Living Abroad isn’t Easy But it’s Better Than the UK

An article in the Sunday Times this week by Selina Scott charts her troubled love affair with a 200-year-old farmhouse in Mallorca that she bought some 20 years ago.  The article is a very enjoyable read and really hits the nail on the head about how hard it can be to set up a new life abroad.

The heartache, tears and frustrations of attempting to make a ruin into a home, of trying to be absorbed by the local culture, (because no matter how hard you try to absorb it, in reality and truth, it – and the local population – have to absorb and welcome you), and the sheer perseverance and virtual insanity it takes to make it really work come through loud and clear in Ms. Scott’s article!

But the really fascinating and uplifting thing about the story, as Selina Scott tells it, is how many people not only relate to it, but how many expatriates have decided to comment online about what has been said and written in the article.  All of them voice the same opinion – although in different words and styles – and that is that living abroad isn’t easy, but at least it’s a damn sight better than living in the UK!

As expatriates we at Shelter Offshore know all too well about the highs and lows of living abroad, about the passionate struggle to settle in and the fantastic fury that evolves when you try and buy a property abroad and make it into your perfect home overseas. 

When every single thing is done ever so slightly differently – and you have previously marvelled at how similar some things actually are to the UK – you drive yourself slowly mad.  You cannot change people and cultures, and you know you shouldn’t want to either.  And yet, wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just pick up a Yellow Pages and find a qualified and registered plumber/electrician or even lawyer to help you with your latest predicament?  But it never seems to work like that…whether you’re living in a first world, highly efficient nation like Germany, or you’re hiding away from the maddening crowd on a Mediterranean island somewhere.

And yet, and yet – as most long-term expatriates will tell you, the struggle, the highs and the lows, the expat flu, the end of the rose coloured glasses are all worth it in the end.  If you read an expatriate’s diary you would be hard pressed to perhaps believe it – because it is an incredibly tough undertaking to move abroad and make a home in a new country.  This is perhaps why expatriates are almost as famous for their whinging as they are for sticking it out and making it work abroad.  But the one underlying and overriding fact that rings true for all of us who live the love/hate affair with our new life overseas is that it is oh so very much better than the old life we had in the UK!

Yes, we have things to complain about, yes we encounter situations that are just not credible and could never ever have been allowed to happen ‘back home’ – but then in our Mediterranean paradise, our place in the Caribbean, our hideaway in the mountains, our city life overseas - we can legitimately escape the rising crime of the UK, the high tax, blame society of Great Britain, the fact that any form of success is frowned upon in Blighty, but if you fail you’re ridiculed.  You leave behind the desperately depressing weather, the traffic jams and bureaucracy, the neighbours who smile at you but envy you and secretly try to out do you, you leave behind knife crime and the new class that has never sought employment and thinks it’s their right to live off the state.  Oh yes, you may have to pay for medical care, but then you escape an overloaded NHS that is strangled by red tape and which employs people in a caring profession who (in our direct and awful experience) couldn’t actually care less.  You escape so much and you gain so much.  If you disagree, then you enjoy your life in the UK, good for you.  If you agree however, or if you feel that there is much to leave behind, then welcome to the wonderful world of being an expatriate and embracing the challenges of establishing a new life abroad!

In conclusion, living abroad is hard – but it’s a whole lot better than remaining in the UK.