Took a long walk to explore the area around the 2 potential apartments I was talking about, to see if there's stores or amenities nearby, and how the area in general looks. There's a few things I already knew, it has a big plaza right outside, which in fact is very long and extends all the way to like three blocks from my current place. There's a small grocery store, and a couple blocks away, a big wholesale groceries supermarket, which I already go to sometimes. There's a gym/sports center with a pool very nearby.
Those things I knew.
But aside from that? I walked all around for several blocks and it's a whole lot of nothing. Just old houses, some small factories maybe, and a few empty lots. If you walk a few blocks through some pretty desolate and unsafe-looking streets, you can get to a metro station, but it's one of the older, shittier ones.
It's amazing how much difference around a few blocks make. I don't know exactly how much the distance between here and the apartments measures, less than a kilometer I think.
But where I am now, you walk a couple minutes and there's several grocery stores, a few small convenience stores, a decent-sized supermarket, several (not great) restaurants, then a bit more walking and you get to bigger supermarkets and even a mall. Nearer than the mall, a bigass stadium and a comparately newer and much more modern metro station.
4 blocks in the other direction, and all you have within walking distance is one small store, one wholesale supermarket, and a sports center.
I'm really not feeling it. It's not just the lack of convenience, I don't know if the area feels safe enough for me to let the kid live there.
I'm probably just apprehensive.
Hell, compared to where I grew up, it looks much safer. At least the apartment buildings have a fence and a guard/janitor bloke, have well-looked after greenery and wastebins, paved paths, and are not built on the side of a fucking crumbling hill.
