What’s the reason for doing this? are you just trying to find a place that seems like a good fit for you or do you just do it for the love of finding new experiences? Where has been your favorite place you’ve lived so far and why?
Every country had a different reason.
I’m born in Silesia, which is now part of Poland, so I’m Polish and so are my parents. But all my grand parents are German.
- When I was 11 years old, just 2 month before the Berlin wall fell my family fled from communist Poland to west Germany and we could stay because our ancestors were German and so we got all the additional German passport.
- After living in Germany for 15 years I married a woman from Sweden and mover there with her and her daughter. We divorced but I stayed in Sweden for my stepdaughter sake. I went to university and build up my life there. After 10 years of living there I thought it’s time to get a Swedish passport so I can vote in national elections. It took a couple of more years but I got the passport.
- I went to South Korea for a 3 month business trip and met a woman here, so after a year of business troops I asked my company to move me to the Korean office which they did. Now we are married and have a two year old son and I have another stepdaughter.
So yeah a bit different reasons.
Very curious about life in Korea
I kind of wanna work there as a programmer from abroad, but how is it really?
As a foreigner you get a lot of slack, especially if you don’t speak Korean, because nobody wants to confront you in English.
But if you really work here as an equal the work culture is brutal. Actually it is - other than the language barrier which is totally on me - the single worst thing about Korea in my opinion. The other stuff you can work around and deal with and there are a lot of super cool things here which make it staying worthwhile. But coming here to work long term, probably not the best idea.
To be honest this country is not ready to deal with immigrants, both in society but especially in the work place.
So, which country is next :-) ?
I always thought after Sweden would be Spain, but it became Korea, so I don’t dare to predict :D
Ja alla svenskar vill åka till Spanien, varför? Inte vet jag, jag är i Frankrike, mitt land nr 2 :-)
För att det finns en massa sol där som vi inte ha i Sverige :D
Men Franska riviäran 😎 (är själv på väst kusten).
About the favorite place, I would say Sweden, but if I’m honest, if you have enough money for the necessities all of those countries are very close when it comes to the standard of living and so on.
So, why did you decide to become a spy and which of the famous intelligence agencies do you work for? CIA? FSB? Something else?
Do you think pretending to be an average person that uses Lemmy is a good cover? 😉
As a spy I can live a dangerous but comfortable life, that is the main reason.
It’s not very famous, it is the Swedish Säpo.
I thing it has worked out well yet and yes it probably ia a very average person think to do to join the Threadyverse with a self hosted PieFed instance.
I saw an earlier answer where you said one of the hardest things in changing countries is making new friends as an adult. Do you have any advice for making friends in new countries? Generally I hear that you should find a group or club to join. Is there any types of activities that you find especial|y good for making friends?
First thing is to learn the language. Even if everyone speaks English very well they still need to concentrate more and can’t be as relaxed as when they speak their local language. Therefore they will avoid you and you will not make deep connections.
Then if any way possible let someone introduce you to their friend group. This makes it much easier the new people to trust you and be open to you because they trust the other person.
Stay in contact with coworkers who switch jobs. Those can become real friends because they invest in your relationship and don’t just see you at work anyway.
I personally never got any friends from clubs or groups.
Oh as for activities, private parties are the best, you can host some yourself but make sure the first one is a banger and many people come so the next one will be Mich easier.
To deepen it once you know some people board game evenings, etc.
If you have children go to the playground with them, there are many other moms and dads who are desperate to talk to adults every once in a while. Invite them over to your house as a family.
If you have a boy/girlfriend in the new country, make friends with their friends and friends of friends and family members.
Language learning course will give you contact with other foreigners, some of them are probably cool.
Thanks for the detailed answer! That’s honestly some of the best advice I’ve gotten on the subject. I’ll definitely be saving this comment!
Can you elaborate on what you mean by “starting from scratch every time”?
Leaving all possessions behind and just going with one suitcase
In the new country I needed to get a flat and buy all the things again. Unsurprisingly doing it a couple of times made me some kind of the opposite of a hoarder. I barely buy anything anymore because I have to assume that I will need to either store it which is very expensive or throw it away one I move to the next country again, which I basically have to assume after so many times.
Leaving all friends and family behind
That is the hardest thing, once you’re out of school and university it’s quite difficult to find new friends and not only aquienticies. And leaving grandparents, uncles, cousins and even parents and siblings behind is very hard too. So you have to somehow in the new country find a replacement family.
Leaving job behind
This is not such a big deal, but finding a job in the new country where you don’t speak the language yet is tricky. Sometimes you have to switch careers too.
I’m sorry but I have to correct your spelling of acquaintances.
But otherwise that sounds very difficult. I have had the experience of having to leave possessions behind and living out of a suitcase at times, but to leave behind my family and friends and also have to learn a foreign language is on a whole nother level of challenge/adventurousness.
To be fair, nowadays it’s not as extreme as before the Internet. When we left from Poland to Germany it was really like if we left for another world. We would visit once a year or so, but nobody in Poland had a phone and writing letters yeah it’s ok but you don’t really do that often.
Now with the internet I’m in contact with my parents through video calls at least once a week, sometimes more often. We share pictures and videos, etc. so it feels that we are much closer between Korea and Germany compared to Germany and Poland back then.
Yeah that makes sense, the internet really helps with that. For a romantic relationship, long-distance is still not that great. But for your parents and family, it can actually work out pretty well, because a lot of times it’s kind of nice to have some distance anyway. Depending on your relationship with your family.
What’s your process between selecting a country, all the way through to citizenship?
It was very different every time:
- Polish: just born there, parents did the paperwork
- German: fairly complicated, grandpa spent years gettin papers which prove he was in German Wehrmacht durin WWII, we fled to Germany on a one day tourist visa, with those papers they allowed us to stay and with a lengthy process which the parents did we all got the German citicenship because of our ancestors.
- Sweden: Very easy, moved there as a EU citicen, lived there for more than 5 years, applied online at the tax agency, waited for 3 years for them to approve it and then they did and send me a letter with the information.
- Korea: I don’t have it yet and I don’t know if I will try to get it, but technically the only people who can have the Korean and another citicenship are people who marry a Korean person, which I did, as a first step :D
But all of it was not planned before, it just so happened in my life.
How are you establishing residency in the first place? Golden visas?
So in Germany because all my grandparents were German so I was a Spätaussiedler
In Sweden as a EU citicen you are allowed to move and work wherever you want within the EU.
In Korea I got a investment visa, my company invested a lot of money to establish an office here in Korea so they are allowed to bring specialists from abroad if they can’t find people with the right knowledge. But that is connected to the company, so I will be changing it to a spouse visa soon.
Do you have an urge to return “home” / back to your roots? Or would you say there is no real home, home is whereever you want it to be and we’re all just temporary residents. I feel like humanity is just one big migration over the aeons.
I never hat the urge and now home in that sense doesn’t really exist anymore, which one of those previous countries would it be?
Sometimes people ask me that question but with te less and less.
So far, what has been your largest challenge? Which country, IYO, is the hardest to move to?
I feel Korea has been the hardest, not as much moving here but the language barrier is extreme and I can’t for the love of god learn the language. After four years I’m still at very beginner level :(
Yeah, anything originating from Chinese requires an intense focus if you want to become proficient with it. At least the Korean writing system was greatly simplified… I guess.
Beyond the language, what is the hardest cultural barrier you have come across? Like what cultural practice is just something that is not something you can really mix with?
I think it would be still here in Korea because it’s the furthest away from the customs I’m used to. But basically most of them somehow trace back to Confucianism and I have a hard time with many of them because the social structure is build not on merit but things like age. That has shaped the Korean society immense. And while I can appreciate being respectful to elders, they’re not always right just because they were born earlier.
Yeah, I also have trouble with “face saving” culture. Though I haven’t dealt with much of it in an eastern Asian sense, other places I have been were big on that same type of thing. It is just stupid. My friend has worked in a places to play the “rude white person”, in which he is brought on to bring up how executive staff are making decisions that will ruin the business, in meetings. Once that ice is broke it is basically up for conversation, and they can blame it on him being from outside of the culture.
What are some things you miss in Korea about Switzerland, Poland, and Germany? Any things that you don’t miss?
Sweden, not Switzerland ^^.
Polish, or more correctly silesian food like Krupnioki, Makówka, Kiełbasa Śląska, Gołonko.
The laid back attitude to both work but also relationships between people and society attitude in Sweden. That is where I felt the least stress.
Germany, the very active live music scene.
What I don’t like in Germany is the constant nagging and stressing people.
In Poland the extremism in regarts to politics mixing with the church and what come out of it like abortion ban, anti lgtbq laws, etc.
And in Sweden I don’t like the winter, ist dark for so long and then mostly without snow but just wet and gray :D
I read Sweden, thought Sweden, and wrote Switzerland anyway. I blame a lack of coffee this morning.
Cool, some large cultural differences for sure. I don’t know how North in Sweden you were, but as a recent ex-par to Denmark– I’m finding Denmark’s winter to be very similar to how you describe Sweden’s. It is very relaxed though, work and socially. And that’s nice
Yeah I was around Gothenburg so similar to north Denmark.
