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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

> Man, you hate Americans, why do you live here? Honest question.

I didn't realize my comment amounted to hatred just because I don't want the average (or worse) domestic to share a home with me.

Where is it better? Do they speak English there and have open borders to an unmarried American male in his 40s? Honest questions.

Japan is on my radar, but they're notoriously difficult in the immigration department, and I don't speak the language. Not that I'm looking for a partner or whatever there, I just find their traditional practices of doing more on the floor appealing. In the US I'm an extreme weirdo for not using furniture.

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> Where is it better? Imo, better is in Scandinavia, Finland, Netherlands, though I have not been to Finland. Every country in Scandinavia seem very comfortable for living.

When we were traveling around Scandinavia, on couple of occasions we stayed next to business centers on weekdays, once in Stockholm and once in Reykjavik. In the morning when I realized that there was a bunch of IT companies, while my wife was trying to arrange us some tourist stuff I was walking around and thinking if I should just go door to door and see if anyone has a job opening.

Typically countries and other states don't impress me that much when I travel as a tourist and I don't fall for "the food is so nice and people are so friendly" argument, but Iceland and Sweden, specifically Stockholm, really made an impression on me.

So yeah, Scandinavia, Northern Europe and maybe Canada? I have met a lot of Easter Europeans, Asians and some Americans there in seemingly all professions, not only specialized skills, so there must be some immigration pathways.

It sounds like you might enjoy the cold far more than I do.

Back in the Nokia N900 era I had an employment opportunity to hack on Linux stuff with them, but it required relocating from my home (at the time) in Illinois to Finland, which they were willing to facilitate. I was keen on the opportunity, until I looked at weather and income. There are some very good reasons I'm in California today...

But I admit you're not the first person to suggest Scandinavian options in this subject. Readers struggling with these issues who don't mind the weather would probably do well to explore those options further.

Hard to look it up on the phone, but I almost am sure that temperature extremes are harsher or same in Chicago than in Stockholm. I think being washed by seas from all sides makes it softer. The bigger challenge imo is very short light day in winter months. As for the weather, they are very good at handling it at infrastructural level. Roads in Iceland in the middle of the night during a winter storm are better than in California in the afternoon after a medium to heavy rain. Also their attitude to clothing and cold weather is very practical and resilient. This is why it impressed me so much, that good infrastructure made bad weather livable. Otherwise, I don’t like winters and don’t miss snow a single bit.

Also, I think Poland is a good country with growing economy and looks like they were able to elect centrist liberal party.

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