I’m trying to make a move myself and am curious what worked and how well it turned out.
Don’t mind me I’m also looking through the replies, I’m not qualified to answer this question… I basically followed the trend and drifted from China to the US for education & thought I would have stayed permanently, but wow things went down the drain quickly (left before the ICE did their thing in Chicago…). I am still trying to figure out the new country (Belgium) I found a job and relocated to at the moment
I’ve been a digital nomad for almost 20 years now as a software engineer. It’s by far the best way to live imo especially if you can have remote income. The world is incredible, there are so many places, so many cultures, so many people to connect with - living in a single location seems like missing out.
I went from US to UK. It was the easiest way out, as a dual citizen by birth. Still hard, with a baby and a wife in tow, neither UK citizens, during a pandemic. My job did a lot of legwork for me, incorporated a subsidiary in the UK for me to work here remotely.
Our families have only been American for roughly one generation so far (bar one or two grandparents), I’m just taking us back to one of our home countries, belatedly. Philippines seemed like a non-starter, as did Croatia. The UK has a lot of the same problems as the US, but at a different scale.
The craziest part was that until we emigrated, we’d never even been to the UK. But we had a certainty several years ago that America was going where we couldn’t follow. I wish I could have travelled more, growing up.
I’d say it was worth it. I just wish I had more cards in my hand to choose from, or that the UK was still in the EU. Whole world’s a mess these days though, just playing the hand I’ve been dealt.
Moved from Austria to the Netherlands at the age of 19. I moved in with my (then) boyfriend so that made the transition easier.
It was weirdly more of a culture shock than I had anticipated. Mainly because lots of things (besides the architecture) are so similar that the differences kind of sneak up on you. Having German and English as a base made Dutch easy enough. Got an advanced language certificate and ended up getting the nationality, found a study I liked and plenty of job opportunities. It has been over 15 years now and I regret nothing.
The only thing that didn’t work out was that relationship.
Moved from Germany to the Bay Area in 2017. Was an interesting experience, I now understand why they hate health insurance so much. Overall it wasn’t half as good as they make it out to be. We were lucky since we could afford it but I don’t want to live in that place.
Moved to Vancouver right before Covid hit and we’re not going to go back to Germany except to visit friends and family. It’s weird to see how conservative and backwards the whole country is and will forever be. With AFD on the rise and the overall negative attitude of Germans we don’t miss it one bit. Canada is much nicer and we’re dual citizens now 👍
My family moved from Mainland China to the US in around 2010. I was a kid so I did not have a choice, but I do remember being excited about it. When I got here, things were rough, language barrier, and ptsd lingering from my abusive older brother made it hard to socialize, I didn’t have much friends. So I didn’t like it too much at first, but I did like how there were just so much more trees even in the city (I mean not really city-city, more like suburban ourskirts of a City, Brooklyn I mean), air feels cleaner in the US, my mother thought the same too. I’ve grown too used to western media, I can never live in Mainland China ever again, the only options for me are now mostly other western countries lile Canada and Australia. As for the US, I liked it until November 2024, now it feels like a foreign army has invaded the country, doesn’t feel very like “America” anymore. But I still prefer the US to Mainland China, even as of today.
My parents, even though they are PRC-Sympathizers (to clarify, they’re NOT communists, just “homesick” I guess), never seriously talked about wanting to go back, dual citizenship doesn’t exist in China, and my mother already got US citizenship so I don’t know if PRC even restores revoked citizenships.
Was it worth it? I mean… idk, but I definitely had access to more entertainment content than I ever could in Mainland China, so in that aspect, yes, absolutely. I don’t think I could’ve ever tolerated China, I mean, being practically the only person who has a sibling would be very weird (I’m the second child in my family born during one child policy), Hukou situation is messed up, Toxic Masculinity is 2x worse, massive corruption problems, food safety problems, child abductions/trafficking that authorities don’t care about, the infamous 豆腐渣工程 (tofu-dreg)… it mean its absolutely just cooked.
(But then… November 2024 happened… So yea, the US is becoming like China all over again. Jesus christ, my life is torture, pretty sure this is a simulation and this is some High-Tech torture chamber by the Galactic Empire.)
TLDR: I wished it was Norway instead, but I’ll accept US over mainland China.
Hey, i am commenting here because it’s for OP… how did they get that chick flair? 🤔
Moved from the US to Germany in 2023 through my work (and the EU Blue Card). It has been life changing and I want to stay forever, eventually becoming a citizen and renouncing my US citizenship.
AMA
What has changed about your life?
So much!
The things that I immediately felt:
- I sold my car, I walk or travel by train/bus everywhere. It’s less dangerous, it’s more calm, I can write or read or game while going anywhere, and it costs me a flat €50 a month which is far less than gas+insurance+loan+maintenance of a car.
- related but I moved from a suburban environment in the US to a city environment in Germany. There are multiple grocery stores, restaurants, parks, and hobby spaces within 4 blocks and there’s not a single patch of harmful grass anywhere lol. Hated living in identical boxes with Monolithic grass borders and absolutely nothing nearby - felt like a constant reminder of our societal failings. Now I pick up groceries by backpack and recognize people in the city.
- as a renter I had to buy my own kitchen, sounds like a negative, is a negative in some ways, but now I have a well designed kitchen with an induction stovetop and a steam+convection oven. No more poorly designed kitchens maintained by landlords that don’t care with cheap appliances. No more forced gas stoves or electric coils. I cook nearly every day and the change in stove was a meaningful upgrade in my life, even coming from a kinda nice gas stove (cause gas is just that much worse than induction).
- I kept almost the identical job, my pay stayed the same and my purchasing power went up and my costs went down, I was automatically included in a union so my job security has never been higher, and I got 6 weeks of vacation automatically instead of the 3. I doubled my vacation! That is such an unbelievably life changing difference that I’ll do everything in my power to never go down from that value - and honestly make more major life decisions based around getting that number up. I feel like I work meaningfully less and have more time for hobbies and big vacations and if I could give one thing to every American for a year I’d pick this and I’m positive there would be a revolution within a week of it being reversed.
- I lived in KC. By car you could get to St. Louis or Des Moines, Topeka, Wichita, or Omaha within 4 hours of driving. If you’ve been to any of those cities, I’d argue (and I’m sorry about this) but only St. Louis really crossed the boundary of “worth it” as far as “places worth visiting multiple times”. Now I’m 3 hours away from Paris by train. Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, cologne are all within 5 hours. Zürich, Hamburg, Amsterdam, I think are right on the cusp of that timeline. All by train, less than €100 tickets for all of them which again isn’t far off the gas I’d have paid for getting to St. Louis and back. To get to Paris for cheaper and quicker while being able to do things instead of driving the whole time… I mean that is just unbelievable. So weekend trips or day trips have vastly improved.
- booked multiple dentist appointments for cleaning and wisdom teeth removal. It has always been fast, free, and high quality. Nothing super remarkable because I had “good” “insurance” in the US but here it felt less like a capitalist racket and more like a neighbor who happens to be a dentist taking care of the city.
- Germany does this weird thing where Sunday everything is closed. It’s low-key annoying because that’s one of the two days you have off so like you want to shop and get groceries and what have you. BUT the benefit is nearly everyone has Sunday off so gatherings on Sunday have been Ultra-effektive. I have had multiple DND groups meeting regularly on Sunday, it’s made scheduling so easy.
- I’ve felt the news be slightly better with a functioning government. When I moved here, for the first two years A) things were passing their equivalent of Congress and B) those things were good news like easier path towards citizenship and weed decriminalization and investing in public transit. Now that was the traffic light coalition, which got back stabbed by the traitorous FDP Party (who are kinda likes tea party or free market Republicans, think deregulate everything and help the rich under the guise of being good people and trickle down economics). Unfortunately because of the SPD’s (their centralist Democrats) unwillingness to run on wealth inequality and general slow nature, we’re back to a CDU based government (their Republicans pre-trump) with the threat of the AfD looming large (their Republicans Post-Trump but also in some ways more extreme and in others less extreme (this comment may not age well with the US’s current trajectory)). So the news has once again turned sour and I once again feel like I’m in a country of people losing the information and class war and we’re hovering over the slow self destruct button. BUT FOR A MOMENT IN TIME, the first time maybe in my life, I experienced a working government doing generally good things for its constituents and it was inspiring.
Those are the things I’ve felt most readily. But there have been numerous statistical improvements that I want to highlight:
- odds of getting violently hurt in anyway plummeted. Of course gun violence went to zero.
- average education went up
- average age when married and having kids went up
- risk of bankruptcy for any reason plummeted
- risk of losing my job went down, but also my salary due to an accident, pregnancy (i can’t but just to be clear protecting women in the workplace is cool lol), major illness.
- cost of healthcare went down, I felt the lack of a monthly charge but taxes went up so it felt more like a wash which is why I’m including it here. The fact that every prescription has been free or less than €20 has been noticeable. Still I haven’t felt the lack of financial shock from a major illness or that whole experience so I’m placing it here.
Moved from the US to the Netherlands in 2023 and regret nothing. The opportunity came in the form of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. It makes it ridiculously easy for Americans to move to the Netherlands, if you are self employed. It worked for me to move, and when my business went sideways due to my main client screwing me over, I got a normal Dutch job as a highly-skilled migrant.
Downsides:
- Pay is decidedly lower compared to American salaries (but pretty good compared to Dutch standards)
- Spicy food is rare
- Korean food is also pretty rare
- Good Mexican food is borderline nonexistent. My coworkers saw nothing wrong with “cheese flavored yogurt” being applied to nacho chips instead of actual cheese. I once tried a local restaurant’s nachos and got a plate of chips covered in a really sweet ketchup.
- While everybody speaks English pretty well, you WILL want to learn basic Dutch to better understand important legal or medical meetings. But you should be learning the native language anyway, no matter where you go.
Benefits:
- Everything I need is within walking or a short bicycle distance
- Nobody is going to shoot me here
- I can get medical treatment without going bankrupt
- Health insurance doesn’t cost as much as rent
- My asthma inhaler doesn’t cost 1/4th of my rent
- High fructose corn syrup is rarely found here (it gives me migraines)
- The cities are more attractive (more appealing architecture)
- The roads are damned near immaculate. I don’t drive here because I don’t need to, but on the rare occasion I’m in a car it’s impossible to not notice how good the roads are. I have crossed the country from Schiphol to Nijmegen and didn’t see a single pothole anywhere, in roughly two hours on the road. Seriously, they could spend 10 or 20% less on the roads and still have what would be the best roads anywhere in N.America by comparison.
- The work-life balance is insanely better (I get 35 paid days off a year, starting from the moment I started working). I can tell my boss I’m sick and that’s that. If I move to a new home I get a free day off.
- Trains are much more enjoyable for traveling between cities than driving; I’ve been reading so much lately
- Dutch is a pretty accessible language if you’re a native English speaker that already understands some basics of German
- Nearly everybody speaks English better than the people I grew up with in the mid-west
- A huge amount of Europe is only a single day’s travel away
- Store workers here aren’t obviously beaten and ground into a raw bundle of nerves and depression like in the US. Of course it’s not a workers paradise by any means, but people generally seem more genuinely happy.
- So many restaurants have patios or tent covered tables to enjoy a drink or meal while staying outside to enjoy the weather when it is good
- Food from Suriname is really good, as are frikandelbroodje and kaassouffle
- Nijmegen’s Vierdaagse can be a blast, the whole old/inner city becomes a giant festival
There’s probably more benefits, but those are the highlights for me. All around though, the biggest advantage is that I can easily see a much better future for myself and my wife in the Netherlands than I can in the US.
This is an amazing rundown and I can appreciate how most of the downsides are food-based.
I can tell my boss I’m sick and that’s that.
This is huge, it’s exhausting to have to deal with the fallout of calling in sick that I sometimes work through it so I don’t have to deal with the bs.
Edited formatting
I almost asked my boss like 20 years ago while I was vacationing near Amsterdam with my girlfriend-now-wife about moving to The Netherlands as we had an office there, but never did. Still wonder how different life would have turned out. It’s an amazing country.
Isn’t there a housing problem atleast in Amsterdam?
There is, nationwide.
But also everywhere else in Europe, and everywhere in the US that I would be willing to live. What can you do eh?
Really in germany too?
The only places without a housing crisis at the moment are places where nobody wants to live.
very much, yes
I’m sorry but you lost me at the lack of food options
There are probably more food options than most U.S cities, just not the same ones.
Good food does exist, it just takes some time and effort to find out where to go and where should be blacklisted. And there’s like three good Mexican restaurants in the whole country.
Well, in Europe we have considerably less mexicans. But in exchange you get lots of Italian, French, Spanish, Belgian, Turkish/Mediterranean and specially in the Netherlands, Indonesian cuisine.
3 in the whole country basically means there’s always one at most a 1.5h drive away.
One redeemable thing in the US of A is that we have melting pot areas with lots of food options. Just the other day I had great Sri Lankan food
The melting pot of flavours is there in NL, just not so much in a place like Nijmegen. Go to Den Haag, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and you’ll find whatever you want.
I’ll definitely check those out when I go to NL
We also have heaping piles of fascism here
Wait until you hear about the ruling party in the Netherlands
Oh I thought the same thing.
Spicy food - eh I guess I could ship in hot sauces etc. No biggie Korean food - damn…that really sucks but Mexican food - dammit, I’m done
I always joke with the wife about opening restaurants for hard to find cuisine wherever we evetually move to. Currently that’s legit BBQ for the PNW if we end up there.
A company was willing to sponsor my visa and pay for relocation costs. Was it worth it? In some other world it might have been, but the way it went for me - absolutely not.
If your entry point into a society is work, make really really sure you will like it. “Culture fit”, despite all the criticisms of the concept, is more important than ever. And make sure the initial social circle you fall into is conductive to your mental wellbeing.
In some ways it’s like being born. Your starting point matters. Anything you achieved previously doesn’t matter since your entire support system will be gone.
All you say depends heavily on where you came from and where you went, but also what job you got. Which is quite clear from the post and yet you mentioned nothing of that.
Do you want to elaborate?
and they were never seen again
Well, not much else to say. Actually a lot more to say but to a therapist. I made some really bad choices in life, and suffered the consequences. A rags to riches to rags story.
Giving more specific details would go into doxxing territory.
Hey, I did that!
Engineer in my 30s. We packed up and left the US after I got a job in the EU (pre 2nd trump). It’s been awesome!
Super hard some days, lots of learning, cultural norming, work, job problems, language learning, social circle building, but it’s very fulfilling and I think it’s a better lifestyle fit for us.
Highly recommend it if you can swing it. And if you do, jump all in.
Glad that’s been working out for you!
What were some things you did that made the hard things less hard?
What went really well?
Who is “we” that moved with you?
Thinking about doing the same thing, working on getting my EU passport now.
No EU passport for me sadly, just a visa. If I could get one I super would want to.
We is my partner and I. Very much a team effort.
great question. I think giving yourself some grace has been a hard but helpful part. Like you will probably not have the bandwidth for keeping the house as clean, the working out, the self improvement, etc etc. Just even giving myself extra time to go to the store and extra space to make boring or meh meals has helped.
Beyond that, all the stuff you’d expect. Putting yourself out there. Listening. Money never hurts (and can help fix certain problems). Friends (from afar and close) are huge.
I began volunteering shortly after arriving and it helped make me a friend circle. I love hanging with them and already can’t wait for Thanksgiving here!
Moved from EU to US during Trump1/just before COVID. Loved the pay check, the weather and the nature, hated the work culture, the food culture, the lack of culture, the lack of a social net and of social cohesion, the ingrained racism.
Moved from US to Germany, liked it but didn’t love it. Loved to social net and the beer gardens, the parks and public transport, struggled making connections and learning the language.
Moved from Germany to France, loved it. Great food, great weather, good work life balance, great social net, amazing food and good culture, people are friendly and welcoming (not in Paris or overly touristy places). Only downside is being away from family and having to build my social circle again.
You don’t think French do weird shit all the time?
Maybe you are French yourself.Not French, but from nearby. Culturally very similar. I really understood how much cultural expectations are deeply ingrained, and how much they play a tole in making me feel “at home”.
There are still things that French people do that I find odd, but not overly much, and more in a cute way than an annoying one.
I was offered a job that payed much better than my old one. So I’d say it’s well worth it.
Downside is that it takes years to build up a new social circle when you’re in late 30s (might vary with personality).
In Germany the trick is joining a Verein (club). Instant social circle.
I would say it was worth it. I moved from the Netherlands to Germany for three years for a Master’s and then to Canada for a PhD and stayed there and got a job. It’s a great way to experience different cultures (though all Western of course).
For the move to Germany, it was really easy. It’s all EU so all I had to really do was register at the Kreisverwaltungsreferat. I had also applied for a grant to study abroad so that paid the tuition as well as the rent. Tuition in Germany is very low by the way. It was also a great way to build independence since I had to rely a lot on myself, having come all alone.
I did meet my lovely Canadian spouse there, so there was the opportunity to move to yet another country. Immigration is a massive pain, even when married to a Canadian, but it all worked out with student visa, permanent resident, and finally citizen. Took years!
The downside is of course being 6000km away from my family. Especially from my parents who are not getting any younger. So it’s hard to be there for them if something happens. But overall, I would say it was worth it. The experiences have been great and I get to spread ideas that work well from places I’ve been to my new home in Canada. The lack of proper licorice here is baffling though!
I live in rural Canada, our local (left coast) grocery has the palm-oil-free NZ licorice RJ’s, which is pretty good, and a specialty confectionery in the village nearby has some great icelandic licorice but it’s expensive.
But at 6K km I guess you are on the prairies, so good luck on the licorice hunt eh!
I moved for work. I jokingly asked my boss one day if I could relocate and did not expect an easy yes. 2 years after asking, I was in another country. Was it worth it? Yes. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and not many people get the chance, so I took it. I didn’t even care what city I was going to end up in (we have multiple offices in across the country).
I did end up in a different city than what was initially planned, but for someone in my situation (wanting to get out of a 3rd world country), beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve since settled in with my wife. Assimilating wasn’t an issue because my home country is very exposed to western culture and we’re fluent in the language.
EU free movement and hell yes. It’s so good I emigrated twice.
And you had to tell us about it thrice!
Guess the first move wasn’t so good after all? If you did it again
or it turned out so great that when presented the opportunity they were excited to do so
