Iworkwithbacteria

Downtown Blacksburg is what you would expect I guess in a small college town, lots of restaurants and bars. Tech does have the Moss Arts Center so (normally) there would be different shows that you could see there and various exhibits. If there are extra tickets there is a text message thing you can sign up for that allows them to notify you. They normally give away extra tickets for the shows. The school itself did bring in a few artists in fall semester for a free show for students. It was Anderson Paak, Fitz and the Tantrums, and someone else, but I can't recall. Christainsburg has a Walmart, Target, Best Buy etc. but no Costco or Sam's club. Sam's Club and Costco can be found in like the Salem or Roanoake area. The Walmart is fairly easy to get to by bus, iirc there is a bus that runs to it. The music here is not really to my taste, so I tend to travel for that. I tend to have to travel to much bigger cities, but I have always been willing to travel to shows if I was excited about it. I drove from the LA area to Las Vegas a few times for random shows.

I will start this off by saying I am originally from an urban area in the southwest US. I had a bit of a culture shock coming here. I am self aware enough to know that if I continued to live where I was from it would be far to easy to distract me. Where I am from has a completely different demographic both at the school and the cultures. (I am from a HSI for undergrad) Hiking is pretty popular, you won't have to try hard to find people to go with. Blacksburg is fairly isolated. Blacksburg is built around Tech. I am not originally from Va so I don't know a lot about NOVa to say much about that comparison wise. I will say that Blacksburg is adorable it feels very small town which was a big change for me. Blacksburg is essentially the area immediately around Tech and Christainsburg is more the city with all of the big brand stores. If you want to go to a bigger city there is a bus that goes to Roanoake which has all the big cities things. As far as being connected to other cities, Tech does have ways to get to D.C. through a bus that takes you to a station in Roanoke. There is also a bus thing that will come through on like spring break and maybe winter break that travels to other big cities. Not having a car shouldn't be a big issue, the bus lines are pretty good here. I will say that over school breaks the bus service is reduced, but it is still pretty easy to work around. I actually have a car but still take the bus to campus during the academic year. It makes sense because parking for grads can be limited at times and pretty expensive. The bus line is Blacksburg transit if you want to research that a bit more. I would recommend living in Blacksburg, if you don't have a car. The bus lines are really focused around there, not Christainsburg. A lot of grad students live off of South Main St. and some complexes will specify that they only accept Grad students or young professionals throughout town. As a bonus, if you decide to go to Tech there is a website that you can join to look at apartments/people looking for roommates. Pricing will depend on the area and if you want roommates or not. I am paying ~600 with a roommate in a2 bd/ 2 ba. That is at the higher end of the average. You can find places where you can room for 400 a month but those tend to be with undergrads and shared bathrooms. Christainsburg is really cheap but then bus lines are more difficult to get to. The complexes tend to advertise that they are near bus stops, so keep an eye out for that.