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Childhood misconceptions

When I was a child I associated apartments with public housing, also I associated public housing with communism. This is FALSE.
Explanation: probably because in Romania no apartment buildings were built during my 1990s childhood. Since fall of communism, construction of new apartment buildings ended (except the blocks caught under construction at the fall of communism, some were finished 15 years later, some are abandoned, example). In the 1990s only new constructions were individual houses, in early 2000s private real estate companies appeared but in first years they built only landed houses, just few new apartment buildings were built until 2006.
THE TRUTH: All countries have public housing, but just not so aggressive like communist ones. And public housing can be landed houses too. France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland were always capitalist countries and have a lot of public housing apartment buildings. Also, Italy, Spain and Portugal have large population living in apartment buildings, but they are private. There’s really 2 countries in the world were “apartment” refers mostly for public housing: USA and Australia.

Until 6 years old I did now know that apartments can have multiple bedrooms, I though that only houses… Romania apartments range from 1-room to 4-room but happened to have all family relatives living in 2-room. I designed some crazy apartments, all with one bedroom, in fact I copied the rooms from family relatives (living, kitchen, bedroom, hallway, bathroom, little hallway near bathroom, 1 or 2 store rooms), enlarged them like crazy and placed in layout without any logic.
My family moved to a 3-room apartment when I was 7 years old. Today I still see people that don’t believe that apartments can be big like a house. I showed to friends a Youtube tour of an Executive apartment from Singapore (4 bedrooms and separate living and dining, like 6-room), and they thought that is a landed house.

In my childhood I believed that the power of a country depends by the size of the leader… a fat president means a stronger country and bigger threat for other countries.
Explanation: probably because my grandparents talked with me too much about World War II attack of Russia to Romania, I didn’t know that time passes and things changes, in 1990s I saw on TV the russian president of that time (Boris Yeltsin) which is very fat, it made me to think that he attacked Romania and it is still vulnerable as long as he is the president.
THE TRUTH: the president during World War II attacks was Stalin, he is less fat, then today there’s no more wars.
Also I believed that politic status affects country power… Empire is stronger than Kingdom and Republic is the weakest. Currently I have no explanation what caused this misconception.

My attention was attracted by Berlin City because is the single city in the world which was governed by both communists and capitalists, so developed differently. West Berlin tourists visiting East Berlin were complaining about the grayness of city caused by communist public housing. This is again FALSE. Both parts of Berlin have ugly and gray public housing, the difference is that in East Berlin many old buildings were demolished and you will see public housing everywhere, while in West Berlin you will find many beautiful pre-war buildings in central area, which hides the public housing at city outskirts. In the 2000s all public housing from both parts of city was renovated and painted in nice colors.

Another misconception is that Japan is full with apartment buildings. This is again FALSE. Out of the 7 East Asian countries, Japan have the smallest proportion of population living in apartment buildings.

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