Write@Home
Winter 2015

Homeland

Aerial view of city residential area with high apartment buildings

In Ukraine, we used to have totally different types of homes. First of all, most of Ukrainians who live in cities or towns, live in flats not in houses. Usually, these are medium sized flats for families with two or three kids and the area is equal to about 40 square meters.

The second difference between Canadian and Ukrainian houses is that we don’t have a basement at all and the houses are made of brick. In general, we don’t use to invite people to rent a room in our house or apartment. The landlord does not live in with the tenant. Only empty apartments or houses are available for rental.

To be honest I like Canadian style more because here there are more houses not flats. I like that the living room is separate, and people only sleep in bedrooms. In Ukraine, the living room is most often used for sleeping as well.

Only new flats or houses in Ukraine have a garage, but the old ones don’t. Cars are parked by the side of the house or street. There are not too many cars there.