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

I'm just outside London, moved here to marry my English wife from Vegas. I work part time doing basic IT for a US law firm due to health issues after heart surgery, and Yankee dollars are worth jack shit here - I'm not making serious tech industry money, but over here it's barely enough to survive on.

Housing is always smaller than you'd get in (at least the western) US for the same price, and I'd bet that's true pretty much everywhere in Europe. Speaking the same language is useful, but Covid has made it hard to make friends or do much.

Despite its reputation, I find that Europe is far more provincial than the US when it comes to food - a lot of stuff you think of as ubiquitous in the West will be "foreign" food and harder 48 to find. (And if you like tacos, stay on that side of the pond.)

Benefits: it's a lot quieter and generally less dangerous than the US. The NHS is absolutely amazing and you'll never want to deal with the American system ever again. People tend to be less aggressive.

From an entrepreneurial standpoint I'm sure it's much harder to get up and running, but I'm old enough to not care anymore. If I could work legally for a UK startup or tech firm doing basic dev I'd be happy enough and well-paid enough to never feel the urge to start my own ragged little thing again.

It is colder in most of Europe than the US, in my experience (not just living here but traveling extensively in my life). If you're a Cali kid, you will miss the sunlight, especially in the winter. It's like a fucking Joy Division video here from October through April. :-D

I think if my wife and I could afford to split our time between here and Vegas, we would. But that's just not in the cards right now.

But hey, at least they're not on the brink of civil war here and the curry is good.

> brink of civil war

I think that might be overstated.

> NHS is absolutely amazing

I've read and heard that for a non-emergency appointments, the wait could sometimes be months. Is that also overstated?

The problem is that you have to go through a GP first, which has a budget and tends to be very conservative. Many GPS will try some silly experiments for months before writing a referral. But once you get a referral it’s reasonably quick. Many companies now offer health insurance with private GPs, which tend to be less unreasonable re: referrals.

Said that it is much worse than Germany or France. To this day I don’t understand the British obsession for a healthcare system that would be acceptable in a middle income country (say Russia or Mexico), but that’s clearly not what you’d expect in a developed country.

It's a pretty similar system in Germany and Sweden at least though (I haven't lived in France).

I moved from the UK to Germany right when I had to have surgery and the wait time was identical (scans were much quicker though as I lived right next to a student hospital).