Russia is known for 2 problems: Fools and roads. I am not ready to judge the intellectual level of americans yet but the roads make me feel like in my motherland already:) Of course I cannot judge overall state of roads in the whole US either, I only describe what I see in the area we live. It's San Francisco Bay area. We live in the heart of Silicon Valley, in the city of Sunnyvale which is next city to Santa Clara where my husband works.
These are a couple of examples. You may see that it's not a small village road, it's one of the biggest roads in the city (El Camino Real). And these holes are not the worst ones, they are just those I wasn't lazy to take picture of.
Sure it's not critical at all. You still may drive and it won't even damage your car most likely. But it just somehow doesn't match with my expectations. Escpecially after I've spent 4 months in Austria. There the roads were perfect. We were living in the small town Altach, it's really a country-side. But the condition of the roads there was better than in Moscow, the proud capital of Mother-Russia.
When I was just planning to move here being yet in Russia I've contacted one women with whom I was earlier in business-contact and I knew that she is now living in the US and exactly in SF Bay area. I was eager to find out any details which could have helped me to estimate the conditions of living here. One of the things she told me is that I will probably have a cultural schock after moving from Moscow, one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world to the "country-side" of Silicon Valley. Now I would say that she has a bit exaggerated from my point of view. Or, probably, it is caused by my gradual move - first I've moved to a real country-side in Austria and only after 4 months spent there I've moved here. So now I don't consider Silicon Valley a country-side at all. The streets are wide here, there are lots of people, cars, shops, different companies, businesess, infrastructure is various and even a bit to various for me after I've already used to live in Austria with a choice of 2 shops and 1 sushi-restaurant. Here you can find whatever type and level of catering you want.
When we were going to move and were considering the car we area going to buy we both consented to buy a small car. Something similar to what I've driven in Russia - toyota yaris, honda jazz. I loved small cars in Moscow since they have more chances to find a parking space and overall, there are already to much of a volume taken by cars, I have never seen any reason to increase this volume even more. I would be happy to have a Smart but they have never fitted my budget limits.
Our plans were destoryed by a tough american reality. You just cannot have a small car here. They are so rare that you cannot find them on those used-cars resources which we have used: cars.com, autotrader.com, craigslist.com and others. Or you will find one but it will be quite new and expensive. To tell the truth I've seen on the roads of California a couple of yaris and jazz (this one more often). But they look so brand new that I suppose they just don't exist here for a long time. Anyway, we had to change our preferences since we're not going to stay here more that 1 year approximately and our priority was to have a car which we would be able to sell before living the US. That's why we needed some car which will fit the prefrences of locals, not ours.
Also we've decided right away that we won't buy a car from a private owner but from a dealer since they provide you with support in registration stuff. Which is quite useful. I've done it several times in Russia and it's literally a disaster. Our russian friends as well as some of my new american friends (from Austria) told me that such kind of activities are not very easy here as well. That's why we've decided to expand our financial limitations for the price of the car a bit in order to avoid stress of dealing with DMV.
I won't describe the proccess of searching and buying the car in details, just some highlights.
Generally what you see in internet is one reality, what you see at the dealer's site is another. There were lots of cases when we came to the place and the car we've found through internet were not there at all. Sometimes they told that it was just recently sold-out. Sometimes they were just not capable to find it on the site saying that the car just for some mystical reason is not there but of course they have lots of "similar" cars, of course normally older and more expensive than the one we came for.
Finally we've found a car which has matched our goals - Volvo V40 2004 and with a mileage within 110K. I've called the dealer to set up an apointment, we've set it up and at the end of conversation I've asked his name and he ansered ""Yuri". We've switched to russian:)
So, finally we've bought the car from a russian dealer. I wouldn't say that everything was made perfect but now we have a car already for 1.5 week. Sometimes the driver's window doesn't close, sometimes we hear some strange noises.... But it runs:) Before buying we've made a general check and got a positive resolution. There is still something to do - we have to change the break pads and 2 tyres. But the car is fine and is big enough to accomodate our two bikes! We've also bought two used bikes last week since we are both fond of cycling and couldn't imagine to live a year without a 2-wheel friend:) They've costed together about 340 dollars including taxes.
It is a tricky thing here. Any price you see doesn't include taxes. Even in a restaurant. You take something which costs 10 dollars and in the end you see 10 dollars plus a tax in your bill. You just have to got used to it.
And yesterday I've got a Keyborad from one of my new russian friend for a temporary use about 1-2 months! I'm happy since I'm really willing to recover my piano playing ability. Now the keyboard stays in a hotel room which looks probably a bit weird but I have a possibility to practice and I'm happy!
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