Ask HN: Good countries for American expats

Great advice. I moved to Thailand last year by myself (and moved back in March). I absolutely loved Thailand, but there many stressful times trying to get things set up. I had a good friend already there (American who spoke some Thai), which helped immensely, but he was around only so much to help.

One of my funnier memories was getting set up for Internet. After I waited for a rep who could speak English well enough to help, I sat down and got her pitch for a 6 month up front payment deal.

I listened politely and when she was finished talking about the extras I'd get, I thanked her and declined the offer. Then she said that they require all foreigners to pay 6 months up front.

"Oh, well in that case I'll take the 6 month deal"

Wow, that is one of the craziest lists I have ever seen.

Several of the places there would be interesting to live (I have a soft spot for Georgia, for instance), but I wouldn't recommend them to somebody coming from the US and looking to settle in easily.

I'm an expat in Copenhagen and definitely find it comfortable, almost embarrassingly so. It feels like being in a foreign country on "easy" difficulty level. Not only does everyone speak English, but at least in Copenhagen, English seems to be everywhere without even asking for it explicitly. Many things from the government (websites, forms, etc.) are published bilingually in Danish/English. And it works smoothly, often over the internet; very little difficulty navigating the bureaucracy. My workplace is also probably 70% English, though I work at an IT university, so that may be non representative.

There is also a lot of "public life" that uses English as the lingua franca, so someone who doesn't speak Danish doesn't end up isolated in just a little British/American expat bubble. Any bar in the city center will have at least 15-25% of the people speaking English (partly because there are a lot of foreign students). And cultural events at museums, universities, & hackerspaces are often in English to accommodate visiting speakers, expats, foreign students, etc. Many tech events are in English because even many Danish companies have non-Danish founders or cofounders (especially true for game companies). It's interesting in part because there is so much English but the majority of people speaking it aren't native English speakers, it's just the language multinational groups end up with for practicality. That also makes Copenhagen a good place to meet many European nationalities. I've met a lot of German, Polish, and Spanish people in particular (in addition to Danish and Swedish people). Especially a lot of Germans, and except the ones who stick to all-German groups, or those who have assimilated and speak good Danish, they mostly end up in mixed groups speaking English. I think I would actually have had a hard time meeting this many Germans if I had lived in Germany; here we have some being-foreigners-in-Denmark thing in common to break the ice, and an English-speaking-by-default environment to make it easy to connect.

Of course there is a whole Danish-speaking cultural scene someone who doesn't speak Danish misses out on, and Copenhagen would be even more interesting if you speak both languages. But for a country that isn't officially English-speaking, the amount of English-language cultural stuff going on is surprisingly large.

(Oh, and the prices aren't bad. Eating out is very expensive, but rent is way cheaper than urban/walkable American cities. I moved from the SF Bay Area and rents in Copenhagen are hilariously cheap in comparison to SF. Also cheaper than NYC or Boston. Maybe roughly on par with Midtown Atlanta, to pick a point of comparison.)

I've lived in Both Australia and Canada (I'm American) with my family for significant amounts of time (currently in Canada). Both are great with very little "differences" from the US.

However, there are some major annoyances in both places as well. We Americans have come to expect things to be A. cheap B. quick and C. easy. See amazon.com. Those either don't exist or are 1/100 as useful outside of the US.

Other things are different as well, but nothing that is insurmountable and some are enjoyable as well.

BTW, I just got my perm residency in Canada and plan on staying here forever. The schools are better than where we came from (Phoenix), the people are nicer and the weather is much, much better (We live in Victoria; wife, 3 kids). Kids go to a francophone (not immersion, though there are those as well) school, ride their bikes everywhere and have parks around every corner. People still don't lock their doors sometimes.

That said, I probably would never live anywhere else in Canada other than Victoria....maybe Vancouver (though that is kinda pricey and doesn't offer the kind of lifestyle we are after). Rest of Canada has mostly miserable weather as far as I'm concerned.

I wouldn't be to concerned about stable/fast internet. I currently work out of hostels and cafes in Medellin, Colombia. Free wlan everywhere and haven't had any more problems than back in Switzerland. And since I have a local cell phone, I can just switch to tethering if there are any.

Europe has a lot of amazing cities I could imaging to stay longer, but they have very different cultures and styles of living. In my opinion it comes down to personal taste rather than any other concern (except maybe cost of living).

Instead of moving all you stuff to one place it may be better to store it in your current place and just come to Europe with backpacks and travel for a bit until your family finds a place they feel like settling.