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This is like comparing whether you would like Diane Krall or Bob Marley based on beats-per-minute. Why do people have such a struggle separating qualitative fr

This is like comparing whether you would like Diane Krall or Bob Marley based on beats-per-minute. Why do people have such a struggle separating qualitative from quantitative? I'm American but I've lived in six countries: the richest was easily Switzerland, the most frustrating was easily France, but for me, the best was easily the Czech Republic. Hands down; no competition. But that's me. And the only way you can ever know which one you'll like best is to live there and go native. If you listen to Diane Krall waiting for it to start turning into the Arctic Monkeys, you won't like it. Most tourists and expats keep expecting the new country to be their old country with a different language. It's simply a different beast, and until you can lose yourself, lose your expectations, you won't know.

lanolin 16y ago
> And the only way you can ever know which one you'll like best is to live there and go native. Would be nice if we could learn from others' experiences to help us make a better decision right off the bat, rather than moving all over the world to try and experience everything first hand.
- mdaniel 16y ago
  Having been a "professional expat" for the past several years, I can assure you that it's not that simple. Yes, hearing their stories can bias your decision up or down by a few points. But, just like choosing a Linux distro: you can only know if it's for you if you live in it. There are no ways (that I know of) to successfully quantify what one seeks in a situation, otherwise eharmony.com would have taken over the world.
sebilasse 16y ago
which also heavily depends on how old you/what period of life you are. Switzerland is less appealing in your 20ies but much more when you're 40 with wife and kids. You just can't have an exciting, always changing, but still well-organised and super-stable country.
maayank 16y ago
may you please elaborate more on why the Czech Republic wins hands down?
- mapleoin 16y ago
  I'm also interested in this, since I moved to Czech Republic a few months ago. I was planning on also moving to Germany some time in the future.
- david927 16y ago
  The first time I went to Prague, I was so blown away that I canceled the next stops on my itinerary so I could stay. Later, after I moved there, I realized it was the whole country that just hit me in the right spot. There are no reasons; it just happened. Like with my wife, it was just love at first site. Love doesn't have enumerable reasons; it just is.
  - gaius 16y ago
    There is a real energy in cities in that part of the world, even tho' Prague and Tallinn (etc) are as ancient as anywhere there's a vibe that the best is yet to come, people getting involved in lots of different projects, technology, art, music... Everyone's open to new ideas and opportunities. Whereas you hop just across to Baltic to Helsinki and it's like a museum, there is a city that believes in its heart that its glory days were in the past. Same with Paris or Stockholm or even Amsterdam. Right now those cities have a lot of accumulated wealth tho' they've lost the spark that created it in the first place. Work in Western Europe, party in Eastern Europe, it's the only way.
  - maayank 16y ago
    Borrowing PG's terminology/idea from http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html, what would be the message of Prague/your favorite city there?
    - david927 16y ago
      For Prague it's "create". Everyone I knew was in some form or stage of the creative process, whether film, music, play writing, painting, starting a company, etc. It may a Czech or expat, it may have been on the side or what they did full-time, but everyone was doing something creative and new.
yread 16y ago
Strangely enough, the czech people have very low self esteem (or patriotism) - they mostly believe that the life is better basically everywhere and that the expats in cz are bothered by a lot of issues. Anyway, great to hear you like it there.
- david927 16y ago
  First, patriotism is for idiots. (I'm sorry but my team is not better than your team.) Second, I wouldn't call it low self-esteem but rather a cultural meme that abhors acting snobbish. It stems from Communism. When I first got there, and someone would ask, "Jak se mas?" (How are you?), I would answer "Great!" But that was the wrong answer. That's not their culture, because no one was great under Communism. So the right answer is something self-deprecating and slightly embarrassing like, "Just ok. I walked around town all morning with my fly undone." They're very sweet, down-to-earth people and these are their steps to keep it like that. About expats, they're like that everywhere, for the reason I mentioned. Many come and go after a year or two and are just long-term tourists who never take off the goggles of where they come from. I know a huge number of expats there and almost all of them love it.
patrickaljord 16y ago
may you please elaborate more on why France was the most frustrating?
- david927 16y ago
  It's where I live now (I live in Nice and work four days per week in London). In many ways, it's paradise: the food, the weather, the people -- amazing. But the bureaucracy is killing me. The paperwork and incommunicado government officials are like something out of a Kafka novel. My wife applied for her entreprenuer license six months ago. (We thought it would take two weeks.) Nothing has happened. It took two months to get internet connectivity after six or seven scheduled meetings where they just didn't show up. Open a company? Forget it. There's a lot more I won't go into. At first we put it down to that we are not native French speakers but after talking to some others, it seems that's not the case. So, in a word: frustrating. That's just my personal experience; YMMV.
  - LiveTheDream 16y ago
    I can corroborate horrible experience getting internet connectivity in Nice; it took about 2.5 months!
    - petervandijck 16y ago
      Getting internet connected in the mountains of Colombia took us a week :)
  - ezalor 16y ago
    A friend of mine opened a company (EURL) in 2 weeks and for about 300 euros. Honest. It'd be twice as expensive in, say, Estonia (I run a business there).
Gormo 16y ago
In addition to the qualitative/quantitative issue, this site also conflates the general with the specific. There are plenty of quantitative metrics that might be relevant to an individual's lifestyle, or more general metrics that could at least be correlated to individuals' preferences and choices. But this site is only comparing aggregate metrics of one country to those of another. The site asks the question "if you were not born in the country you were, what would your life be like?", but the answers it provides have little to do with my life. I expected to fill out a questionnaire about my lifestyle and see results that estimated how the details I provided would play out in a foreign country.

lanolin 16y ago

> And the only way you can ever know which one you'll like best is to live there and go native. Would be nice if we could learn from others' experiences to help us make a better decision right off the bat, rather than moving all over the world to try and experience everything first hand.

mdaniel 16y ago
Having been a "professional expat" for the past several years, I can assure you that it's not that simple. Yes, hearing their stories can bias your decision up or down by a few points. But, just like choosing a Linux distro: you can only know if it's for you if you live in it. There are no ways (that I know of) to successfully quantify what one seeks in a situation, otherwise eharmony.com would have taken over the world.

sebilasse 16y ago

which also heavily depends on how old you/what period of life you are. Switzerland is less appealing in your 20ies but much more when you're 40 with wife and kids. You just can't have an exciting, always changing, but still well-organised and super-stable country.

maayank 16y ago

may you please elaborate more on why the Czech Republic wins hands down?

mapleoin 16y ago
I'm also interested in this, since I moved to Czech Republic a few months ago. I was planning on also moving to Germany some time in the future.
david927 16y ago
The first time I went to Prague, I was so blown away that I canceled the next stops on my itinerary so I could stay. Later, after I moved there, I realized it was the whole country that just hit me in the right spot. There are no reasons; it just happened. Like with my wife, it was just love at first site. Love doesn't have enumerable reasons; it just is.
- gaius 16y ago
  There is a real energy in cities in that part of the world, even tho' Prague and Tallinn (etc) are as ancient as anywhere there's a vibe that the best is yet to come, people getting involved in lots of different projects, technology, art, music... Everyone's open to new ideas and opportunities. Whereas you hop just across to Baltic to Helsinki and it's like a museum, there is a city that believes in its heart that its glory days were in the past. Same with Paris or Stockholm or even Amsterdam. Right now those cities have a lot of accumulated wealth tho' they've lost the spark that created it in the first place. Work in Western Europe, party in Eastern Europe, it's the only way.
- maayank 16y ago
  Borrowing PG's terminology/idea from http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html, what would be the message of Prague/your favorite city there?
  - david927 16y ago
    For Prague it's "create". Everyone I knew was in some form or stage of the creative process, whether film, music, play writing, painting, starting a company, etc. It may a Czech or expat, it may have been on the side or what they did full-time, but everyone was doing something creative and new.

yread 16y ago

Strangely enough, the czech people have very low self esteem (or patriotism) - they mostly believe that the life is better basically everywhere and that the expats in cz are bothered by a lot of issues. Anyway, great to hear you like it there.

david927 16y ago
First, patriotism is for idiots. (I'm sorry but my team is not better than your team.) Second, I wouldn't call it low self-esteem but rather a cultural meme that abhors acting snobbish. It stems from Communism. When I first got there, and someone would ask, "Jak se mas?" (How are you?), I would answer "Great!" But that was the wrong answer. That's not their culture, because no one was great under Communism. So the right answer is something self-deprecating and slightly embarrassing like, "Just ok. I walked around town all morning with my fly undone." They're very sweet, down-to-earth people and these are their steps to keep it like that. About expats, they're like that everywhere, for the reason I mentioned. Many come and go after a year or two and are just long-term tourists who never take off the goggles of where they come from. I know a huge number of expats there and almost all of them love it.

patrickaljord 16y ago

may you please elaborate more on why France was the most frustrating?

david927 16y ago
It's where I live now (I live in Nice and work four days per week in London). In many ways, it's paradise: the food, the weather, the people -- amazing. But the bureaucracy is killing me. The paperwork and incommunicado government officials are like something out of a Kafka novel. My wife applied for her entreprenuer license six months ago. (We thought it would take two weeks.) Nothing has happened. It took two months to get internet connectivity after six or seven scheduled meetings where they just didn't show up. Open a company? Forget it. There's a lot more I won't go into. At first we put it down to that we are not native French speakers but after talking to some others, it seems that's not the case. So, in a word: frustrating. That's just my personal experience; YMMV.
- LiveTheDream 16y ago
  I can corroborate horrible experience getting internet connectivity in Nice; it took about 2.5 months!
  - petervandijck 16y ago
    Getting internet connected in the mountains of Colombia took us a week :)
- ezalor 16y ago
  A friend of mine opened a company (EURL) in 2 weeks and for about 300 euros. Honest. It'd be twice as expensive in, say, Estonia (I run a business there).

Gormo 16y ago

In addition to the qualitative/quantitative issue, this site also conflates the general with the specific. There are plenty of quantitative metrics that might be relevant to an individual's lifestyle, or more general metrics that could at least be correlated to individuals' preferences and choices. But this site is only comparing aggregate metrics of one country to those of another. The site asks the question "if you were not born in the country you were, what would your life be like?", but the answers it provides have little to do with my life. I expected to fill out a questionnaire about my lifestyle and see results that estimated how the details I provided would play out in a foreign country.