In Puerto Rico I asked a cute bartender how to say vodka in Spanish, “Como se dice ‘vodka’ in Espanol”. She reached across the bar, took my hand in hers, leaned forward like she was going to kiss me, licked her lips and slowly enunciated, “vodka”.
I hardly remember any Spanish, but I remember how to say vodka.
Good story! Nice to know, in many different counties one can cut through the language barrier by just going up to the bar and saying 'vodka".
When I was in the service we used to say
If you can order a beer, a burrito, and a bimbo in the local language, you’re fluent.
I bet you remember her face too.
Expats in general …
The first few ex-pats who move into a new area or a new country are by definition pioneers. They’re the personality type to “go native” insofar as possible. Learn the local language well, eat local food in local places, buy and prefer local brands in the grocery store, and generally burrow into the local culture, etc.
Fast foward 40 years and now the area has an ex-pat colony of people who are just there for the cheaper cost of living and less snow than Akron or Jersey City.
Those former folks have some chance of being accepted as part of (albeit a second-class part of) their local community. The latter group will be trying to avoid that local community which will be trying to avoid them.
Beer or Cerveza covers beer in most countries.
Helps that it is birra (IRC) in Italian and close in French. And they know the English/German word Beer in Thailand, S. Korea, Japan & Philippines.
Eastern Europe might be tougher.
Just checked Portuguese is very close to Cerveza and Greek is close to Beer. And Thai actually sounds like beer so no wonder they know it.
Pivo in Russian.
My brother retired in Costa Rica, and one thing I haven’t seen mentioned here is mail service – especially getting packages. My brother orders stuff during the year and has it delivered to me. When he comes for his annual visit, he brings mostly empty suitcases, fills them with the stuff he ordered and takes it back to CR. He said, first of all, shipping to CR is very VERY expensive. But customs can be weirdly unpredictable and stuff can sit in warehouses for months. So, remember it’s not like you can get something spur of the moment like you can in the US.
Good information to know, thanks. So, ordering Prime on Amazon and expecting two-day delivery is not a thing in Costa Rica, eh?
Actually, for Amazon at least, that is changing. Amazon has both direct delivery & Prime Video in Costa Rica now. Though I understand the delivery is not all products, it is millions of products.
Don’t forget, with each different country, different electrical plug in. Malta use UK standard.
Costa Rica & Panama use US 110v 60hz, 2 prong like the US.
Portugal uses the European standard and Italia is just plain weird. It varies by area to some degree but the most common is 230v 50 hz like Europe.
Did some checking for Amazon
Portugal is lumped in with Spain apparently but also good sources are the UK & Germany. Not 2 day, but fairly quick.
Italy is 2-3 days instead of 1-2 days like the US. Still pretty good.
Malta: Not really. Looks like best service for Malta might be Ikea.
Panama: Not really
As What_Exit said, it’s changing. Slowly. Also, my brother is on the Caribbean coast. San Jose (the capital) is on the Pacific coast, and there’s much more available there.
Costa Rica actually has a very large ex-pat community; some 50,000 as I recall.
I lived in Portugal for two years and visited pretty much all of the country. It’s a lovely place, but the people can be somewhat unapproachable to foreigners. Also, learning Portuguese can be challenging. Younger people there may speak English, but older folks’ second language tended to be French. It has been a place where Brits have liked to retire in the past, but Americans are fewer (about 6,000 if I’m reading things right).
I also lived in Germany (four years) and Belgium (two years). I mention this because I never felt that I was part of the local community in any country I lived in, nor particularly welcomed. Europeans are fairly xenophobic and (with good reason) are not overly fond of Americans in their midst. You can survive just fine, and will be tolerated, but you will likely never fit in with the locals. If being an eternal outsider and thus somewhat isolated and lonely isn’t a problem, then by all means give it a shot
It’s good to keep in mind that the American embassy in any foreign country is not there to assist American citizens other than to possibly replace a lost passport. They are not staffed, funded or equipped to provide other services.
Addresses as we understand them are non-existent in Costa Rica. A house address will consist of vectors relative to major landmarks.
But cell service is fantastic. I think Costa Rica should just use an address system based on GPS coordinates (I haven’t been for a while, maybe they already are). They are tech savvy, everyone has a cellphone, it would be easy to implement, and instead of it looking really banana republic that they don’t have coherent street addresses, it would be cool and high tech.
Some interesting and useful answers already. As on who have lived in various places over the years, here is my advice:
think a bit about what sort of climate you want, and what you could tolerate. Bear in mind that older people may not tolerate heat well, and humid heat is really unpleasant - yes, I know. A cool or even a cold winter is not much of a problem if your housing is built to cope with it.
do some Internet research on cost of living, how easy it is to get residency as a retiree, and and any financial hassles. You might want to do this for just about the countries out there, only excluding that are climatically totally unsuitable or have a security problem.
the language. The Latin languages are the easiest to learn. A tonal language such as Thai is a huge challenge. If it must be an English-speaking country, this restricts your choices quite a bit. Of course, you can live in a little enclave (or is it an exclave?) of expats.
what do you want from the country? In other words, how interesting should it be, do you want some local color and culture? Some countries have a reputation for being dull.
cost and quality of health care. In many countries you would just take out private health insurance locally.
Possible places: the Philippines? Morocco?
Someone mentioned Portugal. The downsides appear to be bureaucracy and an absolute need to learn Portuguese, which I am told is more difiicult than Spanish. It is not always that cheap, so I am told, but that depends where you live. The Med is a great area, but it also has a winter.
Wherever you choose, visit it in summer and winter. Will it be too hot or too cold?
One point: would you consider dropping US nationality and taking the nationality of your new host nation? That would get the IRS off your back, and might make it easier to get residency. Look in the Internet for PT literature concerning this and related topics.
This has been an interesting thread. Thank you for starting it. Mrs Magill and I have been looking at Portugal. At the beginning of her career, she worked for eighteen months in Sao Paulo, so she’s not too worried about the language.
We had been looking at Italy, but we finally got her grandfather’s naturalization papers from INS. He was naturalized the year before her father was born, so we can’t get residency that way.
We also believe in trying before you buy. Could anyone recommend a good agent for renting a flat or house for a few weeks?
Google’s proposed solution worldwide for the lack of named streets and addresses is Plus Codes. Much better than lat-longs.
Ah, makes perfect sense. Actual lat-long numbers are cumbersome and letter combinations are easier to remember.
How about the parts of Spain that lots of Brits were retiring to? Did they all learn Spanish or is it enough to be an English-language speaker?
I stumbled across these guys when an ad ran on Facebook, I think.
I think they were saying you could retire in Panama for about $26K/year. That’s not in the fanciest penthouse, nor is it in the worst hovel, but everybody has his/her own idea of what’s sufficient. I read up some about Costa Rica, Chile, parts of France/Italy/Spain, Viet Nam, etc.
Generally, reading various sources, from what I remember:
A lot of these places have good medical facilities. But they’re not as plentiful, not a hospital on every corner. So A) you might only have one specialist to choose from, B) you might wait a long time to see that specialist, and C) he’s in a major city, where you may or may not elect to live. But he’s probably affordable.
Some Americans marvel at how much house palace their money can buy/build, but they may shoot themselves in the foot. A) If you need to sell it, most of the locals can’t afford it, B) banks don’t loan as much or for such long terms, and C) other expats would rather build their own or offer you a lot less than it cost. Some people would just as soon rent, for that matter.
One article I read said, “If you think people are going to come visit you overseas, think again.” I suspect that’s true, because how many visited us before COVID, anyway?
Those same people are the ones who would make an effort to see us half way around the world. Your circle of friends may vary. Internet and satellite help keep in touch with family and friends back home, anyway—if they’re disposed to it.
Does anybody know how well these work?
That could be a lifesaver, and I guess there are apps as well. If you can meet some fellow expats and make new friends, that would be awesome too.
Of note, Malta is shown at 89% of the population speaks English, well above the world average of 15.4%. Costa Rica is below the world average at 8.2% (even lower than Mexico at 12.9% and Chile at 9.5%).
Great link, thank you. Look at those Nordic countries. Wow.
Well English is 1 of the 2 official languages in Malta. Maltese is kind of close to Italian but not really. Italian is the #3 language of Malta but not an official language.
Malta was still British Colony until 1964. So 150 years under British control.
Maltese is a weird language, probably as weird as English. It was an Arabic language but always used the Latin Alphabet. Only 1/3 of the words are Arabic in nature. About half are Italian or Sicilian and most of the remainder are English.
But most natives speak English or enough English to get by, so its pretty good place to visit for the language impaired like myself.
Wasn’t Malta recently in a spot of trouble over passports for expats? They were forced to revoke some, I seem to recall.