Real Boys: Kolyan's Perm

Every episode opens here: the four words «Счастье не за горами» — happiness is not far away — stand on the parapet of the Kama embankment beside the river station, while Vovan's song «Зацени, здесь реальные пацаны» plays over the title sequence. One of Kolyan and Lera's dates was filmed at the sign, and the artwork became famous across Russia after Real Boys put it in its credits. It is now considered one of Perm's new symbols.

Visitor guidance: The sign stands on the Kama embankment beside the river station, in the centre of Perm.

Kolyan lives here with his mother Marina and her partner Armenka, in a flat in the House of the Loader on Monastyrskaya Street. The building went up for the Kama shipping company: work began in 1935 and it was commissioned only in 1939, and today it is a regional cultural heritage site. The flat used for filming was lent by a friend of the creators in 2010, and the landlord kept the interior. In the same building, the strip club «Красная страсть» appeared in a first-season episode, after Masha dumped Kolyan and Lera flew to London.

This is where Kolyan and Edik work as sales assistants, and where the series' central romance begins. A real mobile phone shop on Lenin Street was the prototype for the set; filming started in the shop itself before moving to a studio with rebuilt counters and displays. Lera, Kolyan's former classmate and the daughter of a businessman, comes in to pay her bill. Kolyan ends up holding the receipt with her phone number, and the rest of the series follows from that slip of paper.

Visitor guidance: The salon is gone, but the building on Lenin Street is still there.

The police station was never real: the crew built the set inside the Palace of Youth on Petropavlovskaya Street. Most scenes with district officer Ozobikhin and his assistant Bazanov were shot here, as was the moment Kolyan dances his pasodoble. The crew nicknamed the moves «дракончик», «рапира», «контрольный в голову» and the closing «гвоздик». Today the building is wrapped in a construction fence and hard to approach.

Antokha and Vovan work at a car service filmed in a real car-wash bay on Malaya Yamskaya Street, near the polyclinic. The garage is the lads' headquarters: they swap news, plan businesses and, in one episode, try to breed rabbits for sale. The shoot ran long because the two rabbits turned out to be female. The car wash was working when the crew arrived, and the address still sits in the same yard.

Visitor guidance: The bay is a working car wash on Malaya Yamskaya Street; visit as a customer or look from the street.

Lera studies at Perm University, and one episode brings Kolyan and Lera together at the big globe in the lobby of the first building on Bukireva Street. A renovation later moved the globe to an auditorium in the eighth building, and the old lobby now has poufs and tables instead. The university is Perm's classical university and one of Russia's national research universities.

Visitor guidance: The campus is in the centre of Perm; the globe is now in the eighth building.

One of Lera's former suitors works in Gorky Park, the oldest park in Perm. Kolyan follows her there and a wasp stings him, which is how he discovers he has a severe allergy. The scene plays out among the alleys of the city's main park, bounded by Komsomolsky Prospekt and Krasnova, Sibirskaya and Revolyutsii streets. It is a small comic episode that turns the courtship serious.

Visitor guidance: Gorky Park is in the centre of Perm, between Komsomolsky Prospekt and Sibirskaya Street.

The first season ends with a wedding: Kolyan marries Lera at the Fort Grand restaurant, a real venue in a high-rise near the Gagarin Palace of Culture on Mira Street. In the story the bride's mother books the place, and an off-site registration is ordered so the couple are pronounced husband and wife in the restaurant. The restaurant is gone now, and offices occupy the building.

Lera's father tries to set Kolyan up in business and gives him an old cafe. The crew filmed in the real Kumir cafe in the Krokhalevo microdistrict, which also stood in for the club «Засада», where Kolyan introduces Edik to his friends. Masha later throws Kolyan a birthday party here, and the lads dance to «Руки вверх!». The cafe is gone; a Pyaterochka supermarket now occupies the site on Kurchatova Street.

Visitor guidance: A Pyaterochka supermarket now stands at the address in the Krokhalevo microdistrict.