Previously on Dan introduces pretty basic knowledge about Europe to other
North Americans who don't know a lot about Europe we talked about living in
France living in Spain Portugal and Italy and living in Germany and in
today's episode we're going to discuss some of the most interesting regions of
Europe including the Baltics which is Estonia Latvia and Lithuania and the
Balkans which includes a ton of countries including Croatia Albania
Montenegro Macedonia and Bulgaria and a few others stay tuned so there's two
more regions I'm gonna cover here that encompass over 10 countries but before I
do I want to touch on something and that is the actual experience of living in
each of these countries and in order to get a better understanding of that I
would encourage you to check out another video I filmed on three differences and
three things about living in Europe and this is fairly similar among all
European countries I'm also gonna link to one of my favorite channels called
geography now and some of their videos that go in-depth on each of these
European countries and that way you can go deeper the their video on the Czech
Republic covered stuff that it took me a year to figure out about the country
living here so they do really good videos on what the country is actually
like some statistics and what the people are like and all this sort of stuff so
my goal here is to give you the broad overview so you can start to think about
some countries that maybe weren't on your radar and have some more options
for where you might want to live but not to go in-depth with every country or we
would be here all day and also you'd figure out for some of them I don't know
what I'm talking about the last thing I'll say about this is that most of the
stereotypes for Europe are true I get it stereotypes are bad bla bla bla but if
you're trying to think of what it's like to live in Italy it's like the
stereotype if you're trying to think of what it's like to be in Germany it's a
stereotype bread hard bread beer people who follow the rules you know this is
kind of in Spain is a stereotype European stereotypes have never been
proven false to me I've never been in a situation
where I've went to a European countryman like oh this is nothing like the movies
or what people say it is there are all the stereotypes so that should also give
you a good sense of it not all the stereotypes might be true I actually
found French people to be very nice although I went there after the Paris
attacks and apparently after 9/11 New Yorkers were really nice where otherwise
they weren't so who knows but generally the stereotypes of European countries
are true so if you're wondering what its what a country is like watch some movies
about it watch some shows about it and that's actually going to give you a
pretty good insight into day-to-day life there so the next group of countries
I'll talk about is in the Baltic area this is Estonia Latvia and Lithuania
these three countries are quite small very blond and don't quite get
scandinavian cold in the winter but they're pretty damn close all three of
these countries have some issues with their population being split with the
Russians they were former Soviet countries and during the Cold War period
the Soviets sent a lot of Russians there primarily as a punishment to work in the
ports and things like that the problem is most of the Russians were not exactly
the most educated of sorts this now leads to a problem because when the
Soviet War ended the Estonians the Latvians the Lithuanian they weren't
exactly keen on giving these Russians passports or citizenship because they
were the people sent there by their persecutors and they are not Estonian or
Latvian so they don't have a local password so you have someone in Estonia
who doesn't have an Estonian passport but it's lived there for thirty years
and they don't have a Russian passport either so you have this weird situation
where upwards of thirty forty percent of the population in some cities that's
eighty or ninety percent is of this Russian origin very uneducated most of
them don't speak the local language so they're getting beamed with Russian
propaganda like insane amounts of Russian propaganda they believe it all
and this is very threatening so if you
the news things about NATO about setting up more troops in Estonia running drills
this is why because Russia's in a situation where they could there's a
bunch of things they could do to basically overthrow the population
through the Russians who already live there and do a bunch of weird stuff so
that's one interesting fact about this region as I said they're also very
blonde and they also love to drink I believe Estonians drink more hard
alcohol per capita than anywhere in the world and also a significant amount of
beer as well so they don't slack off in that area Estonia is uniquely a very
innovative country when the Soviets left they elected a very young government who
got rid of a lot of bureaucracy and now Estonia is a country you may have heard
about a residency if you're a digital nomad I'm sure you have where anyone in
the world can basically get a bank account set up there and and open a
business quite easily it isn't actually as innovative as it sounds but they've
set it up so their citizens can vote can sign contracts can do all this online so
it's a very impressive country I was in Estonia last year and it was very
impressed the level of English is really high
I haven't been to Lithuania but Latvia as well really high levels of English
friendly people not a lot of foreigners but enough that they're kind of open to
it but not so many that they're like piss off tourists like in Prague they
don't want any more foreigners at this point but yeah I was very impressed by
Estonia and if I was looking for somewhere new to live in sort of the
spring summer I definitely consider their capital Tallinn it was a smaller
City than Prague but like beautiful old buildings again amazing level of English
nice people and like my uber was a Tesla so a lot of like people doing well and
innovation and all this stuff there so generally this part of the world doesn't
get a lot of attention the winters don't help them but there's a lot of
interesting things going on there I guess if you were to live there and if
you are doing well in business so you're a digital nomad on the end that I would
call location independent which is what we should all strive to be where you're
earning a very good income there are some serious tax benefits in this area
the world and worth looking at these countries as well the last area I'm
gonna cover here is the Balkans I'm gonna skip out on like Ukraine and
Russia because I don't have a lot of experience there the visa situations
weird if you're from North America probably not an amazing time to go live
there unless you're one of those weirdo travelers who likes to go to the
strangest place because people think it's weird and it gives you attention if
you're a normal person they probably don't make a ton of sense right now
depending on if you're trying to actually establish like residency and
spend a lot of time somewhere so the Balkans the Balkans are made up of a lot
of the four well all of the former Yugoslavia so like Croatia Serbia but
also would include Albania Montenegro Macedonia and Bulgaria and maybe a few
other countries we can group Romania in there although I don't think they really
included but let's group them in I was I've traveled through most of these
countries I was recently actually in Bulgaria and Macedonia there's a lot of
natural beauty in this part of Europe whether you're on the coast of like
Croatia or Albania and you have just a beautiful ocean Croatia in particular
has it just gorgeous views it's a beautiful place or the mountains like
some of the drives I did there Montenegro it's incredible so a lot of
natural beauty the people are very friendly it's there definitely people
who prioritize social over making money at least in the people I've met so
that's not maybe because of the economic opportunity there isn't great but there
definitely there's a leaning towards and join life similar to maybe the Italians
or the Spanish there's an interesting I guess mix in these countries because a
lot of them did go through the war in the 90s and so you have places that
we're kind of on par with Western Europe doing really well
Sarajevo for instance was gonna host the or did host the Winter Olympics right
before the war so here countries that we're doing very
well and then have basically been destroyed and set back some have
improved more than others some of the main cities there that you want to check
out would be like Belgrade and Serb is a cool city I actually considered
moving there instead of Prague although Prague is better and you'd have Croatia
Croatia I'd probably live in split or as that are on the coast or somewhere to
look at Montenegro is an interesting place and and then if you go like
Macedonia super cheap all of all of the Balkans are going to be cheap relative
to Europe but places like Bulgaria Macedonia Macedonia was probably the
cheapest I went to Albania is gonna be really cheap Albania in Bosnia or a
primarily Muslim so keep that in mind they're both allowed drinking they're
not like their European Muslim meaning they still enjoy life and they're not
crazy but something to keep in mind in terms of like there will be big cultural
differences between the countries based on the religious background because that
affects people a lot yeah generally a good area though some a place worth at
the very least traveling through its it's very kind of close so you could do
a couple months there and then see if you like one of the spots and consider
setting up a home there Sofia Bulgaria is one last place I'll mention as a
great city I would vote for Prague over it as well if I have to give my opinion
to me it was like a great city and I've been to a bunch of cities like this
where it's like I could see myself living here
like if Prague was blown up or something or a few of the other cities that in
Europe I put ahead of it but either way this part of the world if you're like a
laid-back pace of life a lot of wine rakia a natural beauty somewhere a
little more unique without as many tourists or expats low cost of living
and then the Balkans are definitely worth checking out as a place to
possibly live so that is my off-the-cuff kind of overview of Europe I'll probably
do some more videos in the future that are specific on certain countries or
areas but that's kind of just what I would tell a friend like if we sat down
for beer here in Prague where it's very cheap if you remember that from the
video that's kind of what I would tell you just to give you that overview of
like what it's actually like to like in these different places and then you
could start to think of where you'd most would be most interesting for you I was
gonna say that you might already know where you want to live because we have
these stereotypes in our heads right of like people will always have wanted to
live in Germany or Italy or that most expats I meet or a lot of them the place
they live they kind of always wanted to live from like a movie or something they
read and in a way that's cool but the biggest takeaway for me in
Europe is being totally wrong about my expectations and totally blown away by
places that I didn't really know anything about I didn't know much about
Barcelona or Prague which you probably do now but you know I didn't and both
cities that were just amazing that I loved so I had a lot of experiences
where the places that everyone said was really good or I thought I would like I
didn't like that much and then places that I wasn't sure about I really like
loved so if you do have that feeling of like I've always wanted to live in say
Italy go to Italy and do that but if it's not what you expected don't write
off the rest of the continent try out a few more places and I bet you'll find
somewhere that is perfect for you and that's it thanks for watching this video
if you've enjoyed it if you put up with me this long you might as well subscribe
to the channel catch my other videos which are primarily about helping you
actually have the freedom to become location independent and expat live
abroad and and have that freedom in terms of your life and so with my other
videos I'm gonna help you do that catch you in them
you