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[Alexandr Korol]

I found the place in Karelia where I would live. A military base being sold by the administration of Karelia. They put it up for auction, and I won. It is just a bunch of brick dwellings without doors and windows in the middle of nowhere, but the way I responded when I saw the photos in the listing meant I could see this base in my future. This cluster of buildings on the shore of the lake, about four acres, four groups of dwellings, and nobody around. I bought it without even seeing it, which was also fascinating. People around me were surprised and didn’t understand what I was doing. I asked what the catch was, considering the place is awesome and no one else was interested in buying it. They said that the downside of the location is that it is situated on the borderland, and you need an access pass to go there. Since it is an international border, there are no tourists, and you can’t bring guests there without getting a special pass from the border control. And it is complicated to get one, especially for the foreigners. Sometimes, you have to wait for months. That’s why no one had purchased it for commercial or hospitality purposes. As for personal use, it is too huge and too expensive to restore and build. Basically, they would have to demolish everything and then build a house from scratch. You can build a luxury hi-tech house somewhere else for much less. As for me, it was exactly as I envisioned it when I was still in the United States: that I would live in a castle that I built in the forest, and there would be armed security all around. Because it is near the border, armed security are monitoring the territory, and the entire forest is filled with motion control devices. This is very cool. Free security. And very interesting how all this was orchestrated. I didn’t put any effort into it. I went there in January to see what I had bought, and when I was driving there, I asked if there were any other properties nearby. They told me there is a sports camp. They said, “Well, not really a sports camp, just some shaggy sheds in the swamps, by the shore of the lake.” It was a summer fishing camp, no bathrooms, no shower, nothing. I thought, “Well, I need to buy that too, so I won’t have strange people wandering around.” And I bought it within a month. And while I was buying it, the sellers told me about some serious people who had another twelve acres of land for sale nearby, so I bought it, making almost fifteen acres altogether. What is interesting is that it all happened at once, very quickly and spontaneously. One of my friends who heard me mention Karelia told me that he saw a listing of a farm for sale. I checked it out and saw that this farm is located