Introduction

I still remember the day I put my first step abroad as an expat. Contrary to expectations, I wasn’t that much excited (still don’t know why though) when I landed for the first time. Later on, I thought that “Huh! this is not as cool as i thought it could be. Perhaps, I’ll not stick here too long.” Boy, I’ve never been so wrong in my life.

The time I was writing this article, I frigteningly realized that It had been 13 years, I’d been an expat both as a student and as a worker. I’ve always considered myself lucky enough to be witnessing the both sides of being expat living abroad. My little journey that started in Hungary, followed by Poland, Denmark currently resides in The Netherlands. It’s been going on like this for about more than 3 years now.

During this whole time, inherently, my perception on living abroad has changed drastically. Once upon a time, a dream that I desperately wanted to achieve came true but not in the direction I was anticipating. In this post, The goal will be to share my experience in Europe and feed people with all the learnings, facts, lessons I’ve gained here so far.

I’ve also met & talked hundreds of people who live in Turkey, (which is originally where I am from) had chat with them about my personal experience. That is, one of the purpose of this blog post will be to address the hot questions they have asked me for the past 13 years.

To give some extra context, this blog post will be only about living in Europe.

Even though, i had several chances to visit North American countries as well as Asian countries, I’d rather share my takes on the continent that I lived only. It’d be arrogant (maybe it should be called ignorant) to have takes on countries I’ve only visited.

Settling into a new world

The first thing I noticed as soon as I moved was that “habits i wasn’t even aware of before, suddenly became recognizable and frustrating.” The market, you used to go no longer exists. The bread, you used to buy cannot be found anymore. The cosmetics, you used to use are serviced by different brands and the issue is that.. you don’t know if you’ll like them or will suit your taste. At first, it feels like it’s not a big deal but if you consider living abroad for unforeseeable future, then you better need to figure them out!

The places you’d have got socialized suddenly don’t exist. Your friends that you’d meet when you want to gossip are not in reachable distance. To Simply put, “Your old habits don’t exist anymore.”

The hospital you used to visit is not available anymore. You don’t know how to interact with the people working at the hospital. You don’t know if your health insurance cover your healthcare expenses.

Well, Congratulations! You’ve re-born into this world again without prior knowledge.

The moment I realized that I can’t keep up with old habits was a decisive moment for me about whether I want to pursue living outside of my homeland or not.

The New Reality of Having Friendships

Unfortunately, There’s no silver bullet to adapt new habits or how to adopt into a new social life. It really depends on the country you move. The culture really really matters! A country that shares the same/similar culture with your country always helps. Alas, this is not applicable in most cases though. I lived in Hungary where I had witnessed similar patterns of culture like I used to see in Turkey but Poland was not appreciating me in terms of cultural adaptation. It was a different beast for me to adapt. Though, Slavic people such as Ukrainians and Russians were easily adapting to the country and learning the language.

In a country where we know the cultural norms, and relationship building, it’s relatively easy. However in a country you put your feet for the first time, it can get quite tricky though.

I’d seperate my experience of finding friends into 2 seperate categories. Friendship at the School and Friendship at work.

Friendship at the School

You’re kinda lucky if this is the scenario for you. The school helps you with finding friends. It’s effortless. If you study at a university where the education is being also taught in English then, There’s a very high chance you’ll meet A LOT of people who are in the same shoes as you are. The schools in Europe seem to organize big events before/after each semester. Besides, It’s a university. There isn’t much to say. It should be always easy to meet up new people as long as you are not asocial person.

Friendship at work

Unlike universities, European work culture divides the private life from working life. That is, In most of the scenarios, your colleagues at work are not your friends outside. This might be very strange at first for people who tend to have close-friends at work. For instance, The Turkish work culture is a good candidate in this case where your colleagues can also become your best friends as you spend at least 40 hours per week with your colleagues. It’s also very common to see colleagues getting married in Turkey whereas it’s not that common in Europe.

In Poland, It was really difficult for me to get started with making friends as I thought It was going to be somewhat similar to how to make friends from work colleagues in Turkey. Then, the reality hit drastically; it became a shocking experience for me that my colleagues were having chat only about work and chat outside of work could have only happened during the lunch break. You want to hang out with them after work? Nope, you want to share your personal struggles with your colleagues not related to work? Good luck.

I’m not going to say that this is the experience you get from working in Poland. Not at all! I worked for 2 different companies there and my experience were pretty similar to each other. It may be that it’s my bad luck kicked in and put me in a spot where I felt like i was in a single person train. However, what i realized is that if you’re from a slavic dominated countries, the adaption process is much smoother as I assume they have similar cultures as Polish people do.

I’d like to emphasize that living in Poland was the first time, I spent my time abroad as an adult. That is, wherever you go, if it’s your first time living outside of your country, things will get shitty so hard for you.

In Nordic countries, It’s even more difficult to make friends with your colleagues; Sooth to say, Nordic people tend to keep staying friends with their childhood friends. It was one of the deep cultural shocks for me when i was living in Denmark. At my current age, I don’t even remember the facials of my childhood friends whereas childhood friends still see each other in Denmark after 30-40 years.

In Netherlands, It was a way better experience than the previous two. I believe this is due to 3 reasons:

1. I already figured out what to do/expect in a new country.
2. I did a lot of research on social life in the Netherlands. (Something I haven’t done before moving to the Netherlands unfortunately.)
3. The Netherlands is extremely expat-friendly country. So many people all around the world live in The Netherlands.

The working culture in the Netherlands somewhat similar to Denmark I should say but in my opinion, Denmark is more closed-society than the Netherlands.

I sometimes reframe Netherlands as The United States version Europe. The diversity is immense here. You can pretty much meet people all around the world.

Language Barriers

If you aren’t living in a country where English is the official language, you’ll have struggles regardless of where you go. At the end, even if locals speak English, you need to know a little bit about the native language to do basic stuff such as shopping, ordering, legal processes (such as immigration office, municipality registration etc.) and most importantly, finding a new job.

The comfort of being able to express yourself easily might be coming to an end depending on the country you move; Your English skills might matter significantly as well.

Based on my experience so far, I’d say younger generations tend to speak English very well in most of the European countries, even if it’s not their native language. However, the older people you try to communicate, the more you’ll struggle with expressing yourself. There are exceptions like Denmark and The Netherlands where regardless of the generation, people can easily communicate with you.

Regardless, whether it comes to reading news about the country live in or settling paper-work at the imnmigration office, you’ll need to figure out the native language. No matter what you do, you can’t run away from it. Even if you live in the country that people speak English the most as the secondary language. If you want to integrate into the country and have long-term plans, you better learn the local language. Also, locals will surely appreciate that.

Loneliness

When I said, you are re-born when you move out of your homeland, I really meant it. It’s quite tough if you move abroad alone like I did. You leave your good friends, family as well as memories behind you. It really hurts when you think that your friends still hang out together, sharing pictures/videos on Instagram, your family is having family dinner together. They all hurt and you can’t estimate how bad it can get before moving. I met a lot of people who decided to go back to their homeland just because they couldn’t stand with loneliness anymore.

When the weekend hits, you start thinking what to do without friends first. This can be harrowing at first. Going alone, travelling alone could be quite challenging for those who have never experienced it before.

Even if you move with your family, things don’t get that easy. Firstly, You’re still on your own with your family unless some people you know already live in the country you moved. (Even this doesn’t change much about the feeling of loneliness but still better than nothing..)

Secondly, If you have children, then you need to find a school where they need to go, learn the local language, culture as well as proceed with studying at the same time. I don’t have kids that i can share my experience about, but I met several people who migrated with their kids and heard their experience with sending their children to the school. It can get quite hectic for you.

Benefits of Living Abroad

Perhaps, I delivered a pessimist introduction into settling; I must admit that this was on purpose though. Usually, from the outside of your bubble, the grass may look greener on the other side but it’s not as I described above.

I’m sure there are millions of people who faced different problems than I did throughout their own period of living. Obviously, It’s not feasible to describe them all in this article and this article is not about convincing people not to go abroad.

There are tremendous amount of positive experiences you can get by living abroad. I’ll share the most fundamentals ones as the following:

Cultural Enrinchment

There’s simply no better way to get influenced by different cultures than living abroad. It’s been always fascinating to find out about how other socities interact with each other. For me, the most interesting part of meeting people all around the world is that, the norms, culture that they might have in their country might be the same as in your country even if there’s no historical connection between your country and theirs.

For example, In Turkey, It’s super common to see people taking their shoes off before entering a house. (I don’t understand why this is not common in Europe! You bring the dirt on the streets to your house..) I met several Koreans who shared with me that they do the same in Korea. There’s probably more than 5000 km distance between Turkey and South Korea but the culture can still be the same regardless of the distance.

Improving Language Skills in Haste

There’s no better way to learn English (or the language you were targeting to learn) than living abroad. The umcomfort of not being able to express yourself in your native language forces the brain forcibly to quickly digest a new language. I remember the day I tried to speak English daily first time and 2 months after, The difference is remarkable! I’d say, I had only writing and reading skills before I moved to Hungary and now, I can confidently say that I was already on B1 level in terms of speaking skills in 2-3 months.

Learning English is for sure going to happen nicely in a non-English speaking country but the bonus is that, you can learn one more language which is the official language of the country you live in! While I was communicating in English most of the day, I also had a chance to learn Hungarian (which was quite fun and surprising as it’s similar to Turkish in terms of grammar), Polish (It was a nightmare experience), Danish (meh experince) and Dutch (fun experience).

Travelling

Visas, visas, visas… It’s one of the most annoying things for me in this world. You’re judged by the country you were born in. If somebody asks me to describe “inequality”, I’d say the goddamn visas.

If you’re a non-EU citizen with a nationality that requires visa to enter EU, you know how it feels. So nothing to add into that frustration. As you migrate to a European country, there’s a very high chance, you’ll move to a country that’s part of Schengen area. The residence permit you obtain from the immigration office enables you to travel within EU and also let you enter the zone without requesting a new visa. This is probably one of the biggest benefits of living in Europe as a non-EU citizen. If you’re EU citizen already, well, you should have already skipped this part. :)

Personal Growth

For instance, working in a new country can open your eyes from a different perspective. This can be quite beneficial when it comes to navigating in unfamiliar systems or areas. Living abroad also enables thinking out of the box, Enhance empahty on your colleagues.

Studying in Europe

For me studying Computer Science was quite obvious since my childhood after I found out that my interest on computers were more than just playing video games.

Everybody, including myself knew exactly what I was going to study in the future. One thing that wasn’t clear for me yet was how to study Computer Science in English language. I undebatably knew that in order to succeed in this career, I was supposed to figure out English language as majority of IT documents are written in English.

I reckon, due to the nature of EU and travel-free zone provided by Schengen, Students in Europe can simply go to another country to study. It’s pretty much like similar to going to another state to study in US or somewhat similar to going to another province in Turkey. However, The hospitality of non-native students are not just limited to EU citizens. EU also welcomes non-EU students as well and there are A LOT of them here.

Education Quality

The quality pretty much depends on the university you go as you might expect. However, EU members follow up a strict education system that are pretty much applied among all EU members. This, of course, doesn’t mean that the quality of education is the same among all countries. The biggest factor has been always the teachers and their backgrounds. However, There’s a common consensus that I can share here:

If you’re targeting to study engineering then, western European countries attract the best teachers available in Europe and can provide world-class faculties for scientific research purposes. Though, I must admit that many European countries still lack behind the quality of high education in US but regardless, you have better options with studying engineering in countries like Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark etc than Eastern European Countries.

I don’t know much about other educational fields and I’m not in a position to give a lecture on the quality of the rest of them. Based on what I heard/observed from my colleagues is that, the pattern is similar to what we see in engineering fields except the fact that the gap between the west and east is narrower in these categories. Especially in social science category.

One thing, I need to point out here is that the education in Central or Eastern European countries is not bad. In fact, it’s pretty good. I also studied my bachelor degree in Hungary and when I went back home, I could see the difference right away. The education I received in Hungary was above the average of the high-education quality in Turkey.

Building Network

I’d say this is the best part at studying in Europe. The network opportunity is quite enormous. You have teachers that have really good connections, not just in the European country you’re in but also within the EU zone.

I had teachers who endorsed me and supported me with making networks in the United States as well. (I was thinking about going for masters in the US some time ago but that plan had been cancelled for a long time and don’t think it’ll come back honestly)

You can also make network by making friends! You never know where your colleagues will be working in the future. They might refer you for a job position that you’d maybe never get a chance to even interview!

Work Life in Europe

While i was writing this article, I strikingly realized that it has been more than 7 years since I started working abroad. Considering the fact that I only worked for 2 years in Turkey, It made me realize that I know the European work culture way more than Turkish work culture. After this realization, I decided not to compare Turkey or another country to European Work Culture but share directly what I’ve witnessed so far.

Work & Life Balance

Probably, Work & Life Balance was the first thing that I noticed people were talking about when I moved to Poland. Europeans respect their private life and keeps it seperate from their work life. This usually means as the following:

• Reasonable Working Hours: I haven’t seen any place where you work more than 40 hours per week until now. The extra working hours are usually rewarded with extra compensation. It can be especially quite fat compensation if you’re working on a national holiday such as Christmas or Easter.
• Quite Generous Paid Holidays: It’s usually 25 working days per year you don’t need to work. You can start using your holidays in your first year at the company as well. (Yes, you can’t go to holiday in your first year if you work in Turkey and it’s only 14 working days of holiday for your first 5 years followed by 20 days of vacation after 5 years working for the same company.)
• Personal Needs Matter: If you’ve got an urgent situation to resolve, feel free to skip work. If your child is sick, then take time off to spend time with your children. If you’ve got an appointment during the working hours (which is very common) then you can just call the day off.
• Workspace Flexibility: If you live far from the office location, you can work from home for the most of the week or even remote-only.

Though, Employers in Europe started enforcing their employees to come to the office more often than before. Their usual excuse is to improve the team collaboration and more engagement.

We all know this is bullshit. :) Everybody knows why they’re going to the office more often than ever.

Competitiveness

In terms of competitiveness, I’ll only share my opinions on IT industry.

The European market gets more & more competitive than when I arrived for working for the first time.

In my opinion, the following outcomes are the reason of the tight competitive market.

1. The European Economies are in trouble: European countries are not in a good shape when it comes to their economies. The wheels are not turning as fast as it used to be and money in the markets are draining very quickly due to instability in the world. I share more on this in Current Climate in Europe section.
2. Layoffs: I’m still not convinced that companies laying off their employees because of AI. However, I truly believe that companies hired tremendously during the COVID period. Some companies hired people for their Bullshit Jobs Positions.

I remember, between 2020-2021, I was receiving interview invitations for each day. Everybody was desperately trying to hire an IT engineer. It felt really nice at that time and I must confess, i felt quite powerful at those moments, but I kinda guessed that climbing the mountain will also result in coming down as well.

3. Simply More IT Engineer: In 2026, there are more IT engineers than 2020s. I believe the IT boom during the 2020s also contributed to the increase of IT Engineers. So many people got the impression that if they go ahead with IT, they’ll be resilient to natural disasters such as COVID.

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I’d say finding a new job in Europe is still much easier than finding a new job in US or super crowded countries like India or China. European companies still hire massively from outside of EU to fill empty positions.

There’s one important thing I want to emphasize in this blog post. European countries do not need positions for white-collar jobs as much as blue-collar jobs. The Netherlands, Denmark and other Western European countries do desperately want to hire people who can do plumbing. They try to fill the gaps for nurses. They want to find people who can fix the gas/heating system.

On top of all this, They want to hire someone who can speak the local language. This is where the bottleneck is in Europe. Filling the blue-collar jobs.

In general, I think it’s fair to say that Western Europe is more competitive to find a new job than Eastern Europe. There are so many talented IT Engineers outside of EU want to move this area as I think!? Western Europe’s getting promoted to be the final destination in low-income countries. Still though, the competition is not way worse than Eastern Europe but just to keep it in mind, you’ll see more applicants for a position in western Europe than Eastern Europe.

Compensation

Again, I want to start with yet another heads-up that my view on compensation is based on IT not other fields.

Simply put, IT salaries in Europe are higher than most of the countries in the world as you might have expected before reading this blog post. Though, what you can get from the salary depends on the country you live in dramatically.

I’d say if you’re an IT engineer located in Central or Eastern European countries, you might not get salary in Euros but you might end up having a salary way higher than the average which results higher quality of life. These countries usually do not tax IT Engineers as much as they do in western Europe. Besides, Large enterprise companies love to invest in this part of Europe as it’s cheaper to invest (cheaper workforce) and governments provide benefits for large chunk of investments.

For instance, Poland receives a lot of investment from FAANG companies as well as other large enterprise companies due to its strategic position within the continent. A country with really great talent pool and being not part of Euro zone makes Poland an attractive choice for these companies. This also reflects the salaries on IT engineers there. They are lower than what you could make in Western Europe or USA but way higher than the average income of Polish people.

Western Europe is a bit different scenario though. First of all, Taxes.. Damn, they collect so much taxes in Western Europe! For instance, Denmark might collect up to 55% of your income as income tax! Germany follows a similar pattern as well. They tax you so much!

The Netherlands has a special scheme called 30% tax ruling which allows certain individuals (including IT engineers) to pay 30% less tax for 5 years. The purpose of this tax ruling was to attract talent into the country as The Netherlands claims that they need a lot of engineers!

Since the end of COVID, The cost of living sours in western Europe pretty badly which I cover more in Current Climate in Europe section. The inflation hits really hard at the moment. That is, Even if your salary is quite high, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have a nice, comfortable life.

Before you accept an offer from a European company, make sure to check cost of living, rent prices as well as accommodation crisis in the country you’re targeting to move.

Salary Increases

If you’re coming from a country where inflation is high, you might be surprised that salaries in EU zone are not increasing as much as the ouside of EU. In fact, salaries barely increase. Yearly adjustments are mostly based on inflation ratio unless you do a spectacular job or you get promoted. If you want to increase your salary dramatically then, your best option is probably to change your job.

Current Climate in Europe

In this section, I wanted to summarize how’s been living in Europe and what has changed since I moved here. The climate in Europe has changed significantly over the years. Mostly into the negative side unfortunately.

Economy

I moved to Poland to work in 2019. Before COVID hits… The picture of the economy in Europe was stable and rewarding. I must say the most comfortable time I lived in Europe was right before COVID hit the world. After COVID, things have changed..

First things first, COVID exposed the weaknesses of European countries. The society was very fragile to an unexpected disaster like COVID. The governments panicked and responded the crisis by printing money like there’s no tomorrow. I’m not an economist; I’ll not have a hot take that what they did was wrong. However, In my opinion, the execution of the COVID plan led to one of the biggest reasons of economical struggles in Europe today.

Obviously, The Russian - Ukranian War that started in 2022 has resuscitated the fear of invasion within Europe. Cutting ties with Russia damaged countries like Germany and The Netherlands due to high costs of natural resources. Alas, Europe is not a rich continent in terms of natural resources. Wars in other regions have also caused negative impact on European economies.

Inflation is a big big problem in Europe. Those who get fixed salaries each month faces the hidden tax (inflation) the most. I’m also one of them as I get fixed salary every month here. I can easily feel that I cut more & more every single year in terms of my expenses. As I said above, your salaries are also not catching up with the inflation. It sucks but it is what it is in Europe.

The tax burden on middle-income residents is increasing every year. The governments come up with questionable ideas to balance the budget every single year. Instead of balancing the deficit between poor middle and rich people, The governments prioritize the poor and the rich comfort for political gains. Therefore, they squeeze every single penny out of the middle class.

Healthcare

Jesus Christ!!! Healthcare is such a disaster in this continent. You want to go to the hospital? You need to pass the GP (General Practitioner) firewall on the phone first. Most of the cases, you’ll get an answer like “take paracetamol” or “drink water” which is annoying.

Did you break your leg? for them, there’s nothing wrong. just take it easy and rest. The healthcare is nothing but a comedy show here.

Sometimes I feel like the main sponsor of Healthcare system of European countries is paracetamol. I really mean it. The only way you can go to hospital in Europe is:

• You’re an elder person
• You’re pregnant
• You passed out at home for some reason but somehow you woke up.
• You’re about to die

I understand why they don’t want to send you to hospitals. I get it. It’s due to employment shortage in healthcare BUT If I pay more than 160 euros each month to get healthcare services, I better expect better treatment than getting an answer of “take freaking paracetamol”.

In case you decide to move to Europe in the future, prepare yourself mentally; You’ll suffer with the healthcare system. If you have serious deceases already, make sure you can get the treatment easily. Also, make sure that it’s not super expensive to get treated. In Europe, Healthcare services can rob your wallet so bad.

Political Status

I’ll not go into the current atmosphere of European politics here. It’s not necessary. I have my own personal political beliefs like everybody else but decent amount of EU citizens are fighting over politics every single day already. My focus will be on politics regarding expats.

Several European countries need to attract talents from 3rd party countries. The major reason is that their population is aging. Most of European countries have pretty stable pension systems. To feed that pension machine, they need taxpayers money. This is why they need a lot of people outside of Europe. In case they have a problem with feeding the machine then, politicans will welcome you.

If elections are approaching, you might be put as a target to blame. :) I mean, it makes sense for them. You aren’t citizen and they don’t need to make you happy with their propaganda. They can just target you to get votes from nationalist side of the country. Though, things get into normal shape after the elections.

Personally, I’ve never faced any racism against me in Europe. (Though, I can’t say the same for everybody) I must say European people have always welcomed me and I always appreciated that. I never felt like I was being discriminated. For that reason, I’m grateful. Even if politics look like they’re against you, in reality, life in Europe is not like how European politicans present.

Conclusion

While I was writing this post, I didn’t estimate that it was going to be this long. If you read this piece until the very end. Thank you so much!

By writing this article, I wanted to address the most common questions I’ve received from many people outside of Europe. If this was useful information for you then, I’m most happiest person in the world. :)

If you’re a person who thinks about moving to Europe or you’re about to move to Europe, This blog post is for you. I hope, you can find useful information here that can make your life in Europe much smoother.

Everybody’s life is unique. My journey is never the same as others. I’m sure there are expats, who faced issues I didn’t and didn’t face issues I did. I think i might even find expats who appreciate this hell of a healthcare system in Europe and it’s up to them to share their positive experience. :)

In case you want to contact me, you can find my contact details in my about page.

Have a nice journey out there!