71–80 of 180 posts
I have lived and worked in England, Scotland, in the US, Switzerland and in Germany. USA: best opportunities for smart people to engage in big-impact work. People are too crazy about work. Depending on the city, can also be unsafe. Switzerland: extremely high financial compensation but also high cost of living despite low taxation. People love nature but many are too materialistic. UK: Was the most interesting countr…
Background: normal indian software dude mid 20's. Always wanted to go abroad from childhood but poverty. Recently got the urge to do something with my life (probably because the whole pandemic situation was really monotonous). Tried hard and got an opportunity to move to Amsterdam and I took it. I went with almost zero preparation because, I mean its a first world country, I can buy everything there and what could go…
I moved recently to netherlands and a lot of your experience mirrors with mine, but thankfully i have been able to make some connections by joining different activities like gym, kick boxing, soccer etc. I think if your are earning well enough in India, it's always going to be more comfortable than here but that doesn't mean one shouldn't get out of one's comfort zone and travel. It's okay to go and work outside, gai…
Met my now wife playing online games back in 1999. Moved to The Netherlands from the UK in 2006. Learnt the language, integrated and settled here. We're absolutely killing it here - it was the best decision of my life. We live in a safe stable country which isn't dominated by the wishes of the selfish elderly. We have a fairly well functioning state with a strong social safety net. We're both business owners, have a…
Which part of the UK did you come from? I have to say I'm 41 and neither me or my friends/family have experienced what you describe.
Moved from the UK to France after the Brexit vote (the last chance to easily move my family to another country and have my kids grow up as Europeans with the ability to work and live in the EU country of their choice, access low cost or free university education etc.) I'm a contractor and felt reasonably sure I could find work as an android developer in most large cities - Paris is also close enough that if things re…
France can be tough! Low salaries, high taxes, high prices around Paris area, heavy administration (I don’t wish anyone going to a prefecture!), hard to find information about services, hard and expensive to find apartment or relocate, congested public transport, mono-lingual static culture, hard to make friend with French, public litter and lack of cleanliness, periodic strikes, small apartments (in EU in general),…
Re the admin (to get set up on the health care system etc) everything does need things like original birth certificates etc. And I spent several days going in person(!) to an office somewhere to deal with it (but that's mainly because my french is not really good enough to deal with things like that on the phone easily)
I think if I was on my own here, loneliness would have been a real issue until I had decent conversational french. (I moved with my family though, so it's less if an issue for me)
It was super easy to move here due to the UK being in the EU at the time. Brexit didn’t change anything for me personally but has made me more keen to get citizenship here to get back in to Europe.
During the next decade I met my now wife, had two kids, bought and then rebuilt a house in downtown Reykjavik and then got married. Work hasn’t been a problem, I stayed at the original company for four years and then worked for a bunch of others. I’ve now been working remotely for a US based startup for the last three years.j
I stayed because the quality of life here is fantastic. Living in Reykjavik, with the small, still very residential downtown is like living in a village with the amenities of a city. There is a vibrant cultural scene. It’s probably one of the best places in the world to raise kids. I love the outdoors and access to instant remoteness is often less than an hours drive.
The most immediate downside is that everyone will speak English to you so it becomes a challenge to properly integrate. All my work has been English speaking for example. All my kids friends speak great English and so on. I can understand quite a lot of Icelandic but really need to brush up on speaking to pass the pretty low language bar for citizenship.
Edit: The frivolous things I love are the pools and basically the entire country taking a month off in the summer time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, I live in Austria and I wish to emigrate to the US. I consider Europe, and Austria in particular a living nightmare.
Why? It could be it just doesn't suit your personality. If you a 'rise and grind' type of person, I can see it being hell.
The real issue (which causes all the above differences anyway) is cultural. What matters is not comparing things, but comparing people, their attitude, principles, and way of life.
For me, Europe is an socialist dystopia which punishes individualism, risk-taking, private businesses, and where people don't have a passion for much, no hobbies, and no aspirations.
For any particular thing that people do, for example what hobbies they might have, but this could be extended to almost anything, what car do they drive, etc, anything that can be analyzed statistically you will find that the distribution for people in the US is far wider than the distribution for people in the EU. Whatever it is that interests you and is outside the median, you will find that there are people in the US who share your interests, but you will likely won't find the same to be true in europe. The distribution of anything in europe is narrower.
Let me give you a silly example. On average, americans eat far worse cheese then europeans, but if cheese is your thing you will easily (!!) find better cheese in the US compared to the best cheese I can find here in Europe. But that's not all, if you explain this to an average american who isn't into cheese, they will understand that cheese is your thing, just like they have their own peculiar things they are into. But I will not be able to explain the same thing to an european, all I would get is "what's wrong with our cheese?" and "you are stupid because our cheese is great".
This is not a thought experiment. I have done this exact experiment with cheese with many americans and many europeans. As silly as the example is, it illustrates the point that europeans simply cannot accept that you might care about things they don't care about while americans understand this idea very well, even if they don't understand the thing.
Let's take another example, general aviation. It's an expensive and rare hobby even in the US, but even middle-class people can partake in it, and they do, it's a thing with communities associated with it. It's not a thing here in europe. It's extraordinarily rare, and it's extraordinarily expensive -- not relative to european incomes, but in absolute terms -- GA is fantastically more expensive in europe compared to the US, so you have to be made out of money, and if you do it at all, it's not a community thing.
Just search youtube for anything, any kind of activity that you are interested in, and you will find that the majority of videos are produced by americans. I posit this is not a coincidence.
Someone might claim that's because all these activities cost money, and it's not simply the fact that europeans are not interested in these things, but rather that they don't have enough money to do them. And therein lies the problem. The reason europeans don't have money is because doing business here is a terrible endeavour stiffed at every step of the way. People don't really start businesess, and starting a businesses is shed in a negative light societally. People see their bosses as their enemy (from which they require mandatory (!!) union participation to protect yourself from).
Mind you, not any particular boss they might have, which might be terrible as a person, but the whole concept of "us workers" vs. "they the rich people". Of course, your direct manager is very unlikely to be rich, but in most people's minds the bosses are "part of the oppresing class" and they are the enemy that the state must protect themselves from. The idea that you might even become a boss one day, say by starting a business is ideologically rejected. The regular people are the good people and they don't join the enemy by becoming the oppresor.
I could go on and on, but the gist of it is that I have trouble finding people here in europe who I share values with, but I have no such trouble in the US.
Moved to Germany from the UK. In practical terms, Germany is so far ahead it's not comparable. The quality of life here is better making minimum wage here than it is if you're on a decent wage in the UK. A lot of the difference is housing - in the UK, you're usually paying a lot of money to live in a shithole. Also, as other commentators have noted, everything is falling apart in the UK, so even if you have money, yo…
The idea of having to do courses on "becoming German" is downright creepy. Is it a crisis of identity, or maybe some unclear practical reason?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, I live in Austria and I wish to emigrate to the US. I consider Europe, and Austria in particular a living nightmare.
So do you confirm the availability of "horror stories", as mentioned? Kindly share why you consider Austria a nightmare. I got mixed signals from the place. While some people are extremely friendly, I also perceived quite a defensive atmosphere. Something solid on the surface but struggling below it, like a defence of daily routine - not really lively or happy. But it could also depend on the region, I guess.
I wouldn't say people are overtly happy at all. Something like 'jolly on occasion' is a better fit. They kind of store it up for parties and festivals. This isn't a negative for me though. It's rather have honesty that the sickly sweet fake nice you get in the US.
At least where I live, people like to complain a lot. Idle grousing is sort of a pass time. Honestly I'm not sure why.
Austria was dirt ass poor within living memory. Anyone with gray hair probably had a couple pair of d lederhosen for their whole childhood. Plus Hitler was Austrian. The ruling political party in my state was started by a literal Nazi. Sexual abuse in the Catholic church was (is ?) rampant. That kind history has to weigh on a society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the top thing you can think of as the main difference is that you can get blasted at 11am in a foreign country, the "uncharitable reading" is that you're an alcoholic, not that you're a sheltered emigrant that doesn't know what a real third world country is like.
The parent comment asked «How would you describe the local population», to which it was replied «People are generally more relaxed to the point that it annoyed me for years», also instanced to the "anytime beer". The reasoning flows.