Have you ever changed countries?

[ranzino]

Good they brought down the wall, right? lol

Funniest historic case of FML I've ever heard.

still shaking my head sometimes. it was utter useless.

[Deleted]

I have, yes. I was born and have been living in Austria until about 7 months ago - when I moved to the west coast of Sweden.

My best friend is living here, and when I visited her last year I decided that I like the city enough to simply move here. It was a bit rough at the beginning, and while the culture is very similar, there still are some differences that can throw you off. Also, the language-struggle obviously was real for a while. That said: The people here are super nice.

[Xandrigity]

My husband came from Italy and naturalized to US a few years ago. Long process but he is happy he went through the process.

[Fencers]

I lived and worked abroad for a bit. I am an American and really every place on Earth has some aspects of American culture at this point. Adjusting to local culture was not too difficult as I mostly lived & worked in Western European countries.

I was kinda annoyed by many things being somewhat 'small' (apartments,fridges, etc) and slight inconvenience at times compared to my previous (American) expectations.

However, the truth is people are people the world over. It's not hard to treat people decently and for the most part they will do the same regardless of your national origin.

[Mormolyce]

No, though I've occasionally thought about moving to say, Canada.

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I was kinda annoyed by many things being somewhat 'small' (apartments,fridges, etc)

Burger and shake sizes? :P

[Mihalik]

I grew up country hopping due to my parents job. I'm British-American dual citizen. After college I spent 3 years in a consulting job where I would move to a different country every 3 to 6 months, ending up doing a total of 11 countries in that period. I eventually settled in Spain, currently I'm in the process of dropping British citizenship in favor of a Spanish one.

[frogger237]

Move here first to get used to the idea of being around Canadians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_Line,_Vermont

[Techno-Druid]

From the Netherlands to Finland here, language was most difficult, culture wise the difference wasn't that big. But going from the US to Canada I think you won't have the language issue as much. Having friends is good as it can get lonely at home in a new country.

edit: costs were negligible, EU to EU means I got to just show up and I was allowed to stay for 3 months, got married and got a permanent permit.

The language thing makes sense. Dutch is an Indo-European language, Finnish is a Finno-Ugric one. Your average Dutch (or German or English or French person) would probably have an easier time learning Persian or Sanskrit than Finnish or Hungarian.

Sorry, @Theodarzna has slowly turned me into a linguist nerd.

[Iphie]

The language thing makes sense. Dutch is an Indo-European language, Finnish is a Finno-Ugric one. Your average Dutch (or German or English or French person) would probably have an easier time learning Persian or Sanskrit than Finnish or Hungarian.

Sorry, @Theodarzna has slowly turned me into a linguist nerd.

Oh yes, having virtually no similarities meant an uphill battle, fortunately for me Finland is a bilingual country: Finnish/Swedish. This meant that I could attempt to read the Swedish and with some difficulty, and digging up my rusty German, get the gist of it. Now I've gotten to the point where I can understand Finnish better than Swedish.I'm however thinking of taking a Swedish course as that does improve job opportunities here, the more languages you speak the better.

[Deleted]

I moved from Scotland to Germany, been here over 2 years now. Luckily it was incredibly easy to do so with the free movement of people in the EU, but that's certain to change with Brexit.

I would say the hardest part was the language so moving from one English speaking country to another would rule out that factor.

[shadowmouse]

Bungee here, long term expat. Keep an open mind, be ready for culture clash, understand that you'll go through phases of optimism and pessimism even after you've moved. Those things apply to just about any move.

[Deleted]

No, but I do have a house in Switzerland. Just in case.