WHAT IS LIFE LIKE IN UKRAINE? | Chernivtsi, Ukraine

I hope you're having an amazing day and welcome to my channel if you are here for the first time. I am currently in Chernivtsi which is in western Ukraine and for today's video I wanted to do something that's a little bit different than the usual content I do of showing you the main cities, showing you tourist attractions, how you can more easily see Ukraine yourself if you're an English speaker. So I wanted to do something a little bit more in depth and kind of give you guys more of a window of how the average person lives in Ukraine. Having said that I feel like that is a bit of a difficult thing to define. I truly think that at the end of the day life and the experience of life really comes down to your perspective so by no means is this video some absolute sort of call about what life is like in Ukraine but just a different sort of window than the things that I usually show you guys. So I am currently in a very traditional Soviet times living complex and it's interesting because yes these buildings do look very beat up and in need of restoration on the outside but I will say that it actually is surprising that when you go into some people's apartments it looks much better, like much newer. They do a lot of refurbishing to the inside but the outside is obviously kind of the building manager's priority and usually very little money gets put towards that. So a question that people always ask me is what is the average wage in Ukraine and it's a little hard to put an exact figure on it because it really is going to range depending on which part of Ukraine you are talking about. This amount could have you living fairly well in Ukraine or it could be well below what you need to survive. So from my research online and what people here have told me it's approximately four to five hundred US dollars a month and that's somebody with a college education and you know with good work experience like that's a normal amount of money to be receiving every month. Is it enough to live comfortably in the larger cities? Definitely not unless you have a whole bunch of people living under one roof which is usually you know what families have to do. Like for example my family in Kiev, my grandma when she was alive would live with my uncle and his family under one roof because we luckily had a very nice downtown apartment back in the Soviet times when it was just like given to you. So for us to purchase like another sort of apartment would have been very expensive. But once again I just want to reiterate that I'm not trying to make life seem super bleak here because it's not. You know many people live incredible fulfilled lives and not everybody's like struggling every single month. Ukrainians definitely know how to celebrate and have a good time but I think their you know priorities are just different than ours is in the west. A lot of times out of necessity, a lot of times of just looking at life in a different way. There's much more of a focus here of building a good home, being able to cook at home, centering a lot of celebration around you know the family so to say. I think they are much more family oriented here in eastern Europe in general than we are in North America. So it's just a different emphasis of priorities because there is a difference in opportunities that are available to people here in comparison to people in the west. Do you prefer Ukrainian or Russian? Russian is better. It has changed. The processes are moving in the right direction, in the direction of European development. It's not as fast as we would like it to be but the process is moving forward. But you said you are happy in life in Ukraine. If you had a chance to move somewhere, would you move or would you stay in Ukraine? Plus or minus, we don't know. We just hope for better changes. In our country we have small children. So if you guys have been watching my channel for quite some time you'll have probably seen my immigration story. I'll link it in the description if you guys want to check it out. But basically in that video I was talking about how my mom and I came over to Canada, how my dad Gordon just basically changed the trajectory of our life by bringing us to Canada, and I've always had this thought in the back of my head of how different my life would be if I would have stayed in Ukraine. And I'm not necessarily saying that in a negative sort of way. I don't think there's any way to know how things would have worked out. I have no idea. But I think overall it goes without saying that by coming to Canada I was able to have so many more opportunities and so much more ease in being able to choose what I wanted to do and not having other kinds of you know societal pressures as well. Well, to be honest, it hasn't changed much. You could say that it's very bad. Nothing good has changed. There was less corruption. That's the main thing. I used to live and work in the Soviet Union. Now I'm a pro-Ukrainian. But it hasn't changed much. We've become independent. Nothing has changed. I haven't changed my salary. I haven't seen anything good for myself yet. And what would you say are the three most important qualities to be happy in life? For people to be happy in life? Yes, because I would say that in the West people have everything they need, but not everyone is happy. Well, I would say that the main thing is to have a job, to be able to go to school, to have a doctorate. I would say that corruption should win. I think that everything should be fine. These smugglers, these customs officers should work normally. And everything would be fine. Yes. Thank you. Okay, guys, tell me, please, what do you like most about Ukraine? I can ask you and then you. Well, there are beautiful cities. There are parks. There are even statues. There is a fountain dedicated to Taras Shevchenko down there. In Chernivtsi, I think, it will be gorgeous in the summer, like all the trees. In the summer, yes, in the summer it will be beautiful. Yes. The mountains of the Carpathians are very beautiful here. It's always so beautiful, especially in the summer. Everything is so green. You can walk here. You can walk barefoot on the grass. It's very pleasant. How is Ukraine changing lately? Well, lately, yes, there are a lot of changes. The roads are normal here. There are also sidewalks in some places. There are changes. Yes. And what is your dream, your life? What would you like to do? I haven't decided what exactly I want yet. Because as a child, I didn't really think about it. I would probably go to Poland. Because my sister went there. She said it was very beautiful. Cool. What would you like to do when you are older? What is your dream? I would like to build my own small shelter for all homeless animals. Oh, that's cool. Thank you very much. I actually thought that I would leave the video here for the time being. Because I do believe that for any country, the direction and the trajectory of what's going to be coming next for that country is going to be coming from their young people. So here in Ukraine, the universities really are the starting points for how minds are going to be molded, what kind of new ideas are going to be coming about, and the future leaders of a country. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video and found it interesting. I'd love to know what you thought in the comments down below. Let me know if you'd like to see more of this style of content or if you have any other suggestions. Hope you guys are having an amazing day. Keep being your own kind of beautiful. And I will see you soon. Bye guys.