What to Consider When Moving Overseas

 

It's the most miserable time of the year, sing with me! Tamarindo Beach today overcrowded with people on that holiday week that is the busiest week of the year. Needless to say I did not walk the beach like usual. But my back is much improved finally.

Today has been filled with shockers. What a week! Capped off by reacting to cutting up broccoli, then having to stop to medicate while soaking the broccoli in icy water and lemon juice. I made a run to the fruit and vegetable market in Villareal and stocked up. First time I've ever reacted with asthma to broccoli and I haven't a clue why. We had the broccoli in a salad for lunch, after a couple of nebulizer treatments, some drugs and a whole lot of rinsing of the broccoli. 

Finding that produce market happened quickly after moving to the area. Part of the finding out about the places surrounding you is seeking out where the locals shop, and local produce. I've been going to this place since we moved here over 3 years ago. Many Americans here never find these places, and miss out, stuck going to Wal Mart and the expensive Gringo supermarkets. I go native as much as possible. Which leads me to today's big shocker.

Vyckie Garrison, the founder of No Longer Quivering, my former good friend, moved to Tirana, Albania last week. Moved. To. Albania. ALBANIA!!!

I've always had Albania on my bucket list of places I wanted to visit, but the idea of living there is something else. I'm actually quite frightened for her right now. Why? A lot of reasons, a lot of things I've learned first hand from my own overseas move.

Before we moved to Costa Rica we did several years worth of research. We both had basic college level Spanish. We'd visited the place more than a few times. On our last visit here we decided this was it for retirement, we opened a bank account, hired a local lawyer, and started looking for places to stay. I had researched literally everything I could, and spent long hours talking to ex pats in the area. Not to mention the reams of books written by ex pats we both read.

I knew before we arrived what we would do for medical care, had registered with the clinic we use. I knew how to read the bus schedule in Spanish, how to shop here, how to bitch about my asthma to the doctor in Spanish and studied Spanish even more furiously. 

It wasn't easy, and there were still lumps in the mattress of the move. I will never forget our last day in Tamarindo on the final trip we took to start the ball rolling on the move. A friend of a friends of a friend recommended an American realtor. We told the realtor our rental budget and he immediately tried to high pressure us on the last afternoon we were in town to buy a house in the 500K to 1.5 million dollar range. Ask for an apartment in the five hundred to a thousand dollar a month range and he trots out million plus houses. I remember how discouraged and beat down I felt after that long wasted afternoon. He saw us coming, started rubbing his greasy little hands together thinking we'd just fallen off the tourist turnip truck and he'd weasel us into a huge extravagant purchase. He had no idea how tightwad we really are.

I fear for Vyckie because of this. Everywhere you can go in this world there are always sharpies looking out to fleece the naive non native. I am pretty unfleece-able like I was that afternoon. I can smell someone trying to do what I call the "Gringo Shuffle". If you're living in a poor part of the world there are those that think anyone coming from North America are rich brainless rubes. Even if they are not rich. Compared to just about anyone in a poorer country as an American you are so fortunate and richly blessed with the possibility of being wealthy, with a better standard of living than most in that host country.

I don't know for sure how she formulated her decision to move to Albania at all. It's a poor country, very poor, and they suffer a serious brain drain of doctors and nurses who can make much more money in Germany and other places. The hospitals are very under supplied and under staffed. Very likely it will be hard to get prescription drugs there that she's used to.  She does not know Albanian. She does not know the prices of housing in that area at all. I believe from what she posted about her apartment rental that is likely an inflated Gringo Shuffle price, especially after perusing the rental prices on the Century 21 website and doing the Euros to Dollars conversions. 

No idea what she's going to do there. Likely she'll not be allowed to work and the average monthly wage is a not so munificent 464 American dollars.

There are so many things to consider when you do a big international move like that. It's not to be taken lightly or on a whim. Where will you work? How will you support yourself? Can you wire in funds from the States? Does she know that you cannot receive disability benefits if you are out of the country for more than 30 days? Can you get your prescriptions? (not likely) Everything I am looking at on the State Department website paints a very bad picture of Albania that contradictions much of what she's claiming and thinking. There are cities in Albania that the State Department has banned U.S. employees from visiting due to the drug related violence.

This isn't going to end well. She does not qualify to be a resident either.

I'm afraid she's going to end up like those sad broke Americans I see here squatting on abandoned farmland right off the beach. Homeless, living in tents, begging for food.