Are You One of the Few Americans Who Really Could Move to Europe?
Ten questions to ask yourself before you decide to move abroad
If you are considering moving to Europe, I want to offer you ten questions to ask yourself before you decide.
This Substack, Living Elsewhere, is all about the exhilaratingly glorious and incapacitatingly painful experience that is living in another culture, which usually means living in another country. This week, I want to focus on one specific aspect of this topic and address my fellow Americans who, in the wake of one particularly awful Tuesday, are wondering whether moving abroad might be an option for them.
I am focusing specifically on Europe, as that is where I have spent most of my adult life. Nevertheless, I suspect that the things I say here will apply to a move pretty much anywhere in the world. I will leave it to others to chime in and say what else people should consider when moving, say, to Africa, Asia or South America. I also suspect that Canada is a whole category unto itself.
There are many places to go for specific information about the mechanics of moving to another country, and some good Substack posts on specific countries such as Germany and Switzerland. But before you get to that point, I would like to propose a bit of serious self-reflection about whether you are the right sort of person to make such a momentous change in your life. So here are the ten questions that I would suggest you consider...
1. Are you a Security person or a Discovery person?
This will require some explanation, as this is a distinction I have invented myself. I have an amateur fascination with personality and the psychological field of trait theory, and I believe that there is one distinction that gets short shrift despite being hugely important in life.1
I propose that every one of us sits somewhere on a scale between the pure Security person and the pure Discovery person, representing the extent to which we are motivated primarily by fear or by curiosity. Obviously, all of us have fears (far more than we probably admit to), and all of us experience curiosity. But what I have noticed is that different individuals have different “set points” at which they feel comfortable.
Do you have lots of fixed daily rituals? Do you check in with your partner several times a day? Do you prefer to take the same vacation over and over? Do you even prefer staying home to traveling? When you visit a new city, do you find a restaurant you like and eat there multiple times? Do you tend to stay in relationships for a long time, even when they aren’t going well? Do you have a life insurance policy? If so, you may be more of a Security person. That’s fine; there’s nothing wrong with that—but it is highly relevant.
Or do you prefer spontaneity and variety? Do you take different routes to work on different days? Do you hate to do the same thing on vacation every year? Are you the sort of person who wants to try every restaurant in town at least once? Do you spend a lot of time dreaming about places you would like to visit? Do you tend to get into and out of relationships rather often (like, ahem, me)? If so, you may be more of a Discovery person. Again, that’s fine; there is no right or wrong. But in my experience, Discovery people are much more likely to be happy living abroad. Why? Because in all probability, you will never achieve the same level of comfort and security in another country that you had back home.
2. Do you have the patience and perseverance necessary to deal with setbacks?
Let’s be honest: moving to another country is one of the hardest things you will ever do. No matter how well you plan, things will always go sideways, and there will be an endless stream of surprises—some good, and some really not so good. Above all, as with every home-renovation project in history, things will take much longer than you expect. If you are a highly impatient person and are used to getting what you want when you want it, you will almost certainly not enjoy living abroad. Living in another country calls us to be very Zen.
A related issue is perseverance: After a setback, do you have the grit necessary to try something a second time? A third time? A fourth time? I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to give up and go... well, I wasn’t sure where, so I didn’t. But making things work in a foreign environment is a real test of resilience. It is not for the faint of heart.
Note that in a way, there is a tension between this question and the previous one: The ideal type for living abroad would be a Discovery person who is also both patient and perseverant. I’m not sure how common that is, though.
3. Do you have the emotional wherewithal and support you will need?
In a similar vein, living in a foreign country involves near-constant uncertainty, confusion, and disappointment. Dealing with this ably requires a certain emotional resilience. In my experience, some people have this built in—they are simply people who can weather the emotional ups and downs with reasonable aplomb. Then there are others who need to have a partner—someone who anchors them and keeps them sane when the world around them very much seems to want something different. And then there is a third type: the person who has a tight and well-functioning support network, even when those people are far away. You will need one of these three things in order to ride out the storms of living abroad.
4. Are you prepared to live far away from your family and friends?
People differ in terms of what kind of contact they need or expect with those they are close to. If you have always lived a few minutes away from your closest friends, you may find that suddenly having an ocean between you is like a wave of cold water in the face.2 If you have elderly parents or relatives who you want to be able to get back to on short notice, you will have to think long and hard not only about whether to leave the country, but also about transportation options for getting back. (In my case, even though Lisbon, where I now live, is in the corner of Europe, and thus lamentably far from most of my European friends, I am pleased that I can now get a direct flight to Boston and be in New England, where my family lives, in a matter of hours, should the need arise.)
The Internet obviously makes many things easier than they used to be, and staying in touch with people is no exception. With the options of email, texting, phone calls, video calls, and group video calls, staying in touch with family and friends is actually not that hard—but be prepared to deal with the very significant obstacle of time zone differences. I have one friend in California and another in Japan—a spread of 17 hours. Also, don’t forget the thing that most of us learned a long time ago: while social media claim to help us keep in touch with a lot of people, in reality they create a sense of keeping in touch without much substance behind it.
Oh, and if your plan is to simply make a lot of great new friends in your new place of residence, you may need to curb your enthusiasm. Depending on where you are moving to and how well you speak the language there (see below), you may find it excruciatingly difficult to create a new social network. In my case, for example, despite living in Sweden for years and speaking the language fluently, I found it so hard to develop the sorts of friendships I desired there that I eventually left.
5. Are you prepared to adopt a totally different lifestyle?
Now we start to get into the differences between life in the US and life in Europe (or anywhere else, really). Moving to Europe means leaving behind your American lifestyle and adopting a new one. Whatever you may think about Portugal being like California but with cod, or Paris being like every romantic comedy you have seen, you would do better to see moving to another country as being like moving to to a different planet. Because very quickly, that is how it will feel.
If you haven’t lived in Europe before, you should be prepared to discover, about once a day, a new thing that people do differently over here. Whether it’s how you shop for your groceries (yes, on foot; yes, in several different shops; yes, on a daily basis; yes, speaking the local language; yes, paying in cash) or how you do your laundry (in Sweden, every building has a communal laundry room, which is the subject of much regulation and much conflict; in Portugal, everyone’s knickers are waving out in the street), it will very likely be new and hard to get used to.
I heard a story recently here in Lisbon about a group of wealthy, white, expat American women who were having cocktails together, when one of them started airing the most outrageous grievances. She reportedly said, “I need your help! How can I get my neighbors to stop hanging their laundry outdoors?” In light of the fact that this is something that about 99% of people in Portugal do, one of the women purportedly said she couldn’t help with that, but could offer to draw her a map to the airport. Snap!
6. Are you prepared to accept a lower level of comfort and convenience?
Specifically, one thing that Americans need to come to terms with in moving basically anywhere else on the planet is this: The United States is the Land of Convenience. You don’t become the global leader in commercialism and marketing without selling an awful lot of shortcuts to people. And as a result, for decades Americans have been addicted to hundreds of things that cost a lot but make their life easier or more personalized: fast food, microwave meals, “drive-thrus” (it goes faster if you use fewer letters!), personal shoppers, personal trainers, babysitters, pet walkers, pet hotels, coffee shops that will make your drink in any of 6,000 variations, supermarkets that sell 800 kinds of high-fiber cereal, and so on and so forth. Many of these things cause Europeans to shake their heads sadly. It’s hard to explain how tasteless and, frankly, ridiculous the American obsession with convenience and “having it all” seems from over here.
So you will have to give up many or most of those things when you move. But you know what? Depending on where you move to, you may be surprised at how having fewer options available translates into things being easier, more affordable, and in many cases, simply better. My lunch today consisted of bread and olives, a delicious, entire grilled fish served with boiled potatoes, a salad, a half-pitcher of wine (post-election, you know), a bottle of mineral water, and a coffee (I skipped desert)—and the price was under 15 euros. But that’s Portugal; you can’t eat for that price in Scandinavia (though I used to do my taxes there in about five minutes), so do think carefully about what lifestyle you are after.
7. Are you prepared to make the massive effort required to learn a new language?
Sadly—and I say this as someone with a PhD in linguistics, so it’s extra-sad for me—most Americans do not take multilingualism seriously as a goal. In fact, the majority of people in the world are multilingual, and it is not uncommon for ordinary people to speak three or four languages on a daily basis. (I was told that if you want to be a high school teacher in Luxembourg, you have to be fluent in French, German, English, and Luxembourgish.)
Why do Americans, then, tend to speak nothing other than “good ol’ ‘Merican English”? Simplifying slightly, I would say that it’s due to four main factors:
People in the US grow up with no plan to move abroad (or even travel—50% of Americans don’t even have a passport!).
Americans see their country as the Greatest Nation on Earth, and so therefore other people should have to learn English, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, that is essentially how things are; English is spoken by 1.5 billion people around the globe, thus creating a perceived lack of need for English speakers to learn other languages.
American culture teaches laziness—see Question 6 above—and there is no shortcut to learning a language, no matter how many absurd claims you may see on Instagram these days.
Simply put, if you move to a country with a different national language, and you do not learn that language, you will never have a satisfying life in that country.3 Think about what you would say to an Austrian who moved to the United States and complained about how lonely they were because people insisted that they speak English rather than German.
If you do not wish to put in the thousands of hours required to learn another language, you really should consider moving to New Zealand, Canada (though not Quebec!), or some other English-speaking country. Nevertheless, some people do hope to move elsewhere and get by with just English. While that will work up to a point, depending on where you go, it will essentially restrict your life to that of a tourist—or worse, to that of a colonial-style overlord, something that will not go over well with the locals.
In Sweden, for example, while many people do speak English, your chances of making friends without speaking Swedish will be slim. If you dream of living in the Italian countryside, English will not really get you anywhere. In Germany or France or Spain or Portugal, the English speakers are mostly the younger half of the population, so if you are of retirement age and want friends in the same bracket, you would do best to start taking some language lessons before you do anything else.
8. Are you sufficiently familiar with the country you plan to move to?
Remembering that moving to another country is a lot like moving to another planet (see Question 5 above), it is a good idea to make sure you choose the right planet. Are you looking for something more like Naboo, Coruscant, or Tatooine? (Sorry if the Star Wars reference doesn’t work for you.) While Switzerland, Belgium and Spain aren’t quite that different, they are pretty darned dissimilar to each other. Don’t choose a country just because it’s at the top of the list of places that are easy to move to—you will have no idea what you’re getting. (“There’s a lovely little abandoned moisture farm available for a great price right outside Mos Eisley!”)
Once you have a country in mind, it makes sense to visit as much as possible before deciding to move there. And stay for as long as you can—ideally for two months or more. In my experience, a relationship with a country is like a relationship with a romantic partner: In the beginning, everything is magical, but then after a short while, it starts to become difficult in ways you hadn’t foreseen and are not sure you like. How it goes after that depends on whether you give up and leave, or learn to do the hard work that’s necessary to make the relationship last.
Oh, and remember Question 7? Start learning the language before you go there, because you will want to start using it on day one.
9. Do you see a realistic path toward long-term residency?
There is nothing in the world as frustrating as dealing with the bureaucracy of a new country.4 Because it is always new, and always different, and often in a different language. And in a particular register of that language! Bureaucratic French is not what they teach you in school. And bureaucratic German seems like it really should be against the Geneva Convention.
For this reason, it is often a good idea to shell out the extra money to hire someone who can help you relocate to your new country. But remember this: that person’s goal is to get you to move there, not to make sure you stay. Do not accept vague assertions about how easy it will be to find a job or get permanent residency. You really have to make sure that you know what the procedure you need to follow is.
Many people end up getting bitten by the three-month visa-waiver agreement that most European countries have with the USA, which states that you can come for up to 90 days and then must leave the country again—in such a way that you can prove that you left. (Remember that borders are open within the Schengen area.) Also, you are not legally allowed to work during that period, so if you are coming to find a job, you will have to negotiate that carefully.
European countries vary in terms of what you have to do (and for how long) to get permanent residency, and they vary a lot in terms of the path to full citizenship—and also whether they allow dual citizenship. These are among the most important things to know before you decide to move to a country, assuming you want to have even the option of making your move a permanent one.
10. Do you have a reasonable financial safety net and a Plan B?
Again, a relationship with a country is like a relationship with another person. No matter how good our intentions are and how well we prepare, sometimes things just don’t work out. Therefore, it is critical to have alternative plans in place for various eventualities. Let’s say you aren’t sure whether to give up your house in the US; maybe you could rent it out for a couple of years before selling it, just in case you need to come back. Maybe you are hoping to get a job in France or start a business in Italy—things that can be extremely difficult to make work. Do you have a financial cushion that you can land on if the rug is pulled out from under you? For how long will that last? Make sure you are clear-eyed about the limits of your flexibility. Having a Plan B, and a Plan C, and even a Plan D will help you maintain perspective and stay calm when things get rocky, as they will at times.
Bonus question: Is your partner fully on board with this? Are you sure?
I want to end this piece with the hopefully totally obvious point that, if you are in a relationship with someone and are hoping to make this move together, you both need to be equally on board with the plan. If you find yourself trying to convince your partner that no, moving to Poland really will be great, just wait and see, then maybe you should do some more exploring together, until they start to share your optimism.
Because you know what? If you find yourself suddenly surrounded by Polish speakers, the one person you will be able to talk to is going to have a very significant impact on your experience. You really have to be on the same side. Being lonely in a new country and lonely in a failing relationship is a recipe for utter misery. There must be a Danish film about this somewhere.
But I can’t leave you on that charming note. Here is what I would say about moving to Europe (or most anywhere else): If you are someone who not only dreams of doing it, but also has the right temperament (and the cash) and is willing to do the hard work of researching and learning and making an informed decision, I would say go for it. It will transform you as a person. For a discussion of how it changed me, please see my piece “Living Abroad Changed Me as a Person”.
Just take care to balance the gains and the costs realistically. If you aren’t sure whether moving abroad is what you need, you might want to read my essay “Do You Need to Fix Yourself Elsewhere?” Bear in mind that no matter how disaffected you may feel about the political climate in the United States, or how much revulsion you may feel for the cultural turn there, you will not be able to escape it entirely. If you think you’ll be singing “I got ninety-nine problems but Trump ain’t one”, I have to tell you that the Greatest Nation on Earth shines a pretty bright beacon. Plus, there will be those other ninety-nine problems to deal with, including all the proto-fascist parties we have over here. But hey, all the bureaucracy will definitely help take your mind off of politics! And there’s always that pitcher of wine with lunch.
Living Elsewhere is just a Substack about what it’s like to live in another culture, and I definitely do not offer relocation services, but if you think that I have any specific information that would be helpful to you, feel free to reach out via direct message in Substack. Good luck to you, and boa viagem!
Postscript: If you are considering a move abroad, you may find the more recent Living Elsewhere series The Good Migrant helpful. It consists of the following two essays:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Foreigner
How to Be a Good Immigrant
The closest analogue in the general field of personality is probably the “Openness to Experience” dimension in the Big Five personality traits framework.
In a more recent post, I go in depth into the question of how to maintain friendships despite distance.
For a discussion of why and how to learn languages, see this recent post.
For an amusing elaboration on this point, see this post on trying to register a car in Portugal.
Good post. My husband and I moved to Lisbon a little over three years ago. It has worked out pretty well for us, but it has certainly been challenging. He was more motivated to make the move than I was, although I was genuinely on board. I've had my ups and downs, but some of my challenges have more to do with adapting to being retired than with Portugal per se. What's really made it work for me. is that I'm very much a Discovery person and my idea of heaven is being in a new place, possibly by myself, with nothing to do other than explore. I also love studying languages so learning Portuguese has been a fun adventure. I agree with you about Americans not being great about learning languages, and in my experience most Americans do the bare minimum needed to pass the A2 test. They seem to get by OK, but I would not enjoy living here if I didn't speak as much Portuguese as I do (working toward the B2 exam by mid next year), and I'm highly motivated to continue learning and developing my language skills.
Your anecdote about the woman getting upset about people hanging out their laundry was hilarious. If you expect everything to be like just like it is in the US, why would you bother moving to another country in the first place. I personally find the laundry thing charming, plus imagine how much energy is saved by people not using dryers.
So many great points here. My plans to move to Tatooine years ago looked promising, until I got there and struggled with learning Jawa. In my defence, it's not easy and my months of studying Greedo's language were all for naught when Han Solo killed him (sorry, spoiler alert).
In all seriousness, bureaucratic hassle is one thing I've experienced from years of being abroad and as frustrating as it is (medical, legal, post office, residence, etc), it's all part of the 'fun.' It makes it feel like you're living there, properly.
On point 6 (food/convenience) one thing that disheartens me is the creeping prevalence of bad convenient ready meals invading Europe. There are a surprising number of supermarket meals like this in Vienna, where I live. But wow, that fish...I lived in San Sebastian for a year and loved my menu del dias with dishes like that and wine, etc for, at the time, 10 euros (2006-7).
As for learning the language...oh dear. I'm a bad boy. As a long-time EFL teacher, I've somehow managed on just English, but it hasn't been easy at times. I have my excuses (I'll share those in a post at some point, I have a long list) but shame on me...in a place like Vienna, just about everyone speaks English, but elsewhere, and in the countryside, it is an issue. Shame on me, I know...