereotype I would say it's not that unfriendly but definitely they are not very flexible if you
don't want something exactly like it's on the menu good luck to you getting it changed compared to
Western Europe it's not hugely different to a lot of say countries like I used to live in Belgium
and in France and actually the service wasn't that much better there in general and so in some parts
of Western Europe it can be just as poor uh but definitely that's one thing you're going to notice
if you move from the US to Ukraine is the complete lack of service in the catering industry and also
in general moving off specified deliverables they are not very flexible on that tipping by the way
is normally between about eight and ten percent I would say in restaurants so it is less than the
20% that you normally tip in the us so as a bonus thing that sucks because it's not really something
to do with the country per se it's the fact that you were gonna have to keep explaining to
people here and probably people back home why would you ever move to Ukraine it is something
that is treated with suspicion especially by a lot of Ukrainian girls like why would you move
here everybody wants to leave and go normally to Western Europe or to Poland actually not even
Western Europe is just go to the European Union or maybe in the past I think was more moved to the US
thing that's a lot less attractive because they have a lot easier access to the European Union
Schengen is visa-free so of course you could go there you're not allowed work but it is very easy
to get a work visa difference for example in Poland so why would you come here to Ukraine where
in general wages are very low of course if you're not reliant on Ukrainian wage and you have moved
for at least part of the year to Ukraine then you know the price is obviously a lot
lower here so your cost of living and then your quality of life can actually be
several multiples of back home in North America or Western Europe so just be prepared you can have to
do a lot of explaining and then probably in where you're moving from people just don't understand
why would you go to Ukraine they've probably just seen on the news all about war and poverty and
Chernobyl so they cannot imagine why you would ever come here so can be a little bit grating
to have to justify why you are in amazing Ukraine but there you go there are the five things that do
actually suck here and things that you need to be aware of before you consider moving
5 things that suck about living in this country but as you've seen from the rest of my content on
my youtube channel still enough amazing reasons to come and relocate to Ukraine
whether that happens to be for three or say the entire year 12 months a year
and when you consider doing that you will need to know what other things
not just the things that suck but what else you will have to do in order to make your
relocation here a success so to help you with that I have a free checklist you go down below
type in your email address and I will whisk it off to you that also puts you on my free mailing list
also the checklist is of course completely for free and in the future you will get a notification
how to join my current high level consultation group it is closed for enrollment at the moment
I'm actually in the middle of it we have seven weeks of it and the guys who are on it are all men
who are serious about relocating to Ukraine high level guys we're gonna invest their time emotions
and money into spending three to twelve months a year it's an absolutely fantastic group just
so much know-how and help and assistance you know not just with my years of obviously 10 years
of experience of living in the region but also the guys you know coming with their own perspectives
and what they've learned on their journey to living quite a luxurious lifestyle here in
Ukraine so definitely get in on that asap if you're not already on my free mailing list you
have that checklist to encourage you to be there it's a bit of a no-brainer basically it's all for
free and with that said it doesn't all suck here in Ukraine gonna enjoy this absolutely fantastic
Indian summer's evening it is autumn we are in October and this is the weather that you can
enjoy on the shores of the Black Sea see you very soon in the next video! До побачення! До свидания!