One reason I’ve long wished I had an EU passport is because of how cool it would be to move around different member countries, picking up foreign languages and cultures. Spend a year in Berlin and come home reading Nietzsche in the original! Pick grapes in Tuscany and discover “la dolce vita”! Etc.**
Okay, sounds like a pipe dream, but in my early 20s when I had a little more flexibility I totally think I’d have done something like that had I had the chance. So Euro types, either a) make me burn with jealousy by telling me how cool it was to spend a couple years learning French while working in a cafe on the left bank, or b) disillusion me by explaining how tough it really is to get a job in a country where you don’t already speak the language. Of just that, you know, most young Brits tend to stay in Britain, Swedes stay in Sweden, etc.
All stories welcome, though I’m particularly interested in those who’ve moved to countries that speak a different language. Also, stories about moving and working in another country, please, not just studying or traveling.
**For those who aren’t aware, being a citizen of one EU country enables you to work and live in any other, with some temporary restrictions for citizens of former eastern-bloc countries. For Americans to work legally in the EU is extraordinarily difficult.
From the UK, lived and worked in Ireland for a decade. That was easy, just turned up and got a Social Security number. Planning to move to Italy eventually. That is a bit more bureaucratic apparently: not all countries just allow you to rock up and start work. France is notorious for this, no matter where you’re from.
Amusingly, considering the two countries you mentioned in the OP, I’m from the UK and have lived and worked in Sweden since late 1999. It took about a month or so - and a few forms (including one that I swear I filled in three times in three different places) - to get into the system but once you’re in you’re in. The country wasn’t (then, not sure about now what with being in the system and all) really set up so that people could work with you being fully in the system. I couldn’t even get a telephone, for example.
Language-wise, the state puts on courses. For people like me, that had a job, it was twice a week, two and a half hours each time after work. People without jobs could do daytime. All courses were free and apparently for those on any form of welfare they are mandatory. So I am told, anyway.
These days the UK feels like a foreign country to me. I would be very surprised if I moved back.
I worked in France for another branch of the same big company. It handled the bureaucracy well, so it was easy. The hardest thing in France is that you need an address so the bank will give you an account and you need an account so somebody will rent you an appartment.
I think finding a restaurant job without contacts is hard, with all the fresh Tunisians and all the earlier immigrants.
I am German and worked in the Netherlands for years. My first employer had someone who helped with all the paperwork (relocation support). The only difficulty I remember, was getting a phone. KPN told me that I needed a Dutch ID to get a phone. This turned out to be BS and the nice lady in relocation support solved it in about 10 minutes.
Once I had my Dutch tax number and ID everything was easy.
Not about me, but – … One of my son’s friends at high school and university in Australia had parents who had immigrated from Spain. So, although this guy’s first language was English, he was a dual Australian-Spanish citizen. That meant that when he, my son, and a few others moved to Britain to work, he had it easy: he was an EU citizen, so could work in the UK without a visa, while the others had to get a working-holiday visa or (in the case of my son) an ancestry visa to work in the UK. That means, as a Spanish citizen, he’s worked in the U.K. but not in Spain. (I don’t know how easily he could work there: I don’t know how much Spanish or Galician – his parents’ language – he knows.)
I’m English and have worked in Spain (for one summer), Slovakia and Germany. They were kinda the type of thing you’re talking about - I was a nightclub hostess in Spain and taught English in Germany and Slovakia, as well as working in a cafe in Germany.
These were all jobs where speaking English was an advantage; in Germany I applied for lots of other job and got nowhere even when I was perfect for the job and saw them readvertise it.
Not from the point of view of “being a legal resident for tax purposes”, but I have worked for a Spanish company (so, Spanish tax resident) while pretty much living full-time in the UK (and having the right to vote there in local elections). This was a consulting job. I’ve also attended graduate school in the UK under “reduced price tuition” on account of being a EU citizen.
Note that the reason I set up shop as self-employed in Spain was in order to simplify any “employment” in other countries: nowadays, anybody who hires me is hiring “Nava-the-corporation” to provide the services of “Nava-the-physical-person”. I was tired of collecting SSNs (I have one from Spain, one from the US and one from Switzerland) and of useless agents who can’t be arsed run work permits and other necessary paperwork, and frustrated by how difficult it could be to figure out “where do I have to pay income tax this year”. By setting up as self-employed, I’m basically making my tax-residency fixed while my actual location moves.
Dutch, studied and worked in the UK (5 years), Ireland (8 years) and now in Italy (coming up to two years).
Yeah, it is really cool, though my eyes do glaze over when someone asks where my actual “home” is and I do sometines envy the “settleds” and their nice houses and general stability.