Well said Laurie, I was born in Italy and emigrated in Canada with family when I was ten. Now at 69 I spend 8 months in Tuscany and four back home. In montreal I have my sons, my grandchildren, my friends and siblings. That’s the only reason of the 4 months back home. Yes I went trough everything you mentioned about lifestyle and bureaucracy but I feel and look 10 years younger when I’m there. It just fits my lifestyle and the socialization that at the beginning I found frustrating because of its slow pace, now I realize how beneficial it is to our wellbeing. And it’s funny my cholesterol level has never been so low even with all the cheeses and prosciutto and gelato I indulge.
Finding balance in our lifestyle and a peaceful soul makes the difference.
I’m not rich, and I do wish I could have relocated my children to Europe when I married my Dutch husband 18 years ago. My kids were minors, so I couldn’t take them out of the country away from their bio dad. But my husband’s life is far harder here in the U.S. than it would have been if he’d stayed in Europe. There’s no comparison. I feel rather guilty that he had to give up so much just to marry me. And I’m jealous of the easier lives his family members live.
Life is softer in much of Europe, certainly. When moving aboard, as in much of life our choices are a series of tradeoffs; we give up something to get another thing—your husband, in my humble opinion, made a good choice.
I actually just moved to France (Nice) just two months today. While I’m glad to have more distance between me and the US and the 24/7 news cycle, living in France is different than visiting France. On the plus side, you can actually budget more than on vacation. But the things that harder is day to day communication missteps. The phone for a non-French speaker has been a much bigger problem for me. The other is if you are coming alone, even a loner like myself, can feel very isolating. Not having an „in case of emergency“ contact is also very anxiety producing. Family is the one aspect I didn’t really factor in as being so important. I’m not headed back to the US, but I do have family in Germany and I also have more cultural things in common. Sometimes you just have to take a leap.
YES YES YES! I read the same piece and did much sighing.
I’m a European who has spent most of my adult life as an expat in various countries including the US. I want to scream at the dull and relentless rose-tinting and the wild, unrecognized privilege that underlies so many of these very online accounts of life in ‘Europe’. Truly all it says to me is that you probably haven’t lived there long enough, or engaged with real life deeply enough to know that everywhere is a little bit wonderful and a little bit terrible in its own way.
American terribleness is quite unique and very publicly discussed, but every place has their darkness and struggle even if you don’t happen to see it or experience it and there is always a trade-off.
An expat occupies such a privileged space - you have the resources, education, passport, skills - things almost always bewstowed upon you by the happy accident of your upbringing in your home country - to be able to move yourself, to pay for lawyers and visas and shipping and cover the mad upfront costs of securing accommodation. Plus you almost always have the option to leave if something better presents itself or if shit gets a bit gnarly.
Being freed from the cultural baggage being raised somewhere saddles you with, you get to choose what you do or don’t engage with. You can be in, or you can be out. You can claim what you like and reject what you don’t. Shine the diamonds, ignore the shit. Or even worse, romanticize or minimize the shit! Nothing more than a good story to tell over an apero.
I still straddle a few countries as is the nature of the beast, and it makes me roar to hear people talking about say Paris as some kind of utopia. I love Paris, I’d probably move back if the opportunity arose, but my friends there are worrying about most of the things I am. Impossible work-life balance, long hours, a culture of presenteeism, rising costs, the hell of childcare, the rise of the far-right, racism, an increasingly divided population, our kids getting bullied, social media, climate change etc. I hate when their normal, layered, complex experience is glossed over because of some cliched fantasy people love to peddle.
I remember not long ago reading a suggested IG post from a US family who had moved to London. In it they were talking about how the biggest surprise of their move had been how friendly and community-focused the city was. Which was obviously met with howls of laughter and confusion from actual Londoners who could have spent a month describing the place and still not got to those words. It’s not to say that the original family’s experience was wrong, but to recognize that what we want to see and what we have the privilege of not-seeing when we step into this space, often influences us way more than the reality of where we actually are. It’s often the perspective shift which feels like freedom.
After spending 6 months in Italy and recently returning a few thoughts:
1. Thank goodness that Europe is different, if not there would be no reason to go there. I am always amazed when I read about people that want to live in an expat mini community in Europe.
Why ? Why leave here if that’s what you want. If you constantly compare Europe to the US, why?
You should learn to live like the natives, there’s a lot to learn. There’s good and bad both places.
2. There are things that each continent does better than the other one. My wife has her dual citizenship with Italy and because of her, so do our grandchildren. They plan to go to college for free there. Wow, I wish my college was paid for.
3. As Americans, we work very hard and lose sight of many valuable things like family and something other than money.
4. Realistic expectations, enough said.
5. After our return and re entry to America life, I came to the conclusion that there’s a lot of bureaucracy here too, it’s just different.
6. Respect for veterans. I was drafted and forced to join the Army. I was spit on at airports. Our commander in chief, who never served, calls us suckers and losers. Veterans Day, what a joke, I have never had a Veterans Day off work ever. The bankers, postal workers and etc that never served, get the day off. Hummmm
Europe isn’t a Dr Phil, thankfully, never will. If that’s what you need, see a health care provider, at your expense.
The tension between what Americans are looking for in the age of MAGA emigration and what the places they are fleeing to need from them is not discussed enough.
Great read! I think it's also fair to say that the matter of privilege also goes beyond just being nor being American, but also what type of American. I'm from València (Spain) and go often to visit family and friends up in Catalonia, and what's fair to say is that most (if not virtually all) of the American immigrants we receive are white, middle to upper class and definitely from the "better off" regions of the US; seldom does one see black Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx, etc. (being Latinx myself, I can assure that Latinx people who come here do so from actual Latin America, not the US). And that wave of mostly white, well-off Americans coming here does little to dispel the idea of Europe being a white continent, a perfectly pristine and immaculate area of the world without the woes and worries of "illegal" immigration.
On my daily routine I see group after group, both in my own country (the Valencian Country) as well as in aforementioned Catalonia, of Americans, white, middle-aged, possibly considering themselves a type of "progressive" who come to our shores and expect no less than a pseudo-socialist paradise (pretty much what the disenfrancihsed Bernie voters seemed to expect). A paradise in which they refuse to participate, rarely acknowledging the realities of governments who constantly prey upon the weak and downtrodden, of a crumbling social system because of all of these well-off immigrants (so-called "expats", a word which can only but arouse shivers when I hear it be spouted by someone in conversation) who do not contribute to our larger (and very much failing) economy, who think that because they go to fancy cafés and pretty little bars with 17 euro cocktails they're helping keep said economy afloat, going to at-the-park yoga sessions with a teacher who also isn't Spanish (they're probably German or Dutch); generally just being glorified long-term tourists do naught but contribute to a society (in València in particular, but Spain and to a degree Europe as a whole) which is losing any kind of self-identity and character by the second, a society learning more and more to follow the "American way", in which we're expected now to work for more and more hours and lesser and lesser pay, open up on Sundays, consume the worst of fast food and buy everything thru Amazon and fast-fashion chains.
Americans see our "slow living" on beautiful Mediterranean beaches as a paradise, and they're destroying said paradise by its continued and unending idealisation. Just in the past month, the central counties of my country were hit by the heaviest rains and floods seen in a century, our villages and cities absolutely destroyed under 4-10 metres of water, mud and debris, but that did not affect the capital city, and it thusly had no effect upon these glorified sojourners, parties were still raging on, shops and businesses in the better-off parts of town were still in business with their stream of white, well-off, Americans, Dutch, Germans, etc. They'll post a story on the Instagram, about how sorry and sad they might be for the loss of life (thoughts and prayers, even) but their US dollars and euros and buying of 10 euro coffee and bread won't do anything. Their European paradise is, simply put, a postcard, a background on their Instagram posts to their familes over yonder the Atlantic, not a life to live and respect, in which real people live and die, love and cry, work and seek employment, party and stay home, speak languages experiencing slow and painful deaths by means of having to accomodate to foreigners who'll never treat us like people; but as an open-air zoo, pictures are taken of our beautiful centuries-old edifices, but their histories and those of their neighbours shan't ever touch their ears.
Thanks for your comment. I think your perspective has been missing from the conversation. In a world where immigrants are made the enemy, how do we make sense of expats (which is a term I use for temporary residents in a foreign country by choice) and the impact they have on a community? I would also add, that the decision isn’t the expats to make. I literally winced when I read “thoughts and prayers” for the flood victims—it’s so utterly tone deaf.
I lived in Paris and London as a trader in the mid to late 90s, then retired to Spain in ‘06. It was a no-brainer for me. I preferred the lifestyle here after flourishing professionally. And it was easy to leave NY as I never considered any place else in the US. I grew up in the South Bronx and enjoyed a great public education so I always cast a critical eye at US policy. I had childhood Spanish and high-school French so it was a combination of assets that led me here and I’m quite content. The best thing about much of Europe is that one can lead a dignified life without a lot of money. Priceless.
I have happily lived the Netherlands for almost 30 years, I moved for a job and then set up my own company 10 years later. I love living here, but I didn’t do it to escape, i did it because my job brought me here - and then when they wanted me to move back, I didn’t, because I had a teenager that wanted to finish secondary education here with his friends. And by the time he went back to the US for university, I enjoyed what I was doing and have felt integrated here in my country of choice. But I still have my US passport and I still recognise the benefits of both places - and the negative things of both places. And I find Dutch bureaucracy to be no less frustrating than that of Italy! I’m retirement age now - and I have a small Dutch pension. And unlike what it would cost me in the US, I can manage here on my pensions - and I can walk to everything I need, doctor, pharmacy, physio, groceries, theater, cinema, and so forth. I haven’t had support from a “socialist” state, but then I have also been happy to pay generally around 40% of my income in taxes, because it funded the pension I have now, and for many years here, my health insurance. We have a marketplace for insurance now, but it is still incredibly affordable compared to the US, and the quality of care is fantastic, which is really useful as one ages! But I don’t think moving anywhere ever solves your problems, because wherever you go, you literally take them with you.
Bravo. What strikes me as a far more realistic and rewarding option, is to bring home and truly incorporate into our American lives some of the cultural touchstones and customs we revered in our travels elsewhere - even if it was journeyed within a novel.
Good points, Elizabeth. It's easy for us to have a 'the grass is greener on the other side' type of perspective towards these sort of things.
When it comes to the West, one main reason for this is how such societies are portrayed by the media and system in general.... when in fact there are many systemic problems brought about by neoliberal capitalism in these countries.
Well said Laurie, I was born in Italy and emigrated in Canada with family when I was ten. Now at 69 I spend 8 months in Tuscany and four back home. In montreal I have my sons, my grandchildren, my friends and siblings. That’s the only reason of the 4 months back home. Yes I went trough everything you mentioned about lifestyle and bureaucracy but I feel and look 10 years younger when I’m there. It just fits my lifestyle and the socialization that at the beginning I found frustrating because of its slow pace, now I realize how beneficial it is to our wellbeing. And it’s funny my cholesterol level has never been so low even with all the cheeses and prosciutto and gelato I indulge.
Finding balance in our lifestyle and a peaceful soul makes the difference.
Love hearing how happy you are!
I’m not rich, and I do wish I could have relocated my children to Europe when I married my Dutch husband 18 years ago. My kids were minors, so I couldn’t take them out of the country away from their bio dad. But my husband’s life is far harder here in the U.S. than it would have been if he’d stayed in Europe. There’s no comparison. I feel rather guilty that he had to give up so much just to marry me. And I’m jealous of the easier lives his family members live.
Life is softer in much of Europe, certainly. When moving aboard, as in much of life our choices are a series of tradeoffs; we give up something to get another thing—your husband, in my humble opinion, made a good choice.
We have a happy marriage but he carries a much heavier burden here.
Maybe this might help?!:
https://federicosotodelalba.substack.com/p/sci-and-math-are-having-a-conversation?r=4up0lp
FYI? If you can afford to live in Italy, you have luxury problems.
I actually just moved to France (Nice) just two months today. While I’m glad to have more distance between me and the US and the 24/7 news cycle, living in France is different than visiting France. On the plus side, you can actually budget more than on vacation. But the things that harder is day to day communication missteps. The phone for a non-French speaker has been a much bigger problem for me. The other is if you are coming alone, even a loner like myself, can feel very isolating. Not having an „in case of emergency“ contact is also very anxiety producing. Family is the one aspect I didn’t really factor in as being so important. I’m not headed back to the US, but I do have family in Germany and I also have more cultural things in common. Sometimes you just have to take a leap.
It’s always so, so difficult in the beginning. The loneliness is real. Gregory Garretson has an excellent post about that.
https://livingelsewhere.substack.com/p/how-not-to-lose-your-friends-when
Canada???
this reminded me of 2018, when bolsonaro had won the elections here in brazil and a friend asked me if i intended to leave the country.
i said no, arguing that it’s shitty everywhere, especially for a latin american immigrant.
she not only disagreed with me, but she also said that my generalization was dumb.
she is not longer a friend and, of course, she was american.
Game changing reading, very clarifying and mind opening! Love it 🥰🤯
YES YES YES! I read the same piece and did much sighing.
I’m a European who has spent most of my adult life as an expat in various countries including the US. I want to scream at the dull and relentless rose-tinting and the wild, unrecognized privilege that underlies so many of these very online accounts of life in ‘Europe’. Truly all it says to me is that you probably haven’t lived there long enough, or engaged with real life deeply enough to know that everywhere is a little bit wonderful and a little bit terrible in its own way.
American terribleness is quite unique and very publicly discussed, but every place has their darkness and struggle even if you don’t happen to see it or experience it and there is always a trade-off.
An expat occupies such a privileged space - you have the resources, education, passport, skills - things almost always bewstowed upon you by the happy accident of your upbringing in your home country - to be able to move yourself, to pay for lawyers and visas and shipping and cover the mad upfront costs of securing accommodation. Plus you almost always have the option to leave if something better presents itself or if shit gets a bit gnarly.
Being freed from the cultural baggage being raised somewhere saddles you with, you get to choose what you do or don’t engage with. You can be in, or you can be out. You can claim what you like and reject what you don’t. Shine the diamonds, ignore the shit. Or even worse, romanticize or minimize the shit! Nothing more than a good story to tell over an apero.
I still straddle a few countries as is the nature of the beast, and it makes me roar to hear people talking about say Paris as some kind of utopia. I love Paris, I’d probably move back if the opportunity arose, but my friends there are worrying about most of the things I am. Impossible work-life balance, long hours, a culture of presenteeism, rising costs, the hell of childcare, the rise of the far-right, racism, an increasingly divided population, our kids getting bullied, social media, climate change etc. I hate when their normal, layered, complex experience is glossed over because of some cliched fantasy people love to peddle.
I remember not long ago reading a suggested IG post from a US family who had moved to London. In it they were talking about how the biggest surprise of their move had been how friendly and community-focused the city was. Which was obviously met with howls of laughter and confusion from actual Londoners who could have spent a month describing the place and still not got to those words. It’s not to say that the original family’s experience was wrong, but to recognize that what we want to see and what we have the privilege of not-seeing when we step into this space, often influences us way more than the reality of where we actually are. It’s often the perspective shift which feels like freedom.
currently in europe and i agree!
After spending 6 months in Italy and recently returning a few thoughts:
1. Thank goodness that Europe is different, if not there would be no reason to go there. I am always amazed when I read about people that want to live in an expat mini community in Europe.
Why ? Why leave here if that’s what you want. If you constantly compare Europe to the US, why?
You should learn to live like the natives, there’s a lot to learn. There’s good and bad both places.
2. There are things that each continent does better than the other one. My wife has her dual citizenship with Italy and because of her, so do our grandchildren. They plan to go to college for free there. Wow, I wish my college was paid for.
3. As Americans, we work very hard and lose sight of many valuable things like family and something other than money.
4. Realistic expectations, enough said.
5. After our return and re entry to America life, I came to the conclusion that there’s a lot of bureaucracy here too, it’s just different.
6. Respect for veterans. I was drafted and forced to join the Army. I was spit on at airports. Our commander in chief, who never served, calls us suckers and losers. Veterans Day, what a joke, I have never had a Veterans Day off work ever. The bankers, postal workers and etc that never served, get the day off. Hummmm
Europe isn’t a Dr Phil, thankfully, never will. If that’s what you need, see a health care provider, at your expense.
The tension between what Americans are looking for in the age of MAGA emigration and what the places they are fleeing to need from them is not discussed enough.
Great read! I think it's also fair to say that the matter of privilege also goes beyond just being nor being American, but also what type of American. I'm from València (Spain) and go often to visit family and friends up in Catalonia, and what's fair to say is that most (if not virtually all) of the American immigrants we receive are white, middle to upper class and definitely from the "better off" regions of the US; seldom does one see black Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx, etc. (being Latinx myself, I can assure that Latinx people who come here do so from actual Latin America, not the US). And that wave of mostly white, well-off Americans coming here does little to dispel the idea of Europe being a white continent, a perfectly pristine and immaculate area of the world without the woes and worries of "illegal" immigration.
On my daily routine I see group after group, both in my own country (the Valencian Country) as well as in aforementioned Catalonia, of Americans, white, middle-aged, possibly considering themselves a type of "progressive" who come to our shores and expect no less than a pseudo-socialist paradise (pretty much what the disenfrancihsed Bernie voters seemed to expect). A paradise in which they refuse to participate, rarely acknowledging the realities of governments who constantly prey upon the weak and downtrodden, of a crumbling social system because of all of these well-off immigrants (so-called "expats", a word which can only but arouse shivers when I hear it be spouted by someone in conversation) who do not contribute to our larger (and very much failing) economy, who think that because they go to fancy cafés and pretty little bars with 17 euro cocktails they're helping keep said economy afloat, going to at-the-park yoga sessions with a teacher who also isn't Spanish (they're probably German or Dutch); generally just being glorified long-term tourists do naught but contribute to a society (in València in particular, but Spain and to a degree Europe as a whole) which is losing any kind of self-identity and character by the second, a society learning more and more to follow the "American way", in which we're expected now to work for more and more hours and lesser and lesser pay, open up on Sundays, consume the worst of fast food and buy everything thru Amazon and fast-fashion chains.
Americans see our "slow living" on beautiful Mediterranean beaches as a paradise, and they're destroying said paradise by its continued and unending idealisation. Just in the past month, the central counties of my country were hit by the heaviest rains and floods seen in a century, our villages and cities absolutely destroyed under 4-10 metres of water, mud and debris, but that did not affect the capital city, and it thusly had no effect upon these glorified sojourners, parties were still raging on, shops and businesses in the better-off parts of town were still in business with their stream of white, well-off, Americans, Dutch, Germans, etc. They'll post a story on the Instagram, about how sorry and sad they might be for the loss of life (thoughts and prayers, even) but their US dollars and euros and buying of 10 euro coffee and bread won't do anything. Their European paradise is, simply put, a postcard, a background on their Instagram posts to their familes over yonder the Atlantic, not a life to live and respect, in which real people live and die, love and cry, work and seek employment, party and stay home, speak languages experiencing slow and painful deaths by means of having to accomodate to foreigners who'll never treat us like people; but as an open-air zoo, pictures are taken of our beautiful centuries-old edifices, but their histories and those of their neighbours shan't ever touch their ears.
I reiterate, great article.
Thanks for your comment. I think your perspective has been missing from the conversation. In a world where immigrants are made the enemy, how do we make sense of expats (which is a term I use for temporary residents in a foreign country by choice) and the impact they have on a community? I would also add, that the decision isn’t the expats to make. I literally winced when I read “thoughts and prayers” for the flood victims—it’s so utterly tone deaf.
I lived in Paris and London as a trader in the mid to late 90s, then retired to Spain in ‘06. It was a no-brainer for me. I preferred the lifestyle here after flourishing professionally. And it was easy to leave NY as I never considered any place else in the US. I grew up in the South Bronx and enjoyed a great public education so I always cast a critical eye at US policy. I had childhood Spanish and high-school French so it was a combination of assets that led me here and I’m quite content. The best thing about much of Europe is that one can lead a dignified life without a lot of money. Priceless.
I have happily lived the Netherlands for almost 30 years, I moved for a job and then set up my own company 10 years later. I love living here, but I didn’t do it to escape, i did it because my job brought me here - and then when they wanted me to move back, I didn’t, because I had a teenager that wanted to finish secondary education here with his friends. And by the time he went back to the US for university, I enjoyed what I was doing and have felt integrated here in my country of choice. But I still have my US passport and I still recognise the benefits of both places - and the negative things of both places. And I find Dutch bureaucracy to be no less frustrating than that of Italy! I’m retirement age now - and I have a small Dutch pension. And unlike what it would cost me in the US, I can manage here on my pensions - and I can walk to everything I need, doctor, pharmacy, physio, groceries, theater, cinema, and so forth. I haven’t had support from a “socialist” state, but then I have also been happy to pay generally around 40% of my income in taxes, because it funded the pension I have now, and for many years here, my health insurance. We have a marketplace for insurance now, but it is still incredibly affordable compared to the US, and the quality of care is fantastic, which is really useful as one ages! But I don’t think moving anywhere ever solves your problems, because wherever you go, you literally take them with you.
There is something gentler about aging in Europe vs. the US.
Bravo. What strikes me as a far more realistic and rewarding option, is to bring home and truly incorporate into our American lives some of the cultural touchstones and customs we revered in our travels elsewhere - even if it was journeyed within a novel.
Love this!
Good points, Elizabeth. It's easy for us to have a 'the grass is greener on the other side' type of perspective towards these sort of things.
When it comes to the West, one main reason for this is how such societies are portrayed by the media and system in general.... when in fact there are many systemic problems brought about by neoliberal capitalism in these countries.
Yes, absolutely. The myth is the problem.