“Where are so many cars, who break benches, why so many playgrounds” – questions that bombarded me with Ethan, my old friend and part-time native of California!
Yes, after the holidays I began to actively communicate with my American friends again, although enough time has passed since my return to the Russian Federation – the USA does not let go. BUT! Today we are talking about something else…
If you omit all the details, Ethan asked to show where we live, sort of like a tour of our area, in general, I already showed him my hometown, but my own “sleeping bag” and our panels – for some reason not.
It didn’t even hurt that we are now actually on different ends of the globe, but video links, photos and Google maps, I successfully conducted a tour of sleeping bags in Yekaterinburg – my hometown!
I want to share with you the most interesting moments, what surprised him the most in our environment and his opinion!
Let's start in order, the first thing that surprised him a lot was the number of cars in the yards and the crowded parking!
The fact is that in the USA, panel houses are usually economy housing, the middle class takes out loans, mortgages and moves out to your homes, it's the American dream, your backyard.
In areas consisting of panels most often live low-income people, and sometimes even do-it-yourself slackers, like Harlem in New York. Therefore, there are not a lot of cars there either.
This is exactly what Ethan noticed, quote –"I don't understand, people live in panel human settlements, but at the same time, parking lots are clogged with cars costing the same apartments, is it really more important to buy an expensive car than to move to a more decent, own housing, or is there a cult of motorists in Russia?"
The next thing that surprised him was devastation!
And not the lack of improvement, but devastation, if the shop – then every third broken, if the urn – every second burnt, the fence is crumpled, the list goes on forever.
Ethan did not leave any special comments, he just noticed that this is a strange feature of the mentality, why break your own environment, for which, for example, in the same in disadvantaged areas of the United States, everything is whole, yes, dirty, old, painted in places, but whole.
Next, too many playgrounds!
In short, he was surprised why put a small, meager playground in each yard, if you can put a big, beautiful road, but one for 5-7 yards, this is how they do it in the USA, they put a small park or square in the middle of the sleeping bags and they already put playgrounds there And so on.
People from all over will go to this place, it's better to walk 200 meters to a beautiful place than 20 to a meager place, waste of money to empty!
One more point – chaotic building!
This is especially true for Yekaterinburg, where a glass skyscraper can stand next to a two-story, wooden, residential barrack, or where yards can be round, square, rectangular, and so on.
In the USA, almost all the streets are parallel to each other, form a very clear structure, and the intersections of the streets are easy to navigate, in a word – our sleeping areas seemed to Ethan like a real labyrinth in which a visitor can simply get lost.
In the photo above – American buildings, the streets are parallel to each other, there are almost no yard areas with playgrounds – maximum – benches, but straight check out the stone jungle, big park.
That's not all that struck Ethan, but the article is dragging on, so it's time for us say goodbye, write what you want you're on about it! And also subscribe to my channel, hello everyone!