Gregory Baranski

I have been struggling because of where I was living, but I am not willing to accept that, but change that!

I’ve been to quite a few places, and I was taking notes.

For context: I grew up in Poland, country of Eastern Europe, that not only shares the culture with countries such as Russia or Belarus, but also takes some from the west like Germany. Poland is very uniform when it comes to religion, skin color, language.

It’s a very safe country, very clean with no trash on street, but kind of car focused.

My requirements

• Good public transport, throughout the day and night, preferably underground. Must be cheap, or with an option to buy monthly, quarterly tickets.
• Warm climate, I’d prefer not having temperature under 20C during the day any time of the year.
• Self-checkout in supermarkets.
• Native or very good English language.
• Drinkable tap water.
• Side walks and bike lanes, so that I’d be able to drive a longboard, or a bike.
• Flat, so it’s easy to ride a bike.
• Multi-national environment.
• Kind of safe.
• Outdoor spots for young people, where they can meet for free.

Nice stuff to have

• Legal street-crossing on red light.
• I want to be able to buy groceries on Sundays.
• As I’m using iOS, I’d prefer this operating system to be the more popular one, just for convenience.

The rating is made with the help of Absolute Category Rating.
- excellent
- good
- fair
- poor
- bad

Additional comments

Gdańsk

• Lack of spots for young people, except for Elektryków and Stocznia - but these are the things that you have to pay for. I want something free.

Warsaw

• A lot of cars
• Sometimes pedestrian overpass is the only way to get to the other side of the road, that’s very inconvenient.
• Good universities
• Spots for young people, like Pole Mokotowskie or Vistula River.

Kraków

• A lot of tourists from the UK coming here for cheap alcohol.

Alicante

• Nice and generous people.
• They’re not speaking English.
• Self-checkout doesn’t exist.

Tenerife

• A lot of people living in vans that are converted to campers. #vanlife.
• Amazing climate, same weather all the year.
• Very green and tropical
• Mountains and volcanos
• Beautiful nature
• Very good roads for cars
• English is spoken
• It’s remote, cuz it’s an island

Malta

• Small
• Remote
• Expensive
• Driving here is like driving in the Bangladesh, they constantly honk at you, they don’t go really with the rules, maps sometimes show wrong ways, against the signs, streets are very narrow and hard to drive.
• Lack of lakes or any form of sweet water.
• They’re not really speaking in English, they do if you ask them something in this language, otherwise between themselves they’re speaking in Maltese, and mixing in some English words.
• People are not really nice, and they’re ethnically mixed a lot.
• Very tourist oriented, I felt like i’m getting scammed on every corner.
• Very Italian, stuff in shops were from Italy, the streets looked like that, it reminded me a bit of Arma 3, which by the way was in Greece.

London

• Native English, I love that.
• Quite dangerous, warning signs about pickpockets everywhere.
• A lot of trash bags on the street.
• Good public transport, metro works very well, although it feels old and every time I ride it I have pain in my ears.
• Mild winter, averaging between 5-10 degrees Celsius in January.
• Even though it’s very international, I don’t feel like it’s truly like people from all these countries are living together. I feel like most of them came for work, and are being separated from the native English community, so that things like Jewish district or Muslim district are actually a thing.

Netherlands

• Very good biking road system

Turkey

• Very nice and helpful people
• Active during the night
• Very cheap
• Not so technologically developed, e.g card payments not always work
• Not drinkable tap water
• No english
• Culturally and religiously different.

Romania

• Decent nature with decent development

Transnistria

• Super cheap