Romanticizing life in foreign cities/countries: C/D?

Cuz I sure waste a lot of my time doing this, adding specific time periods to spice up my yearning - e.g. "oh to live in West Berlin in 1974"

classic

anywhere but here tbh

I used to do it until I realized I needed to be doing something different not living somewhere different. Living somewhere different was just easier to picture

they gotta eat in those countries too don't they

been an expat in a v pleasant foreign city for 8 years now, no burning wish to return. more people should do it.

and yes I did romanticize it to an extent before I moved and it's actually exceeded my romanticizing severalfold

what city u in anagram?

Vienna

but yea i definitely do this, prob b/c whenever i've spent time in a foreign cities i've been there as a tourist on vacation

gets really bad for me during colder months when i want to be in a warmer climate. all the places i most want to travel are warm (latin america, middle east, india, mediterranean)

classic, definitely do this. i moved abroad at some point, though not specifically to places i'd romanticized. while living abroad i started romanticizing life in my hometown, to which i returned recently and now i'm day-dreaming about moving abroad again, even though i won't for at least 3-4 years, if i even do.

so yeah, i definitely enjoy doing it

I've been an expat for the last 15 years (in 4 different countries). I've enjoyed most of that time but, like clockwork, once the novelty wears off and the place fades away in the backgound of the humdrum of everyday life, I start fantasising about this other new place where life would just be so much sweeter, man.

as a kid my parents used to move a lot (never abroad .. just in the uk).
i hated it.
never got roots/friends etc.
so, when we bought our proper family home in a lovely part of the country 15 years ago, it felt like i had found my first real home.
since then, i've never really had a need to move to anywhere else.
that said, in the middle of the last couple of winters, i have begun to have urges that once the kids have all left home i may just sell up and go sit out my final years on a beach somewhere warm.
to the point i have even worked out budgets etc to figure out my options ..

i had to remove bookmark from thread because it was making me strongly romanticize life in other countries

what if I were in another city right now? wouldn't that be romantic?

I am sitting in a country, different from the one you are in now.

I spend much of my life wondering how long I could live on my savings if I moved to Kyrgyzstan. Doing the work I do now, I have a choice between London, possibly Dublin, and almost nowhere else apart from exotic foreign locales. It's increasingly hard to see much of a long term future in London or Dublin unless the cost of living and quality of life change.

You could always commute in from the bog like everyone else?

I definitely romanticised London before I lived here. Was lucky to come when I did, I don't know how I'd do it now.

while living abroad i started romanticizing life in my hometown

So the crux of this thread is that London is expensive? Or is it that others desire to live in London?

i'm supposed to be going to hakodate japan next summer so i am doing this a lot

I've been an expat for the last 15 years (in 4 different countries). I've enjoyed most of that time but, like clockwork, once the novelty wears off and the place fades away in the backgound of the humdrum of everyday life, I start fantasising about this other new place where life would just be so much sweeter, man.

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Thursday, 26 June 2014 00:16 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm on my 3rd expat experience and this is very much the pattern Everything is Awesome->Everything is Shit->Reality->Where's the new novelty

I'm finding this go round harder than the previous two. the last time I had institutional backing (universities) this time I don't really and it much harder making friends and building social networks. This is giving me pause about wanting to do it again.

tbh I think this sums it up nicely

I used to do it until I realized I needed to be doing something different not living somewhere different. Living somewhere different was just easier to picture

― saer, Wednesday, June 25, 2014 3:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fantasising about some supposed ideal place is always more attractive than figuring out what to concretely make of your life. I've spent so much time lamenting how much cooler life would be in Berlin or in NYC and it's still difficult for me to accept the fact that location is probably at the end of the day a very minor part of what anyone's life is about.

My partner and I are thinking of making a clean break now she's finished her degree, although because of the nature of her work we have to stay in the UK for at least two years, so we're considering a move to a city neither of us have really visited before. I'm romanticising this idea but also a bit concerned I'm underestimating how difficult it might be to make new friends and build other networks as really we're both used to having a whole bunch of people we've known for years all round us.

xp i dont know man, location is a pretty big part of what my life is about

the place that i am affects my mood a lot

I'm finding this go round harder than the previous two. the last time I had institutional backing (universities) this time I don't really and it much harder making friends and building social networks.

:(

I think I romanticise the "exposure to new experiences and cultures" bit, but I'm already very aware that the minutiae of life anywhere would be, if not the same, equally shitty and boring. I suppose I romanticise being constantly on the move (ahh, to be back on tour), but at the same time I'm aware I've become probably too neurotic to actually cope with that style of life these days.

Been thinking about this a bit, there's going to come a time in the next 6/7 years when my wife has finished her studies & the kids have finished school when we won't have any reason to be here in Hull any more. My job just requires me to be within a few hours reach of London which is quite a wide arc these days. Are we obliged to maintain a family home after the chicks have flown? I'm not sure. Quite like the idea of renting a flat in a bigger city and doing the cultural stuff we missed out on by being young parents tbh. that or a houseboat.

current foreign crush is Burano ... http://www.isoladiburano.it/en/index.html

Krakow is a terrible place to be reading this thread. I'm aware that I am romanticising the idea of being based in Poland permanently - not least in glossing over the challenges that becoming proficient in Polish would present - but the minute my colleges start talking about going mushroom picking in the forests at weekends, or I start looking at adverts for glorious art deco apartments half the price and four times the size of the ones in London, i'm tempted.

Are we obliged to maintain a family home after the chicks have flown? I'm not sure. Quite like the idea of renting a flat in a bigger city and doing the cultural stuff we missed out on by being young parents tbh.

bh and me had this exact conversation.
i.e. sell up hq and move to a nice apartment in bath (which is a bigger 'city' than where i am based now), but i am not really in mood for doing that when flying solo.
that said, i have a few years left of the parenting chaos, so no need to decide just yet.

it's still difficult for me to accept the fact that location is probably at the end of the day a very minor part of what anyone's life is about.

yea i agree in some ways and disagree in others. climate and sunlight for me has a huge effect on my well-being, i feel pretty miserable in winter and super-energetic and blissful in summer, in some cases even kind of manic. things like landscapes, architecture, access to green spaces, vitality of a city/town, 'livability' and affordability, the economic well-being of a place all have an effect on me.

at the same time though i feel like community and connection with other people, family or friends, goes a really long way. i've been happiest in a given place when i have a community of people to connect with. we've thought about leaving boston and moving back to a depressed midwestern city (cleveland) pretty much b/c i have family and friends there. there are some cool things about cleveland too w/r/t the things i mentioned in my prior paragraph but the community might be the biggest factor in moving there.

also when thinking about this thread i'm pretty much throwing in other US cities in the same boat as "foreign cities" b/c i romanticize life in new mexico or colorado or california or austin, TX or new orleans just as much oaxaca or tel aviv or maracaibo.

This is classic, but only if you know at some level that you are just daydreaming and your romantic ideas have no contact with reality. As long as it's a given that you aren't hopelessly deluding yourself, it's a classic daydream and it can lead to some very creative thoughts.

Sometimes I start to think about living in some hip German city, and then I start to think "but I'd need to speak better German" "and I'd need to be a lot more gregarious" "and it's really a game for a younger person" "I should've gone ten years ago, Berlin was hipper ten years ago too" "but I'd still need to know what I know now, including but not limited to a little German" until it's basically a complete fantasy daydream where I'm some completely other person who speaks German flawlessly and is young and attractive and hell why not a male native German speaker and it's 2003, or it's 1983 and I can Quantum Leap into some hip proto-paninaro in some possibly imaginary Italian club scene and hang out with My Mine and Mr Flagio, etc

tbh this seemed a bit depressing, like I had lost all hope for my current actual existence, but Aimless's post is reassuring

OTM

except the fantasy/daydreaming part. i'm definitely moving to Berlin and setting up my new life as a top house DJ.

...soon as i get my time machine set up so it goes back to 2004

People still moving to Berlin in droves, it might be more expensive than it was but you compare it to London and you compare the easyness of things compared to London and you see the appeal is still there

Would like to see Berlin at some point, but I've been on a serious Santiago/Valpariso Chile kick. Desperately want to check it out first.

I romanticised life in a foreign country, then I moved to it, now after 7ish years I'm pretty much done. I like Ed's flowchart above, but for me it's more like "everything is awesome -> reality -> everything is shit -> get me home asap". I miss my friends, my family, actual living space, not having to travel 1h+ to meet up with people, rents that aren't grossly inflated, and even the cold/snow/winter sometimes. etc. So many things about life in London grate on me, and the good is no longer outweighing the bad.

But I'm terrified that I'll get home and spend a few years there and want out again. I don't want to be stuck in 4-7 year cycles in various cities -- it would be nice to have a real 'home' base.

concerned I'm underestimating how difficult it might be to make new friends and build other networks

I have essentially been living in "foreign" cities since the age of 9 (upon returning to the city of your birth after an absence of 18 years, it felt pretty foreign) so I don't fantasise about living in foreign cities, I fantasise about waking up one day in a city that actually feels like "home".

I'm the opposite - pretty much lived in the same town all my life and now, despite having a great network of people and being familiar with every nook and cranny, I'm itching to go somewhere totally different. I can empathise with recent interviews with Owen Pallett about his moving to Toronto because he couldn't form new memories in his home city.

We're in Sweden at the moment and have been for 24 hours. Aside from the fact that BA haven't a fucking clue where our bags our, its amazing; everyone lives by lakes in beautiful new modernist houses, and you can buy potato gratin and meatballs EVERYWHERE, and the beer (at least in shops) isn't as expensive as people warned me, so, compared to the UK, it seems like a magical fantasy land.

And the closest shop to where we're staying sells BICYCLES, including a STEEL CROSS BIKE.

I'm beginning my second yearlong stint living in France so I dunno if I'm romanticizing it since I know what it's like to wait in line at the prefecture, wait for months for important bureaucratic things to happen, struggle to communicate on a daily basis...but I only really feel alive when I'm in a foreign place, because of the daily struggle. but it's a struggle that has little downside: eventually things work out, and money/health/food/shelter/safety don't depend on winning the struggle. so it's like a regular stable life but better. and so I'm already planning the next foreign adventure. coulda happily been a diplomat I think.

I romanticize life in other cities right here in america. Is that the depressing version of this topic?

bah I'm much more prone to romanticizing Boulder or Anchorage than Madrid and Milan

US cities totally count! it's not depressing. this is a HUGE fucking country and there is a lot of variety between cities. i mean, new york probably differs more from santa fe than it does to london.

Would like to see Berlin at some point, but I've been on a serious Santiago/Valpariso Chile kick. Desperately want to check it out first.

― Elvis Telecom, Friday, June 27, 2014 5:29 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

valpo is a really cool fucking city man!

santiago is a little dry, i thought. i spent about 4 or 5 months living in santiago about 10 years ago. for huge city it didn't strike me as that interesting, it also seemed like a really tough culture to come into as an outsider. huge generalization obviously but people didn't strike me as open in ways i've found in other latin american cities.

i mean it was cool but for a big latin american city i think mexico city or lima are a lot more interesting. INFINITELY better food also. chilean food is garbage imo. buenos aires was cool too but i still think i'd prefer mexico city or lima.

but yea valpo is great:

http://racheltobias.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/20100522_valparaiso_chile_026_r1.jpg

but it still has it's realities. worst city i've ever been to in terms of stray dogs and dog shit literally EVERYWHERE.

Almost as prevalent: romanticizing a city or town while vacationing there.

Dublin is expensive but a good place to live and work ime, especially if you've gone a bit up the ladder in a multinational already sharivari

with no plans for kids and currently both working on that pesky ups killing/experience bit ito career, we vascillate btwn getting established enough to buy the forever home out west (not romanticising there tbf its p much heaven) and yeah thinking "we're youngish, qualified, mobile, let's do Canada, France, Germany....wherever"

Careers and money allowing, even stickin in Dublin isn't the fear I once had.

essentially I'd be happy anywhere I could make some money and get a decent nights sleep, location be damned.

I totally loved and somewhat romanticised Dublin when I was there last week. To be fair, I was staying in Dalkey right next to the sea and dreaming about living in a Martello tower more than living in Dublin itself, but the city still seemed very cool.

that sounds a v otm way to do Dublin alright

In that case, I sill romanticize NYC all the time, but currently 40% of the population is in poverty and I don't do too well in midwest cities so ehhh..

i do this all the time, i wasted my 20s ~not~ living in europe even tho i could have easily done so

moved around a bit amongst north american cities in my 20s, and while i'm essentially a sad sack wherever, there was at least a certain frisson in waking up and realizing that i was somewhere strange (in my case alaska).

i'd like to think that a new locale would stimulate me, but these days i'm pretty immune. still, tho

where is ed these days?

Slight chuckle at romanticizing life in german cities.

Tokyo/Budapest/Copenhagen for me, plz.

ed is in oz

i do think that at some point i go to alaska

but mostly i want to chill in europe or s america and read a book and pine after a beautiful broad

Melbourne to be precise.

I'm finding this go round harder than the previous two. the last time I had institutional backing (universities) this time I don't really and it much harder making friends and building social networks.
:(

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 26 June 2014 20:21 (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Part of it is being un/under-employed right now. I've just taken a space in a cowering space to stop myself from going mental, something I should have done much earlier on but I was worried about shortening the runtime on my savings.

The Euro / GBP exchange rate and ever increasing cost of accommodation in London are making this seem more and more attractive if you can maintain a UK salary and work remotely.

Not sure I can convince anyone that, from a geographical perspective, the most logical place for me to work would be Slovenia but it might be worth a go.

Who Slovenia?

Why

I live in a foreign country and its highly recommended to those of you unlucky enough not to do so

A lot of my work is in Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe so living somewhere that was within a few hours of Venice, Munich, Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade by land and has good flight connections to the UK and Russia would be great. Housing is cheap by European standards, it's in the EU, the quality of life is pretty great by most accounts and I've always loved alpine scenery. Plus the wine's not bad. Xp,

I've been offered the chance to buy a house in Ireland at a knockdown price but idk, I'm resistant.

There are some places that defy romanticising.

^ I thought hard about that statement and finally concluded that a truly determined romanticiser could work with any place that they'd never seen or visited and throw a bit of exotic glamor over it. Even Des Moines, Iowa.

food in slovenia was so good and there seemed to be all kinds of weird shit going down in ljubljana, i would starrily-eyed expatriate myself there in a heartbeat and then have a blogspot abt how genuine and dte the people are

lately it's been:

ghana, ethiopia, south india (spec. tamilnadu), bali, bhutan (even tho they hate foreigners), chile, paraguay, colombia (just cartagena rly), prolly others

I thought hard about that statement and finally concluded that a truly determined romanticiser could work with any place that they'd never seen or visited and throw a bit of exotic glamor over it. Even Des Moines, Iowa.

Dude. Any DM romanticiser worth their salt wouldn't have to work as hard as you think.

http://i.imgur.com/o0zkaDd.jpg

It's like a dream come true!

I romanticised my life in a city. Then I lived in that city. Now I want to leave. Lesson learnt.

Des Moines is for people who can't handle Iowa City.

Am seriously looking at Amsterdam for work/life change/Escape From The US reasons. Wouldn't make that plunge without a definite job set up over there but am working on it. I love Europe in general and have to settle somewhere so why not?

you guys have me pining hard for Des Moines

many xp's - oh yeah Ljubljana is fantastic. Would move there in an eyeblick.

Classic, with Portland as the foreign city of my dreams. Won't even need a passport or work visa.

Des Moines doesn't look like that in February.

i hate this thread.

it makes me pine for a new groove elsewhere.

us cities:
cleveland (for real, my family is there and the housing is cheap as fuck)
albuquerque
northampton, MA
denver
bay area
los angeles
san diego
honululu

foreign:
anywhere in mexico
various cities in peru (lima, cusco, arequipa)
bolivia
san juan, puerto rico

for all those craving chile ime most places are somewhat boring and the food sucks

From that photo, Des Moines looks like Legoland.

sorry that came off super shitty. there are infinitely fascinating places there for sure but santiago is probably the least interesting major latin american city i've been too

the food does suck though at least in comparison w/ other latin american cities esp peru or mexico

so far my list is as follows :

summer - chicago

umm .. thats it ..

Des Moines doesn't look like that in February.

Well, yeah, I mean, this is the image I have of Des Moines in February.

http://i.imgur.com/VDzg04V.jpg

valparaiso, chile is the place i tend to pine after

I would totally move to Slovenia, basically everything you might want in terms of scenery is very easily accessible and Ljubljana (while about the size of a small provincial high street) is the vibiest city on a summer evening.

I am doing exactly that over-romanticisation and there are language barriers and probably some horrific political stuff if you look too closely but hey.

Lets all move to Slovenia en mass.

you have a fellow down as this monstrous polyglot and then he busts out the 'en mass'

;)

I'm romanticising life in a post-independence Scotland mostly rn

Too fucking rainy.

Moved to Vietnam last year to teach English. Basically life has been way easier and more fun than I thought it would be, though maybe my expectations were not that romanticized. Have no plans to leave.

xps, autocorrect on phone, though my French is pretty shocking.

lisbon or porto stay in my mind a lot. san sebastian. new york.

maybe one day... though i really need to be somewhere english speaking as long as i want to act and do comedy.

inevitably this feeling has kinda skyrocketed over the last week - fight or flight...

i mean porto

https://lobusdaestepe.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/dsc04997.jpg

I'd do this but only if I could go on House Hunters International.

my dream place is still somewhere out along the middle of the Silk Road, this is a dream and I am not prepared to do a feasibility study

collioure

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/3/7/1362679079579/Collioure-011.jpg

http://www.maisondecampagne.org/images/collioure_night3.jpg

http://www.viree-malin.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/collioure-weekend-top-bonplan.jpg

lisbon definitely

clouds yes valparaiso is incredible

i realize i was dismissive of your dream and i am sorry

http://www.carjet.com/files/Porto,%20Portugal%20-%20francesinha%20at%20Ar%20de%20Rio%20-%20Porto%20Airport%20car%20hire.jpg

porto

also:

tel aviv
haifa
marrakesh
tangier

Porto is delightful and definitely somewhere i could see myself living.

Tel Aviv has a very appealing chill vibe as well, within certain parameters.

I know this is your dream but given the opportunity to live anywhere in the world, Tangier would be a very long way from my #1 choice.

Tangier was better than I'd expected but yeah

go with Chefchaouen instead

basically if the city is on the mediterranean and has good food and is relatively safe i will romanticize it and want to live there

I live in such a city right now and it does rule tbh

how about Valletta, Malta?!?

really like seville. presuming i can have a swimming pool.

xposts

I have moved around a bit and I still feel like food is actually (marginally, but still) more important than weather.

I used to romanticise London, moved here, and it was great. It's so damn expensive now though, that I'm starting to romanticise other places.

But it's harder to convince myself to just up and move now I've got a young baby; a few years there might not mean much to me but could well have a huge impact on who he is/what he speaks/etc.

xp admrl are you still in western MA? i romanticize western MA a lot

I am in western MA. I kind of chuckled to see Northampton on your list! I live about 5-10 minutes from it and never go there.

It's pretty amazingly beautiful in Western MA right now though. We just need jalapeños.

xp to stet oh yea w/ two little kids my days of moving around are done until retirement basically, we will buy a house sometime in the next 5 years and that will likely be our last move for a long while

northampton is great! i used to live right downtown and it was great, we were only there for a year though. i loved it year round but in spring, summer, and fall especially it was pretty much paradise in western MA

Yes. A very old man told me the other day that between about now and Thanksgiving, it is "pretty much paradise"...and then for the rest of the time it totally sucks.

The big advantage to living in Tangier would be that you get to act like a local and not have to be worrying about complete strangers being up in your shit literally every five minutes.

Valletta is astonishingly beautiful and they speak English there, could totally live there.

Anyway, good list of US places. I've lived in/near three of those cities and I'd still pick Los Angeles every time (naturally). But I'm curious about Albuquerque (or Tucson) too...

xp

Also my "foreign" city would be Ho Chi Minh City or Phnom Penh. Love those places.

yea i've spent very little time in LA but have really loved it, the climate is amazing too.

san diego sounds a amazing right now for me. a good friend just moved to san diego and he is the main beer selector in a fancy beer store and his partner is a phd student at ucsd and the emails i get from him describing their life biking around in a warm sunshine and drinking amazing beer and reading history nonstop all sounds pretty idyllic to me

san juan, puerto rico

straddles us/foreign

uk under labour govt iirc