where should you live in Europe?

this is a map of Europe as you can see there's plenty of choice when deciding on where you want to live but some places are better than others or are they to find out I made this presentation focusing on the main advantages and disadvantages in these five popular European countries and we're starting off with the Netherlands I lived in the Netherlands for 5 years specifically in an a city that not a lot of people know about and I feel like I'm pretty equipped to talk about this country let's start off with the pros first pro on our list are bikes bikes are great what can I say it's very safe to bike around since there's bike Lanes everywhere the country is incredibly flat and I think almost every person in the nland has at least two bikes as someone who had a phobia of riding bikes and decided to study in the Netherlands after half a year of living there I gathered enough courage to relearn how to ride a bike and I felt pretty safe doing that but your bike will get stolen if it looks really nice and it has a flimsy lock so beware the next Pro on our list we have Innovation the Netherlands is very Innovative Innovative apparently Dutch people like inventing things they invented things such as the telescope microscope popularized the distribution of orange carrots and they invented vertical gardening even though the Netherlands is not the top most Innovative country in the world you can still see it affecting your everyday life for example not that long ago I went to encad and I went to Alim to get a machine-made cup of coffee and instead of normal milk in my cup of Ino I had the option to get it with oat milk which was mindblowing for me because my body does not really go well with cow milk so I was very surprised and happy to see this option and so since Dutch people are such fans of innovation they're also a big fan of digitalizing a lot of things like making appointments online or doing your taxes they also love paying with their debit cards either at the grocery store or a retail store and a lot of the time they prefer using self checkouts at some point when I was living there I also made a gym membership and I was astonished by the fact that in order to get into the gym you had to scan your finger so it identifies you and you can go do your gym things so as you can tell Dutch people love convenience and efficiency so therefore at the supermarkets you'll also find a lot of pre-made food and pre-cut stuff of course in many countries and supermarkets you're most likely to find some kind of salad bar or pre-made sushi but I feel like the Netherlands is just on another level they have a wide selection of salad noodles sandwiches wraps and you can find those in almost all supermarkets my favorite salad was this mozzarella tomato salad at little that I took when I was in a rush or just didn't feel like cooking it also had a lot of different vegetables and pasta so it was like a nicely balanced meal I still think about it sometimes they also had a lot of pre-cut and prepackaged stuff like this they had mini potatoes cut potatoes sweet potatoes onions lettuce mushrooms it might not be very good for the Environ environment but it's very convenient you can't argue with that plus I heard some people are trying to develop some kind of eco-friendly packaging that's better for the planet so that's pretty cool English almost all of the Dutch people living there know how to speak English and they're pretty good at it I think while I was living there I met like two people that didn't know or didn't really want to speak English also most of their movies in the cinema run in English with Dutch subtitles except for like animations that are meant for children that's we have public transport specifically trains the train system in the Netherlands is great it's not perfect because nothing in this life is perfect but it's still very good the Netherlands is a relatively small country especially compared to France or Germany so it's pretty easy to get around especially with the train almost all of the trains well most of the trains have Wi-Fi in them but what's more helpful is that the train stations actually have Wi-Fi so you can check where you're going or if the train is cancelled or something but I have to say that it's not cheap to travel by train if you want to go from encad to Amsterdam it usually will cost you around €30 just one way of course you can buy some kind of subscriptions to give you a discount or travel free on the weekends but still it's it's probably cheaper to go with a car if you have one last but not least the Netherlands is not a big country but it is a pretty country most cities have very beautiful and Charming Dutch architecture and they have canals not all all of them but a lot of them so it's like Venice but completely not like Venice now let's move on to the cons firstly we have the weather well in general in the summertime it can get up to like 30° for a week or two and in the winter in I would say worst case scenario minus five but other than that it's kind of Cloudy and maybe windy and there's quite some rain and the worst part about rain is that you probably need to bike somewhere during that time and if it's also windy then it's just a lose lose situation and so a lot of Dutch people use some kind of app like this that looks at the trajectory of the rain and the clouds and how it's going to fall and so they can calculate when exactly they should go home but the worst thing about the Dutch weather is that it can be completely unpredictable one moment it's raining then it's sunny and there's a rainbow then it's raining again and then it's hailing a tornado pops out of nowhere and and then it starts riging meatball so you're completely confused on what's happening right now now the next con we have the Dutch language even though you'll still probably be fine without knowing a single word in Dutch if you know English you'll probably want to learn the language for many reasons and if you know English Dutch is considered in the easy category of languages to learn however personally in my opinion I don't think Dutch is a very pretty language it's like a mix of German and English but you also have a potato in your mouth and you might also run into the problem of not being able to practice Dutch in the Netherlands since if they can sense that your Dutch is not that good they might switch to a language that you're more comfortable in as they probably know at least five though you'll probably have to convince them that you don't know any other language except for your broken Dutch housing finding some kind of good and affordable accommodation in the Netherlands is difficult like a lot of countries the Netherlands is having a housing crisis and renting something in Amsterdam could be very expensive even for Dutch people that lived there for their whole life in short there's not enough houses and apartments being built to accommodate the country so there's a high demand and it's not cheap and I also remember seeing some kind of article where International students came to the country and they didn't have a place to stay yet so they had to tent outside the university until they find some kind of accommodation so then speaking of apartments no floors in apartments it's not a regular occurrence but it does happen sometimes if you move into a student room or an unfurnished apartment there is a chance that they just don't have any floors in that case you might be lucky and get the floors from the previous tenant but you also might need to get rid of it the next time you move out so that's a doozy I don't really know what a doozy is but I feel like that's pretty accurate description of this and last but not least is Dutch food let's start with the positives they have great cheese and I love to get myself a freshly M STW waffle other than that their traditional food is a bit boring they love fried food like Crockett and bitter balling oi Boling and they also sometimes love having sprinkles for breakfast a traditional Dutch lunch consists of a flat flimsy piece of bread topped with a slice of cheese and folded like this four times it's a bit underwhelming what can I say other than that of course you probably can find whatever you're looking for in the supermarkets or specialty stores and in general they have a lot of inspiration from Indonesian food since history happened between them so that's basically it and let's move on to Germany I've lived in Germany for about a year and a half now and it feels like a lot of time but also not that much so let's move on to the pros first pro of living in Germany is that this country is Big so you have a lot of choice when it comes to cities to live in and travel you have the edgy techno Berlin sophisticated and Rich Munich business casual Frankfurt and rainy Hamburg and many more Germany has a lot of airports and neighboring countries so there's a lot of things that you can explore then Germans love their peace and quiet that's why on Sundays a lot of shops are closed you can't throw away glass and you can't really vacuum in your apartment this definitely can be seen as a negative but it's also nice to know that there's a day dedicated to just rest and regain energy for the upcoming week unless you work in a restaurant or some kind of Cafe then uh that's a different story even though most grocery stores are closed on Sunday if you live in a big city then most likely there are some that are open Healthcare Germany offers universal healthcare and it says here German has a high standard of healthcare I don't think this sentence is correctly made and I also don't know if I can vouch for that because I don't have much experience with it so far so in general it's a good thing however what I do know is that getting a doctor is pretty annoying they have weird opening hours and they usually don't accept new patients so you'll probably have to make a lot of phone calls to actually get get the help you need most of the times when doctors do speak English but nurses might not next up we have cost of living I feel like Germany is a pretty affordable country to live in and work at so if you can see this chart because I'm not too sure how well you actually can see this it shows the purchasing power that the person has in each country and Germany is pretty high on the list 100.2 the purchasing power indicates the ability to buy products and services so people living in that specific country how much stuff can they buy with their hard earn cash like rent food and other expenses this chart also indicates that the Netherlands is actually higher on the list than Germany which is a bit confusing because I feel like in the Netherlands the rents are higher and the food is a little bit more expensive but I suppose it really depends on where you live in Germany because probably Hamburg or Munich would be pretty pricey so if you're a digital Nomad traveling Europe and saving up some bucks I guess in general just move to a smaller City to save up on rent next if you love baked goods you'll love German bakeries they have a wide variety of cakes pastries sandwiches and Hearty bread it's incredible then what is good to know is that Germans and Dutch love being punctual and making appointments if you had planned to hang out with the German and you're running late and you didn't send a text message saying that you're going to be late they'll probably be offended by that and finally Auto bounds they have autobond and Germans do love them let's move on to the cons of living in Germany first things first we have the train station system the German train system is very welldeveloped it goes to many cities and Crosses many villages however it is not very reliable Germans are known for being punctual but for some reasons their trains are not I saw somewhere statistics saying that one in five trains is late or cancelled but in reality in my experience almost every other train is light at least 20 minutes plus it seems like every year they're discovering the concept of winter and there's snow on the tracks and we don't know what to do about it so we're just going to cancel the train tax deduction well taxes are not bad that's why Germany has universal healthcare and almost free education but it can take a big chunk of your paycheck and this is a bit of a difficult subject because this is not an accurate representation of how much taxes an average person pays in this country this more shows if you are very rich and earn a lot of money type of taxes it says here that on average a German pays around 24 or 42% depending on how much income you make but Germany also has additional taxes like the church tax if you're religious specifically probably Catholic then you'll have to pay this tax to the church it not only goes to the church but it also goes to some kind of Charities or events so overall it's a good cause but there's also a tax that everybody needs to pay which is called the radio and TV tax it doesn't matter if you don't have a TV or a radio each household has to pay this tax and it's around €8 a month for one household so it's basically like a set amount that you need to pay I understand the sentiment but it's still frustrating another con of living in Germany is homelessness Germany has the highest number of homeless people in Europe and you can tell you can see it in the streets this is a big issue that Germany's dealing with there's a lot of Beggars and people sleeping on the street and it might make you feel unsafe and of course I don't blame them for being in this terrible situation situation but I feel like the country is not doing enough to actually help them I believe Germany does have some kind of social benefits but I don't really know how it works and I don't really have a solution for this but I hope they'll fix it at some point I always view Germany as being punctual and efficient but looking at their train system and bureaucracy I'm not too sure anymore getting things done here is a slow process so it will require a lot of time appointments and forms and doing your taxes on your own in Germany is basically impossible you either have to hire a tax guy or you can do it through fanam but you'll probably need to know German for that next up we have unfriendliness I've read a lot of Articles saying that Germans are unfriendly well I think it depends on where you come from if you come from places like America or Spain where small talk is encouraged or where the people are just in general more welcoming then I suppose if you come to Germany you'll probably think that Germans are pretty unfriendly but in general they respect teacher's privacy and personal space and well if you're looking into making friends then it's a bit more difficult since they like sticking to childhood friends and usually they just mind their own business unless you're doing something annoying or you're breaking the rules somehow like by J walking then you'll probably meet the German stair to be honest I didn't know it existed until Tik Tok and I didn't experience it myself until I started researching about it and I went to the grocery store and I witnessed it in real life where a German was staring at another German because they didn't pack their groceries fast enough no kitchen it's a common occurrence if you rent an apartment that is unfurnished you might not have a kitchen there which is so annoying why would you not have a kitchen in a rental department you might get lucky by just buying through the previous tenant however it might cost you like at least ,000 I think this situation is getting better but this is just ridiculous not only do you have to buy a kitchen but you also have to hire people to install it so it costs a l lot of money last but not least we have the German language even though German is placed in a box of easy languages to learn if you know English German grammar makes it way more difficult you can probably survive in Germany without knowing German but in order to make friends and just make your everyday life easier you would want to learn German plus if you learn German in school you'll be surprised how different German sounds around the whole country a lot of the Germans up north have difficulties understanding what the south is talking about and when it comes to Austria and Switzerland that's just a completely different language in general they might understand each other but they will have to use all their willpower to intivity listen anyways now let's talk about France a country full of love croissants and over romanticization and you might be wondering have I ever lived in France and the answer is no but I do have a friend that has been living there for the past 2 or 3 years so I asked him some questions and here are the answers so let's start with the pros firstly we have food France is known for having amazing Cuisine starting from stinky cheeses to macarons aares and snails and frogs and much more French people really value fresh produce and great wine and they will judge you if you get a baguette from the supermarket because that's a criminal offense France is also known for taking it slow they love having one or 2our lunch breaks and enjoying their long dinners with family and friends but that does not mean that they're lazy when when they go to work they actually do their work pretty productively without any distractions and then after that they're just enjoying their free time for this reason some stores might be closed during lunchtime or not open on Sundays at all since France Works to live and not the other way around they also enjoy vacations and a lot of them France is a country that is known for their highest number of paid holidays in the world depending on your employment it's from 25 to 35 days of paid time off plus plus you also have 11 public holidays so they really know what they're doing and their school system also enjoys having breaks between school time to enjoy the holidays with their parents but when it comes to destinations and exploring France also offers a very diverse terrain France is also often considered to have one of the best geographies in Europe due to its wide variety of Landscapes and geographical features so they have nice beaches mountains Rivers flat surfaces so basically whatever your little heart desires however to get where you need to go you'll probably need some kind of form of transportation and if you don't have a car France offers a lot of public transport they have buses they have metros they have trams they have trains and they're pretty accessible and convenient but if you live in a more rural area you'll most likely need a car there might be a bus going from City to City once or twice a day but in order to get somewhere that where you need to go you'll most likely need a car it is more reliable than German trains but if your train is cancelled good luck getting a refund I actually forgot to mention that in Germany if your journey is delayed by one or two hours you can actually get a decent refund from 25 to 50% or even 100% but it's a bit of a hidden feature and if you have the app it's a bit more easier to find and finally accommodation when it comes to finding a place to stay France has plenty of options unless you want to move to Paris then well it's Paris in addition friends can also offer you assistance when you move from one place to another place but it depends on the distance and if you have used this service before but it's kind of cool now moving on to the cons speaking of homes even though there's plenty of choice many of them are old although the outside looks Charming the inside is what matters and the inside might have small rooms only one bathroom outdated kitchen bad isolation noisy floors and stinky pipes you can find places that have upto-date kitchens and other installments but they're usually further away from the city and they're not cheap next up we have the language barrier of course like any other European countries if you don't know the language is going to be way more difficult to live in the country but if you know English French is also considered to be one of the easiest languages to learn French and English actually share 30% of their vocabulary French grammar is not as difficult as German but it has its own difficulties like not pronouncing specific letters and words and nouns having genders which are pretty random so you'll just have to memorize them if you live in the island you won't have a problem with speaking English because Dutch people love showing off their English skills if you live in Germany you can survive without knowing the language especially in the big cities but in order to feel comfortable in this country you'll most likely need to learn German to socialize and and do other small tasks but in France unless you live in Paris it's going to be really difficult to exist in this country I mean if you're staying there for a couple of months or years like as an international student you'll probably be fine but if you're trying to settle in and find a job and date people then it's a bit more complicated what I have gathered from the worldwide web is that French people not really keen on speaking English either because of Pride political reasons or they just don't feel that comfortable in their language skills so they would rather speak French then France has a culture of saying no I've seen many content creators that live in France or lived in France talking about this that the first default answer is no either if they want to open a bank account or change your flight the first answer will be no so you'll actually have to fight for what you want and convince them to do it your way this is an interesting phenomenon and I tried looking for explanations on this on the internet and so what I found is maybe the first hypothesis is that they have protester blood in their genes and the first thing they want to say is no know whenever whatever happens then secondly 75% of knows is most likely a I don't know so I don't know how to help you or I don't know how to fix this issue so instead of saying I don't know they just say no and lastly which is bureaucracy which is also the next slide of this presentation bureaucracy in France is complicated if you want to do a and you need to have B but in order to get B you need proof that you applied for a so basically it's just in conflict with itself they also don't want to deal with this confusing system and forms and so if you really persist they probably will help you anyways moving on to the cost of transportation we talked about how convenient and how many options are there in France when it comes to public transport but it can also be quite pricey especially those high-speed trains and if you have a car you also might need to pay a toll for using a road or a bridge and it can be as high as30 only one way which is pretty crazy next up we have strikes strikes aren't necessarily a bad thing people need to fight for their rights and what they believe in even though France is quite up there when it comes to the quantity of strikes they produced it doesn't happen that often but when it does happen it will most likely affect your life either you can't go by train to work or the roads are blocked off or the electricity is out something like that so that's just a thing that happens next up we have not that many choices when it comes to vegan or vegetarian options I feel like French people are purists when it comes to food so this kind of makes sense of course if you live in Paris it's probably not a big issue but in any other bigger city it's not really that common to find vegan or vegetarian Alternatives in the supermarket but I've heard it is getting better so we just have to wait a couple years last but not least rudeness French people are rude all of them it's crazy this is a prominent French stereotype yes there's rude people in France but there's also rude people everywhere else looking on the internet forums it was quite divided one Forum was saying that French people are rude and the other one saying that no one is rude in France and everybody's really nice I think there's a lot of cultural differences because a lot of the people saying that French people are incredibly rude were also from America where they enjoy small talk with strangers and expect the service to go above and beyond when serving them French people might be to you if you don't speak French or even try to learn it and if you don't say bongu when you enter a bakery they'll see this as very disrespectful and in my experience I have encountered many rude waiters but to be honest the Gastronomy industry is pretty hectic and they probably just want to give you what you want and leave you alone so I don't blame them so now we can talk about Sweden the only time I've been in Sweden is when I had a layover in Stockholm but I do have a friend that's been living there for quite a while and she had some non to share with me so Pros nature Sweden has a lot of nature but Sweden also has the freedom to Ram law so you can basically Camp hike and swim anywhere you want without landowner's permission with respectful distance of course you can also go and collect berries and mushrooms if you would like to do that additionally Sweden also has a coastline as you can tell by this map there's a lot of water around it so there's a lot of choice when it comes to going to the beach and taking a little dip however don't expect the water to be warm especially outside the summer season and it's quite shallow and there's a lot of seaweed so you know you have a beach but is it a good beach Swedish and English a lot of swedes living in Sweden know English pretty well so that's not going to be a problem but if you would like to learn Swedish because you've been living there for a while or you're planning on living there for a while and you think it's a good idea which it probably is I have good news for you because Swedish is not that difficult to learn I mean it's considered to be an easy language to learn if you know English and their grammar seems to be quite easy of course learning a new language always will have its difficulties maybe in pronunciation or vocabulary but in general it's okay holidays and parental leave Sweden is also pretty generous when it comes to giving out holidays and vacation days and as an employee there would get a minimum of 5 weeks of paid vacation Sweden also has one of the most generous parental leave systems in the world parents get 480 days of leave per child which is a lot of time in Germany you get around 3 months and in the Netherlands you get around four months plus 390 days are paid at a rate of 80% of your salary which has a limit to 80 a day I did this research but now I'm confused I guess that's good Plus in July it might be that the companies are working way slower or just shut down completely at some point I was applying for a company in Sweden and I got an email saying that we have to wait with the candidacy decision making because the whole company will not be working during the July season then what's also great about Sweden is that they have Universal free healthcare so from my understanding if you have a Social Security number in Sweden then you have the right to have Healthcare provided for you and it is considered to be one of the best in the world so that's pretty awesome then other than iers free healthcare they also have free SL lowcost education so if you're Swedish or from the EU you'll find many universities that are free but you still have to pay for accommodation and food and for that if you're Swedish you can take a loan of €700 that has a very low interest rate and if you're EU and you would like to have some money you can also take this loan but you have to work at least 10 hours a week I think in order to be qualified for this loan and just like in any other European country if you're non EU you'll probably need to pay quite some money to be able to study next up oh my God the cons we're moving on to the cons first we have cold weather no sun well firstly in the summer time it can't get up to 30° but the rest of the year is pretty mild and cold it also depends on where you live because if you live up north then it's probably cold a lot of the time also in the Scandinavian countries in general it gets pretty dark you will get seasonal depression no matter what and that's something that students from these countries warn International students about but in order to combat this issue Sweden adds vitamin D in a lot of products that they consume like bread yogurt and milk so if you feel sad during the winter seasons grab yourself a big loaf of bread with some butter and M CH that and if you're thinking of moving to Sweden this is a huge factor to consider the next up we have no Urban cities the biggest city in Sweden is Stockholm which is also the capital of Sweden it has a population of a million people and it's pretty spread out and other than Stockholm there's not a lot of other big cities all of the rest are pretty medium and here is a chart of the population in these cities so we have Stockholm here which has a million people then we have guttenburg almost half less Malo even less people and then you just have you know just not a lot of people living in these cities this is not a completely terrible thing especially if you like some peace and quiet but it makes the country a bit less exciting I suppose renting in Sweden is a bit confusing especially if you just came to the country apparently Sweden operates on a q system when it comes to housing so you'll have to get into a virtual line of a city a company or a student thing in order to get a place to stay it can take months years or even decades to get a nice place and when you actually get the place is actually reasonably priced and your second option would be renting a place from a private landlord where the prices are a bit pricier plus you also have to be quite careful with those contracts because they can easily scam you if you don't live in Sweden this will be kind of confusing at first but you'll get the hang of it and so when you're there get in line as soon as possible to get a nice place hi taxes in general Nordic countries are known for having high taxes that's why they have free education and free healthare and in Sweden it can go up to 53% of your annual income which is a lot but this is the case of if you earn a million EUR a year which is a lot of money so actually an average person in Sweden pays from 20 to 25% of their income if you like drinking then you're not in luck because in Sweden booze is expensive and it's a bit tricky to get at some point Sweden was struggling with alcoholism so in 1955 they came up with liquor stores where you can buy liquor the basic rule is that if something is below 3.5% you can buy it at the supermarket so like like a beer or a light wine and anything else above 3.5% goes to this liquor store these stores are actually closed on Sundays and big holidays but people did get used to this concept and they kind of enjoy it because this store is a monopoly you can go inside and ask for a specific gin for example from Spain and they have to provide it for you buy it and sell it to you so if you're adventurous with your taste and alcohol then maybe this is for you I don't really drink so I don't really care so now again let's talk about health care but now differently firstly if you have some kind of emergency and you need to take care of it quickly everything will be taken care of no problem but if you have some kind of mild or chronic pain that's a bit more tricky to get diagnosed and get treated for from my friend's experience if you have some kind of symptoms you have to call up a nurse and explain what's going on and usually if it's not that life-threatening it's a bit difficult to get them to take it seriously then to visit a doctor you'll need to pay 20 and this is a bit complicated for example if you have a problem with your ear you would like to see an ear doctor but in order to do that you first have to go to a general doctor and pay him €20 and then you get a referral to get to see the ear doctor also dentists dentists are really expensive in Sweden until you're 23 years old it's actually free which is pretty epic but after that it's really expensive to get simply a checkup you have to pay €60 and a filler will cost you €150 girls which is a lot of money the last point on my list is Swedish people being reserved and introverted as I said before a lot of Swedish people do speak English but they might not want to speak to you usually how it goes is they make friends in kindergarten and they think that's enough friends for me I'll stick to those friends and so they're not really looking to make new friends or new connections it's not impossible to make friends in Sweden but it's significantly more harder but I think it's a general thing in Europe and adulthood of having difficulty to make friends if you're a student you'll definitely have an easier time because you're surrounded by your peers and you're seeing each other every day but if you're moving to this country as an adult you'll have to put in quite some work Swedish people won't go out of their way to talk to you so you'll need to be the one who makes the moves and for this there's even a subred on how to make friends in Sweden which has a step-by-step guide that explains how to make friends in Sweden now that we're done with this we can move on to our last country Austria I lived in Austria as an exchange student granted it was for 6 months and also it was when Co started so my main resource for this will be the worldwide web and if you're wondering about my outfit well when I think of austrians I think of old white men for some reason so that's what I am right now let's move on to the first slide which is that Austria is beautiful and I lived there I lived in dorbe which is the complete opposite of where Vienna is dor Baron is a small City but it was surrounded by mountains so every time I look outside the window it felt like I was living in some kind of simulation there were huge mountains and it seemed like you're in a game where they block off the area so that you don't cross it because there's no game to play anymore plus if you love outdoor activities then Austria has lots to offer like camping skiing mountain climbing and swimming in icy lakes and more and even though the capital of Austria Vienna is pretty flat it is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe so it's definitely worth visiting Austria is not a big country and if you like traveling you're in luck because it's also surrounded by other countries that are worth your while like Croatia Italy Czech Republic Germany and way more other things so if you like traveling a weekend trip to another country is pretty easy to do depending on where you are you can go by bus train or plane speaking of public transport public transport it is punctual and reliable unlike some countries but it was a bit tricky to exactly find out what is the price range of traveling by public transport I found that the single average bus ticket in Vienna is240 a monthly Regional pass in Vienna is 50 a regional pass in other areas of Austria might cost you €150 to €200 a year and if you want to go anywhere anytime you might be interested in the € 1,000 ticket a year which if you travel a lot it's a good deal but also it's a really big commitment to just pay ,000 last thing on my list is quality of life AIA has been ranked multiple times to be the most liable country to live in and Vienna has been ranked multiple times the best city to live in in the world or in Europe was it Europe probably Europe in the world oh wow so they are doing something right they have great Public Services low levels of pollution great health care and education so that's why they rank high on the list while austrians enjoy their careers they also appreciate the little things in life like having a home-cooked meal or taking a walk in nature now moving on to the cons first one it's cold apparently Winters are really cold in Austria I mean it makes sense they're they have a lot of mountains but I was surprised how similar Austria was with Sweden as a whole to explain in more detail I was pretty skeptical about this so I went on a website that compares climates in different countries and I compared Sweden as a whole country and Austria as a whole country and how their weathers are same or different and I was pretty surprised to see that Sweden and Austria was pretty similar in weather even though they're located in completely different locations in general Austria was a bit warmer than Sweden it had more snow SL rain during the year but Austria had a little bit more sunlight than Sweden however it also completely depends on where you live because if you live in the North of Sweden of course it's going to be colder and darker so it's not going to be as bad if you live in Vienna you know potato potato then the next slide we have cost of living Austria has one of the highest food prices in Europe but they also have little and ALDI disguised as Huer so you can also find groceries that are not that expensive when I looked up apartments to rent in Austria they seem to be reasonably price but apparently compared to the salaries the austrians get it is not so reasonable anymore at least that's what I found out so you can let me know jobs or finding a job in general in Europe if you don't speak the language it's going to be way harder to find something if you're not a senior in your position with lot of experience if you don't have a high demanding job like it or Finance then it's almost impossible even in Vienna typically you can find International jobs in capitals like Amsterdam Berlin or Paris but it just doesn't have anything or at least I couldn't really find anything hi taxes now this is a tax bracket that I put in here from 2017 which is kind of not so accurate Finland is ranked the top tax Taker and Austria is also quite up there so that's about it last thing about Austria they're unfriendly and it's difficult to settle in this is based on an article that's written in 2023 that surveyed experts living in different countries on how easy it is to settle in and how friendly are the locals and Austria was ranked pretty low plus I saw aot of Tik toks of people saying that austrians are unfriendly but then I looked at the comments and a lot of people say oh I've been to Austria and austrians are super friendly so you know you just there are friendly people and there are unfriendly people so it really depends on who you meet and where you meet meet them and you know because it's a new place and if you don't know German or Austrian German then it's probably going to be even more difficult so that's it about Austria and now we can talk about things I forgot to mention there are probably more that I forgot but these are the ones that I remember now firstly I forgot to mention the 49y old ticket in Germany it's a great ticket you can get anywhere you would like in Germany and it's €49 what a steal the one disadvantage is that you'll need to take Regional trains so if you want to get from Dortmund to Germany it would usually take you 3 hours but with this ticket it'll probably take you 5 to 8 hours because it's much slower then we have Germany cares when the prices started to rise and the electricity bills came everybody was a bit worried because it's quite expensive now and to help with the bills the government planned to give everybody €300 to people that live in Germany but I never did get €300 even though I was employed and I don't blame the government I blame the people I was working with anyways talking English a lot of these countries that I mentioned speak good English even Austria Austria is quite up there when it comes to percentages of people that speak English in my experience if you are in a group of Dutch people and you're the only English-speaking one most likely they switch to English to accommodate you and to probably show off their skills but what I noticed with Germans is that if you're in the same situation they most likely will just continue speaking German unless you say something or they realize that you don't understand anything of course there are exceptions but that's the general vibe that I got and the last but not least thing that I forgot to mention is don't move to the Netherlands when I made the video If you should move to Germany or the Netherlands a lot of Dutch people in the comment section said that of course our country is much better but you should not move to the Netherlands we don't want more people here and even though these comments I thought were a bit rude especially because I was thinking of moving back to the Netherlands I understand where they're coming from they just don't have enough housing to support the Dutch people that live in the Netherlands let alone having other people coming to the country expecting to have a place to stay they're probably not going to be unwelcoming and you'll probably manage to find some place to stay or even buy a house or an apartment but but that's just something that was on my mind actually to minimize the amount of international people coming to the Netherlands they made some kind of law that a specific amount of lessons or courses or programs should be in Dutch and Dutch should be taught if two International students which actually would be nice when I studied there because I had to pay to study Dutch and it wasn't even that nice of an experience so folks what did we learn today well no country is perfect they all have their goods and their bads and it all comes down to what you prefer and where you have the opportunity to move to plus until you actually move and live at the specific location you can't really know if you would like or not like it because it really depends on the situation the people you meet and the things you need to do so if you have the opportunity to move somewhere that you don't know if you like it or not why not try it or not if you really don't like it then it is hard to make friends unless you're an international student surrounded by other students it will be a bit more difficult to make friends I've read so many articles saying that it's hard to make friends in Denmark in Belgium in Finland in Slovakia and well yeah I guess people like sticking to people from their childhood from school from University and they're just busy doing their own thing plus if you don't know the language and you're a bit introverted then it's going to be just harder overall I would just say give it a year to C in and maybe find some hobbies to do and you know it's not impossible to meet new people it's just a little bit more difficult maybe a little bit even more difficult finding a job in your career is also not an easy task if you don't know the language you're not a senior in your position and you don't want to live in a capital because that's probably where the most opportunities will be that are international or if you're not in a high demanding job I don't want to discourage you because it's not impossible but right now we're in a recession so less companies are hiring and a lot of companies in general hire internally so you don't even know that the job is advertised so yeah if you're trying to find something and you're not really successful then you're not alone oh speaking of jobs I have a coffee you can buy me a coffee now on hello /hello Erica and you can support my video making skills and video thingies that I do on this channel if you would like to do that feel free no pressure would be cool though so I know Europe has more than five countries but these specific countries I had some experience and my friends have some experience living in them so I thought it was a fun video to kind of put together so if this video goes well I might make a part two and add a couple more countries to the list would be pretty fun so yeah that's it for this video and I'll see see you later [Music] bye-bye so if you care about my laptop drama I actually bought three laptops and all of them had some kind of issue so I had to send them back first one had a problem starting the second one I think also had a problem starting but in a different way and the third one lasted the longest I had it for a month or longer it was working flawlessly but for some unexpected reason it started crashing and lagging my video editing soft W just my video editing software I tried everything to fix it myself but then I was like okay let's just ask the people maybe they can fix it for me so I sent it back they fixed some other issues and then I said hey could you check the hardware and they were like oh I'm not sure we'll check a week later they're like hey we can't fix anything and so we're going to send you the money back and I'm like oh okay so I have to find a new laptop uh

Channel: hello erika

Views: 313,754

Keywords: living in europe, what is it like moving abroad, life in europe vs us, my life in france, comparing life in the us and europe, how are the us and europe different, living abroad, living in paris, living in the us, nathaniel drew in paris, america vs. europe, europe vs us, living abroad is hard, cultural comparisons, living in Austria, Germany, Sweden, Living in Sweden, living in the Netherlands, living in france, living in germany, netlerlands, is germany a nice place, europe

Id: oMmD_UYrLgk

Length: 44min 27sec (2667 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023