First of all, why Europe?
Growing up in Australia, I didn’t even really know if Europe was a country or a continent and finally learnt about the continents of the world in high school (maybe Year 8?). In history classes throughout high school, we learnt about the World Wars and France and Germany were countries that always popped up. But I still could not point to where they were on the world map.
While many other kids went on holidays overseas, including Europe, I had never gone overseas (excluding Japan because it’s my second home country) until my first year of university. Since then, I had travelled to a few countries, sometimes by myself, sometimes with friends, but only ever went as far as +/- 3hrs in terms of time difference from Sydney.
I don’t quite remember at what point I had felt that I wanted to live in Europe, but the roots of why were definitely because of being in Australia. I wanted to travel around Europe and see what the hype was about, see what was so different to Australia, see the famous points of interest and the amazing views. But travelling to Europe just costs so much money and takes so much time. Like easily over $2000 return and 20+ hours each way. So if I say I’ll go to this country this year and that country next year, my money will fly away so fast and my paid leave will be used up on unnecessary travel time.
So, why not just live somewhere in Europe and travel around to different countries on my days off? Many people just go on a weekend trip to their neighbouring countries right? Like going from Sydney to New Zealand, but with an option to take a train or bus. There are so many options within the same distance of travelling 5 hours from Sydney to Perth.
The Sun and sunlight hours
Once I knew that I wanted to live in Europe, I looked for those popular rankings of countries with the best quality of life, work-life balance, etc. A country that caught my eye was Sweden and it seemed like a very nice country with friendly people. But with further research into what life was like and watching YouTube videos of people who had immigrated to Sweden, they mentioned the lack of sunlight during the winter months and how even locals get depression.
I immediately knew that I could not survive with 5 hours of daylight a day for more than a few days. And on days with bad weather? I can only imagine that it will be dark and gloomy. I’m from Sydney where we have 10 hours of daylight even during Winter. So, the idea of living in Sweden was scrapped.
Meanwhile, once I started looking into living in Spain, I found that there are many cities which are known for their great weather and the amount of sunlight they get throughout the year.
Language
Before deciding to move to Spain, I spoke English, Japanese and some level of Mandarin Chinese.
I knew that by moving to a non-English-speaking country meant that I would be learning another language. Some people argue that you can get by in many European countries with only speaking English but I feel that that is very rude and prevents you from fully enjoying and living the best life in that country.
Moreover, I work in the hospitality industry and speak with many overseas travellers. Whilst many people speak very good or enough English to get their message across, there are still many people who do not feel comfortable speaking English or even none at all.
When I was learning Mandarin, I learnt that just learning the words and grammar alone are not enough and you have to understand the cultural background and the social norms surrounding that language to really understand (and sometimes, to not be offended). Many guests will literally translate how they would say it in their language into English and so when they don’t say something grammatically correct or use a word in a different way, you need to have an understanding of that language to figure out what they are trying to convey.
For example, to ‘take medicine’ in Mandarin would be 吃藥, which literally translates to ‘eat medicine’. When a Mandarin-speaker is suggesting that you ‘eat medicine’, it does not mean that you should be chewing on the tablets.
When considering the number of speakers in the world, there are more people who speak Spanish than French or German as it is not only spoken in Spain but also Latin America. I also found learning and speaking French and German very hard in language classes in high school. Thus I came to the conclusion that learning Spanish would be helpful in communicating with more people around the world.
Time for an adventure
That was pretty much all that I considered before moving to Spain. Only a few months before moving, I actually looked up where Spain is in Europe. I found out that Spain has very high unemployment rates and that the pay is not so great. I also didn’t really know any Spanish dishes except for paella and jamón ibérico (I really like Italian pizza so moving to Italy crossed my mind but everyone told me that I would love Spanish food).
Not everything has been perfect, but I am enjoying my life in Spain!