bati
Member
I recently moved countries for work (had the offer before I moved), but was somewhat lucky in this regard because I went from one EU country to another. Whole immigration process has been relatively painless and I was able to secure an apartment and bank account with my ID alone - so yeah, thanks EU officials for the free market lol.
Even though I don't speak the language I'm fortunate enough that a lot of people here (pretty much everyone 35 and below) speak passable/good english (I'm not a native speaker either) so buying things is generally a very painless affair. Food is great, mostly meat focused, cost of living here is lower than back home so I can afford luxuries without looking at every cent, and the shops are well stocked, the only issue is that I have to whip out my phone and check google translate for items I'm not familiar with - took me a week before I picked up this habit because at that point I've been buying a yogurt for 5 days straight and was never sure if I'm looking at yogurt or milk lol.
Unfortunately I got into the city in October and since it has a lot of universities most of the apartments were rented by students before I got here, but I think I lucked out in the end and secured a nice place that's about 15 min walk from work, 20 meters (I shit you not) to the nearest grocery store, 300m to a supermarket, 70m to a bus station, 100m to first gym, 150m to the second gym, 400m to an Italian restaurant, 350m to a hairdresser. Basically jackpot as far as location goes.
Public transport seems a little unreliable, the buses on my route seem to drive every 20-30 minutes, but their schedules goes +-10 minutes which can be a little rough if you're in a hurry to get to work. I had to walk once already because of it. People here are super chill, city is very similar to the one I moved from but has a few nice quirks of its own. Work is great, I work in an international team and people are super nice, not much to say about that really. I'm honestly a little amazed at how fast I managed to acclimate myself, first two days I was pretty homesick, partly because I miss my mom's dog a lot (might seem minor, but he means a lot to me) but now I feel like a fish in the water.
If I could give one tip to my past self it would be to ignore the public transport routes on google maps - I've done research before I moved here and severely limited the areas for apartment searching because of it - only to find out once I moved here that the routes don't take nearly as long and that some of the lines on google maps were flat out wrong. Always look for local route planners and factor that data in your plans, not google's.
tldr - amazing experience so far.
Even though I don't speak the language I'm fortunate enough that a lot of people here (pretty much everyone 35 and below) speak passable/good english (I'm not a native speaker either) so buying things is generally a very painless affair. Food is great, mostly meat focused, cost of living here is lower than back home so I can afford luxuries without looking at every cent, and the shops are well stocked, the only issue is that I have to whip out my phone and check google translate for items I'm not familiar with - took me a week before I picked up this habit because at that point I've been buying a yogurt for 5 days straight and was never sure if I'm looking at yogurt or milk lol.
Unfortunately I got into the city in October and since it has a lot of universities most of the apartments were rented by students before I got here, but I think I lucked out in the end and secured a nice place that's about 15 min walk from work, 20 meters (I shit you not) to the nearest grocery store, 300m to a supermarket, 70m to a bus station, 100m to first gym, 150m to the second gym, 400m to an Italian restaurant, 350m to a hairdresser. Basically jackpot as far as location goes.
Public transport seems a little unreliable, the buses on my route seem to drive every 20-30 minutes, but their schedules goes +-10 minutes which can be a little rough if you're in a hurry to get to work. I had to walk once already because of it. People here are super chill, city is very similar to the one I moved from but has a few nice quirks of its own. Work is great, I work in an international team and people are super nice, not much to say about that really. I'm honestly a little amazed at how fast I managed to acclimate myself, first two days I was pretty homesick, partly because I miss my mom's dog a lot (might seem minor, but he means a lot to me) but now I feel like a fish in the water.
If I could give one tip to my past self it would be to ignore the public transport routes on google maps - I've done research before I moved here and severely limited the areas for apartment searching because of it - only to find out once I moved here that the routes don't take nearly as long and that some of the lines on google maps were flat out wrong. Always look for local route planners and factor that data in your plans, not google's.
tldr - amazing experience so far.
