If you could pack up and move your whole life, where would you go?

A few years ago I visited a place in Italy called Bomarzo. It's has a famous park with giant stone sculptures of monsters in it. It's miles from anywhere and tricky to reach by public transport. I had to take a train and a regional bus from Rome. It's one of those places where the last bus leaves for the nearest city at 17:45 and if you miss it the next bus is 07:45 the next morning. Perhaps because of this I remember that the house prices were really low, e.g. this nice flat for €29,000:
https://www.idealista.it/en/immobile/24922588/

It's rare that I use the alt-gr key, but that's how you write the Euro symbol. There's probably a catch that makes it a nightmare hellscape to live in, but I could imagine myself relocating there. I would sit all day in front of the computer until I have a heart attack, and then a few years later they would find my mummified corpse, but it would be in Italy so the scenery would be nicer. I could wear tight shorts and walk around the house with a hairy chest, like Pablo Picasso.

Bomarzo's scenery is pleasant - it's a hill town surrounded by woods - but slightly odd because the place looks as if it was scorched by fire and never repainted:
https://goo.gl/maps/1LJi66UaQfZWTF9R7

I remember seeing people on the top floor using a bucket with a pulley to lift their shopping. Apparently this is also a thing in Naples:
http://www.grandvoyageitaly.com/piazza/only-in-italy-opanar-the-naples-basket-lift

It's called an o'panar, and comes about because the old stone houses don't have elevators, and the Italians aren't willing to dynamite them and replace them with breeze-block-and-brick Bovis-style homes with paper-thin walls, as in the UK.

think of all the things that keep you where you are. maybe you already found your place. but if you didn't have the things you love (family, friends) and loathe (work, loans, unhappy obligations) keeping you where you are, where would you go?

*bonus question for those who like a little more direction: what if your main goal was to live in an inspiring place to paint, to be around painters, and to spend as little money as possible?

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone)

Having a "fuck it" moment of my own. What if your main goal was to see all the different animals, to be around beaches, and to spend as little money as possible? And what if you didn't know how to drive?

Opportunities to care for animals and the ability opt out of human interaction much of the time would be a big plus.

Galapagos Islands are not accepting new residents, so that's out...

The California Channel Islands I think have volunteer caretakers (maybe even Santa Catalina, that has a town there). I wouldn't mind spending a few months of the year on the bigger, non-Catalina ones.

Or have perhaps consider a “reset” trip to India, travelling also to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos ? If you avoid the wealthy gap year students, you may find yourself in five years time a Buddhist monk in a remote order.

Trust me, Eastern religion is not a thing I need more of.

The non-Catalina islands look amazing! But seem to be uninhabited

They are uninhabited, but I think there are "park ranger/biological researcher" type situations where people can stay on the larger ones for a while.

ah gotcha, thanks
I'll look into that for sure but guessing i wouldn't qualify, certainly not as a researcher anyway.

What if the places you'd like to move are on paths that point to copying the things you hate about where you are right now? (What I'm trying to say here isn't fully formed in my own mind; by all means ask questions.)

If you want new animals, Madagascar would be your best bet. Unless you are already from there, in which case its abundant biodiversity is prob old hat.

Madagascar unfortunately not particular safe for fay old me, been wanting to go forever and seems a little impossible

Yeah I forgot to mention, someplace where homosexuality is not punishable by imprisonment or death would really be best.

So Borneo is probably out, too.

They are uninhabited, but I think there are "park ranger/biological researcher" type situations where people can stay on the larger ones for a while.

My gf's mom's next door neighbor got to stay at an old sheep ranch on Santa Cruz Island while they updated the signage... he said it was pretty amazing, and the food was excellent

I think some of the "biological researcher" positions are like "Here's a picture of an Island Fox, walk around and count them when you see them, and put an X on this map of where they were spotted. But these positions tend to get filled by bio major undergrads from So Cal colleges.

Honestly, I know absolutely nothing about Madagascar aside from the cool biodiversity. Didn't mean to make people upset/sad, sorry.

Aw, you didn't upset me fwiw and I took the table is the table's post more as a "great idea! but..."

I don't think homosexuality is actually criminal in Madagascar though it is in Brunei and Malaysia so I should apologize for conflating those things.

Lol

Europe is substantially poorer, more racist, less dynamic, and MUCH less free than the US

Food is bland, coffee tastes like shit, the weather is mostly awful, their primary cultural export is tourism, and they have less say in the affairs of the world https://t.co/zOrZI15O1P

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) June 27, 2022

uh the racism part is absolutely true.

Really tickled by the notion “coffee tastes like shit” like Italy just doesn’t exist and as for Vienna…

Or Paris, even, for that matter.

Shit, the coffee out of a streetside Nescafe vending machine on thw outskirts of Krakow makes better coffee than any Starbucks i’ve ever been in.

The guy is a fucking idiot

uh the racism part is absolutely true.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Tuesday, 28 June 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Lol no it depends where exactly in Europe you are at.

I’m only going by what I’ve seen and what my non-white friends have told me.

Europe has double the population with less than half the number of people locked up in the US. Whose increasingly run for profit and non-racist prison industrial industrial complex has a demographically disproportionate 38% share of black prisoners! There might be lots of nazis in Europe and shitty racist centre-right governments, but I don't think there is any country whose systematic racism is so brutally efficient at incarcerating black people as in the US.

Europe has never been a racial paradise but it’s notably more difficult for the local whites supremacists to access guns.

having trouble with “more racist,” maybe “as racist in somewhat different permutations” (not that i know from experience)

accusing europe of having worse coffee than america is hilarious

I’m speaking purely of treatment on the street, fwiw. A Black friend of mine said “I was never treated more like an n-word than in Barcelona and Boston”

“Less say in the affairs of the world” eh

I looked this person up & it’s some conservative podcaster so that’s your lens through which to parse “racist” “dynamic” and “free” ie, as xyz says, lol

the mention of boston says it all i think

You can be followed by young children on bicycles in Coventry and in large groups afer school in New Haven. They call out chinks for all Asians.

They probably don't know what they are saying or doing.

The one part of that tweet which is probably true is that salaries in even the richest European countries are somewhat worse than the US.

The Big If is public services and what the trade-off might be in terms of what Europeans get. We all see the horror stories on healthcare in the US.

would Europe let us Americans in? Seriously, as an American, with no significant ancestral ties to any country in Europe, could I actually become a citizen of a European country?

Not unless you’re very rich and can buy a passport from Malta or Bulgaria (Malta is around €750k, not sure how much Bulgaria is). Most other countries at the very least have residency requirements - when Brexit happened my now husband was looking to see if he could get Irish citizenship via me. He can, but we would have to move and live there for about 3-5 years. So, the easiest ways to do it are via “investment” (ie buying the passport) or having a parent or grandparent from some country. The residence requirement for non EU citizens means you need a visa of some description which can range from being difficult to a major fucking pain. However, if you are the non-EU partner or spouse of an EU citizen you can move with them to any country in the EU regardless of job etc and the EU can’t prevent you from doing so. Ymmv but essentially the barriers are greatly decreased and in some cases non existent. Iirc on that last point, up until Brexit that was a right I, as a non-British EU citizen, had over British citizens, which was crazy.

Oh also if you’re an Irish citizen whose only citizenship is that, there are huge delays in getting your passport issued or renewed because of all the British people who’ve decided to take up their ancestry to avoid passport queues*. So even if you do have an ancestry claim it could take years, so that’s great.

*this thinking applies mainly to the likes of Emma Kennedy and not British people from Irish families with a genuine connection who just never got around to it!

thanks for not saying, "sarah, you suck, you deserve to be stuck in America." ... my bff is Bulgarian, I should ask her!

Lmao it’s not up to me, there are tons of worse people living in Europe I assure you!

(Bulgaria’s a steal at €512k btw). However, I only know about this cos I’m constantly seeing ads for it on Russian-owned livejournal so there’s possibly a bit of a queue.

my wife has irish citizenship but it's pretty white over there, no?

Much less so than it used to be.

cool we should visit sometime

maybe her mom knows someone! (her mom used to live in the same apartment building as my friend, so I got to know her ... she is hilarious ... I have many stories about N's mom, but not for this thread)

Bulgaria is nice, I've traveled around there a but, but it's absolutely hemorrhaging population, especially in rural areas

would Europe let us Americans in? Seriously, as an American, with no significant ancestral ties to any country in Europe, could I actually become a citizen of a European country?

Many countries will allow freelancers/self-employed people to move there. Germany has a self-employed visa, Sweden has one...it's a bureaucratic pain in the ass, and expensive, but it can absolutely be done. About a month ago, I talked to an immigration lawyer about moving to Sweden. He told me that their menu of services, to prepare and process your application, costs between $6-15K. You have to be able to prove that you have enough money to live in the country for two years (about $30K) and show a viable business plan (which they help you prepare), and the application process — from submitting your forms to getting a thumbs-up or thumbs-down — takes about a year. If you get approved, you get a long-term residency permit, and once you've lived in the country for five years without breaking any laws or whatever, you can apply for citizenship.

can I do this for England?

I'm only half joking when I ask, why would you want to? With so many other options available...

appreciate the summary info about the logistics of this

if you don't want to be a citizen and you're employable there are plenty of options in europe. not necessarily easy/good options, especially if you have a family.

because the English appreciate their big bottomed birds? idk

i'm going to try to move from a red state to a blue state in the next 5 years which feels daunting enough.