I’m Moving Back to Europe: Why Romania Comes First
Since I've announced that I'm moving back to Europe, a lot of you have been asking me where I'm going. So, I decided to make this news to give you a little bit of insight into where I'm going to be moving in Europe this year and then where I'll be living next year.
I have been living or traveling abroad for the last 20 plus years now. now been to more than 60 countries. So, I help people move to different countries and that's a little bit of the reasons why I'm leaving the US and going back to Europe.
So, the first place I'm going is Romania. I've given myself a few months to prepare to leave the United States and then when my lease ends, I'll go straight to a conference and then visit my friends and family. So, if you're thinking of moving abroad, it's good to give yourself plenty of time at least 3 months, 6 months up to a year before you actually have your departure date.
Um, in this case, because I've moved abroad so many times, and because I'm an expert in living abroad, I gave myself a shorter window of just about two or three months, but typically I recommend minimum 3 months or more up to at least 12 months, especially if you're moving with a whole house of stuff or if you have to downsize a lot of stuff.
So, another thing, yes, before you leave your home country, go and visit friends and family. Um, you might not see them for another 6 months or so. So, it's always a good idea to go visit them or have them come to you. So, in this case, I'll be making my rounds going to visit my parents, my sister, my nephew, and then my brother and his fiance, and my niece over in California. So, that'll take at least a week or so.
And then I'll come back to Miami and leave around mid November to Romania. And the reason that I'm going to Romania and I am pursuing citizenship from descent. My grandfather had dual citizenship in Hungary and Romania. And uh one of the requirements to qualify for citizenship in both of those countries is to pass a language exam.
Now, Hungarian is probably a bit harder than Romanian, and I've always I've been to Hungary before, but I've always wanted to go to Romania. had a few trips planned before that we had to cancel because my mom was sick and things happened. So, I'm really looking forward to going there and spending quite a bit of time there.
If you've followed me or my podcast for a while, you'll also know that I speak Spanish and I learned that through an immersion program back in 2002 when I was a Rotary Scholar in Costa Rica. And ever since then, after taking five years of Spanish in high school and college, then going to Costa Rica for three months and studying in an immersion program, I learned so much. I learned more in 3 months than I did in 5 years of school.
So, if you've been struggling to learn a language, a really good way to do that is to just go to the country and immerse yourself there and focus on learning the language. Take classes, go to a place where people don't speak much English. And so that's what I'm going to do in Romania.
Now, I know a lot of the population does speak English there, especially in the bigger cities like Bucharest and Kluj. So, I've been looking around for places in more rural areas where I'll be forced to speak Romanian when I'm out and about, especially with all the technology we have, FaceTime, social media. It's really easy to kind of stay in the English zone.
So, I really want to get out of my comfort zone and and learn the language and take classes on a regular basis, if not every day, than a few days per week. So, I've been looking around for language schools in Romania, and I found a couple because I'm going in November.
We're going into winter, which is typically not the busiest tourist time to go to Europe, but that's why I like it. It's not as crowded. It's not as expensive. if it's not as hot. Uh the days are shorter, it's darker. There's some pros and cons, but uh it's also good to go to a place that you're thinking of living during maybe not the best weather or the best climate to see if you like it during the bad times and then you'll probably also like it during the good times, like the warmer weather, more sunshine.
So, I've been looking at Brassoff and CBU. I don't know if I'm saying that right, which are relatively close to the mountains. I once spent a whole winter season in Bulgaria skiing and snowboarding in the morning and then working remotely in the afternoon and the evenings. And so I'm kind of thinking I could do the same thing here in Romania.
Instead of going to Kluj or Bucharest, I can go to one of the smaller towns near the mountains and have a little bit of, you know, nice work life balance. go snowboarding a few days a week and then come back and work from my laptop, uh, running my relocation company and then also taking classes in the in the evening.
So, it's going to be a busy day or maybe we'll have that switched around because of the the time zones. But that's my plan for the next few months.
Now, unfortunately, I have been asking around. I've been emailing language schools and very few of them have any programs that start in November or December. Probably because it's going into the holidays, Christmas, New Year's. So, it looks like my only options at first are either to take private classes in Cebu or Brasaf or to study in Bucharest or Kluj for at least a month or so.
So I'm thinking maybe the first four to six weeks stay in Bucharest or go to Kluj take classes and then in January move to one of the smaller towns to do more of an immersion program where I can be closer to nature and stuff like that and spend at least a couple of months there and then maybe go back into Cluge when it is closer to springtime and the language exam because the language exam that I need to take to pass the test to show that I'm at B1 level Romanian and then qualify for uh getting citizenship are located there.
So also when the snow is melting on the ski slopes, you know, could be a good time to go back into the cities. So I don't have it completely planned out yet, but I personally like to slow travel. So I plan to stay at least for a month in each location. So, you know, maybe a month in Bucharest, a month in Brasav, etc., etc., a month in Cluge, and see where I'm at.
Come like March or April. I will be flying back then to the US because my brother's getting married and then going back to Europe. And here's where things could change.
So, if I really love Romania, I'm happy to stay there. I'm planning to apply for a digital nomad visa after I get there, which u I can apply for about 2 months into my 90-day shenan stay on my passport. So, I'll do that and then I can stay for up to a year, I believe.
So, if I like it, I'll just stay there and we'll see how it goes.
But I also do need to think about my work, my clients, and also my plan from this year, which was to move to the Netherlands. So the main countries that I help people move to are Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, and the Netherlands. We also get a lot of inquiries for for Ireland and the UK and a few other places mostly in Europe, also Latin America, Mexico, Costa Rica.
But um even if I'm not, you know, working and and living in those countries, it's nice to be close there and in the same time zone as my clients once they get there. Maybe be able to meet some of them in person. Um work with our partners there, residency attorneys, things like that.
I could do everything remotely. I've been working remotely since 2008, so quite quite a long time. I did write Digital Nomads for Dummies, but um it'll be nice to be closer to the countries that my clients want to move to and I can pop over and, you know, visit them, pay $50 for a ticket versus being across an ocean away.
So, I could apply for a visa to one of those countries. Um, could be, you know, a digital nomad visa in Portugal, could be a longstay visa in France, could be a digital nomad visa in Spain, but I'm probably going to go with the Daft visa in the Netherlands because I do love the Netherlands. And from there, it's really easy to travel anywhere else.
In the meantime, if my citizenship application is processing, I've heard that can take up to 1 year, 2 years, 3 years at the max. But to still be able to live in Europe while I'm waiting on my passport, then I will need to get a form of a visa or residency. so I could go with the DAFT visa, which is the Dutch American Friendship Treaty, uh start my freelancer relocation business in the Netherlands, and uh meet all my clients that are moving to the Netherlands.
So, that's my plan so far. If you have any um travel tips on Romania, which is one of the European countries I haven't been to yet, then please drop them in the comments. Let me know any questions as well and subscribe to join me on this journey.
Related
