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Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

181 points feraligators | 2 comments | 25 Jan 22 15:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

I've long considered leaving this country for a multitude of reasons.

I'd be curious to hear some first hand experiences of those who've made the move to Europe and what you think of the process and considerations one should make.

A few questions to start the conversation:

- Where do you live?

- What's the biggest sacrifice you had to make (i.e. pay, housing, friends, etc.)

- What have you gained?

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abofh ◴[25 Jan 22 16:35 UTC] No.30073882[source]▶
Won't discuss publicly, but I'd say : worth doing, but leave your stuff in storage for two years -- the appliances won't work here anyhow.

Seek out communities (meetup, etc), and if you're doing it for a startup, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

Pm for story time, but basically, it's an adventure, and one that will be of (mostly) your own making

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1. rootusrootus ◴[25 Jan 22 16:57 UTC] No.30074269[source]▶
> but leave your stuff in storage for two years -- the appliances won't work here anyhow.

I wonder if anyone in the US has converted their house to European appliances. The voltage is close enough, converting an entire house over to using 240V on all circuits is a trivial change, the hard part would be swapping all the plugs for European ones. And the frequency is probably the biggest part, but I'm unsure how big a difference 50Hz vs 60Hz makes with modern appliances.

I just find the thought kind of amusing. In a country this size I'm betting at least one person has done it. People are nuts.

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2. anelson ◴[27 Jan 22 09:49 UTC] No.30098352[source]▶
Not exactly what you're talking about, but I wanted an InstantPot badly here in Kyiv and the models available in Europe on 220V did not include the model I wanted, and cost alot more. So I imported into Ukraine a US InstantPot, and a transformer to convert to 120V (although it doesn't convert the frequency from 50 to 60Hz). Works fine; I've been using it daily for at least a year. I thought the timer might run slow if it's using the mains power frequency as a clock, but that doesn't seem to be the case so it must have an internal oscillator.