Viewing topic: Advice on Russian cities please!!

Hello everyone, welcome to my first post.
Thanks as well for the information I've gleaned by reading lots of pages from the site.

Im a Politics graduate, with intermediate level Russian, got a weekend TEFL qualification and taught EFL for 12 months total, done in 3 stints (school in Novgorod, adults in China, summer camp with LL nr St. P's).

Ok, life story over, I like TEFL teaching and I want to improve my Russian, so I'm hoping to avoide the 2 biggest cities. But more than that, I was hoping to find a pleasant town/city to live in. Almost all the advice is aimed at tourists who will spend 2 days rushing through each place, looking at the pretty Kremlins and cathedrals, staying near the centre.
I freely admit that when travelling I'm equally guilty of this, but got fed up with the outskirts of Novgorod quite quickly. So does anyone know of decent places that Soviet construction didn't wreck too much? I'm from a small English city of 100,000 where you can walk everywhere and there is lots of good scenery. Basically has anyone stumbled on the Russian version of Bath?

BTW I'm not bagging on Russia, I love the place, that's why I want to go back. Also, the worst offender I've seen of ugly city syndrome has to be Athens, just because it takes so much effort to bugger up a city with so much potential. Compared with the Parthenon, those mining towns in the Arctic never stood a chance!

And don't worry about places being obscure. I'm happy to go somewhere in Siberia if it's nice to live in, and especially if there's a good school there.

Basically I'm fed up with seeing an advert for a job in Tyumen, googling the place and getting lots of pictures of the lovely looking Kremlin in Tobolsk, 200km away.

Can anybody help?? Please?? Fingers crossed

Hi George!

Might be worth a look at Togliatti, Samara, Novosibirsk (large student population, apparently), maybe also Tomsk. Of course, there should be lots more nice towns out there, the main thing is to get in touch with people working in them. We have members in a lot of different locations, mainly in Western Russia.

The map on the main school directory page should be useful - just click on a marker to get the name of the city and a link to a list of schools there.

Try VirtualTourist.com

Moscow isn't bad if you like big cities. I like it. The only problem is you have to work sometimes because it's somewhat expensive (about 1/2 to 1/3 NYC prices). However, there's more opportunities here, so you might land an expat salary or figure out how to make a bunch of money.

St. Petersburg is nice also, plus it's cheaper, so you can hang out and do nothing. I had a great time while I was living there, but you can't make any real money and it's tough to land an expat job.

I've heard that Yaraslava is big enough to be interesting and not too far from Moscow. Plus it's dirt cheap -- like 1000US per month is considered a good salery.

One of my acquantances was in Ekateranburg for 3 years (makes me wonder what crime he's fleeing from in the US) and he said the place is nice.

Above all remember not to trust real estate agents, and to hassle with finding a place on your own. Once you've got the local price on accomadation, Russia is cheap.

Kolomna
Ryazan
Kazan
Volgograd
Samara