Where do you live, and would you recommend it?

[Vandy!]

Just out of curiosity...

What country do you live in right now, and if someone from another country was thinking about maybe possibly moving to your country, would you give it rave reviews, or tell him/her to keep looking? (Let's pretend that your foreign friend wasn't escaping his/her home country, or anything desperate like that. Let's just say s/he was just tired of the home country and wanted a change of scenery.)




My response:
I live in the USA, in Florida. I run into lots of international students in my university, and I always wonder why the heck they would leave to come here! This one girl came from Japan, and had lived in Switzerland before deciding to come to Florida. Apparently, she had been wishing to come live here for some time. =| I thought she was insane. It is hot and humid 11 months out of the year. It was mid-80's on Wednesday, for instance. The people here are rude, I'm not fond of the architecture, the traffic is ALWAYS bad and there are no metros or trains to take, everything is overpriced, there is no scenery to speak of, and we don't even speak the same language down here! I've been travelling my whole life (mostly to Europe, but Canada's a dear favorite too), and even spent a month in Italy, and I can tell you that everything that I hate about living here in South FL does not exist up there (at least not to the same extent). So basically, if someone from another country asked me if they should move to this particular part of the USA, I'd tell them either to look for a more tolerable part of the country (I wouldn't know because I don't travel within the US) or find a different country altogether.

(Since the hypothetical foreign friend isn't someone who's escaping their country, I didn't answer for someone who was fleeing Cuba/Haiti for a "better" life in FL. In that case, it can't be helped. We're closest to them, first of all, and secondly, if they are willing to risk their lives and their family's lives to come here, then life at home must have been 10,000x worse.)

[Zkribbler]

Los Angeles.

Whether I would recommend L.A. depends upon what the person is looking for and/or afraid of.

The Good

Great weather. In the last week, it's been in the low 80's and 70's. Although that's somewhat unusual, I've never known it to snow in L.A. (About every 5-10 years, some snow will fall in one of the surrounding valleys and stay on the ground long enough for the TV news crews to get there.)

Diverse population. L.A. is now the No. 1 entry into the U.S. People come from all over: Latin America, East Asia, Armenia, Poland, Iran, etc. Caucasians have become a minority.

Culture: Many great museums here: The County Art Museum, the Getty, the Huntington, the Norton Simon. As the movie capital of the galaxy, we are the main source of America's McCulture. We also have two major universities (U.C.L.A. and U.S.C. ) plus an assortment of smaller universities and private colleges.

The Bad

Crowded. L.A. is the number two city in population is the U.S. and our population is expected to double in IIRC 7 years. Although L.A. is spread out, some areas are already jammed, and the freeways are becoming more packed everyday. My commute is about 20 minutes, but some people drive an hour or more.

Earthquakes. Every decade or so, we have a major shaker, but we're built for it. A hospital wing collapsed in the 1972 Sylmar earthquake and the bottom floor collapse in the 1991 Northridge earthquake--both killing scores of people, but other than that, there's only a couple of deaths per earthquake, if that. Much better odds than suffering through a hurricane or tornado, which we don't get.


The Ugly

High Crime: More murders here than in any other city (although Detriot and Philadelphia beat us out in murders per capital.) Also, we're a major drug entry port.

[Dr. Nick]

Buenos Aires, Argentina. And yes, I'd recommend it to anyone foreign (for a holiday at least).

[General Ludd]

Ontario, USA lite. Would not recommend it.

[Datajack Franit]

Milan- nice place for shopping, hooking up and getting stabbed, in this order

Positive stuff

Awesome museums, churches (the gothic one is the 4th biggest in the world) and universities. Financial center, hosts the stock exchange and it's the 2nd italian city after Rome. Huge '800 style malls and piazzas, good restaurants and gourmets. Efficient and modern airport/train stations


Fair stuff

Crowded subway system. LOTS of tourists, including bloodthirsty japanese middle-aged women literally jumping on you for infos and photos. So called "modern art" at every corner and extremely vulgar advertising (huge photos of a woman masturbating while sitting on a bidet used to sell jeans ) . Not-so-clean ethnic restaurants

Baaaaad stuff

Parks invaded by horny gays on day, angry squatters at night. Indecent public loos. High pollution lvs. Several terrorist plots (luckily) blocked in the latest months. McDonald's builded in front of churchs and art galleries

[Eli]

Israel :

Apathy is the only key to sanity here.

[Eli]

Never mind.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Atlanta Metro Area

Definetly recommend living here. Even though traffic sucks and mass transit is horrid as well, the 'city' is nicely spread out and resembles suburbia. However, you can easily jump on the train or drive to go downtown or to the bars in the outlying regions of the city.

[Bereta_Eder]

Athens.

New York would be shamed.

Not that much criminality in any case, but similar, very similar.

[red_jon]

Wales is best viewed from a distance of at least 2000 miles.

Southern England (where I live when not at uni) isn't so bad and (for some reason) seems cheaper than Wales.

Northern England (where I've lived half my life and where my relatives live) is just plain nasty.

[Sonic]

I live in Vilnius, Lithuania, and I quite like the place.

[Nubclear]

Utah.

Good: Great place to raise children if you can escape the religious fanaticism.

Tickets for movie theaters are cheaper here.

If your mormon, this is an obvious plus.

Bad: The lack of anything to do slowly drives you insane.

The number of mormons will overwhelm you.

Religious fanaticsm. Nuff said.

Most things cost much more in Utah.

Nonbelievers: Prepare for many people to try to convert you 24/7.

Liberals: No. Sorry. Utah isn't for you at all unless you like confrontation.

Mormonism creeps into the school system (When one religion (a fanatical one at that....) has over 70 percent hold of any place....you can bet that it will creep into education)

So in short...the cons seriously outweigh the benefits unless your a mormon (and a masochist as well.....)

No, I dont recommend this place to live.

[Joseph]

Napa Valley north of San Francisco about 40 miles. A mild climate most of the year. Hill and Mountain all around. Traffic is bad leaving town on any weekday, not to bad on weekends. 70,000 pop. Counting county pop. Next to city about 85,000.
Interstate 80 cuts through a conner of Napa County.
In California we are no. 2 in tourism behind Disneyland. The highway to the Winerys is bumber to bumber on the weekends.

[Provost Harrison]

Ah, my delightful home city of Kingston-upon-Hull in N. England. Population of city officially 280000, total urban area about 450000.

Pros: Spacious city, changing all the time with lots of new developments and construction, not as ugly as people think it is going to be - got a fast growing tourist industry, university city, good nightlife and facilities as would be expected for a city of it's size, weather generally milder and less extreme than other parts of the country.

Cons: It's like the city version of Royston Vasey, a bit of a cultural backwater in many ways. The local education rate is poor so opportunities for decent careers in this area are not too good, and thus pay is rubbish, despite spiralling property prices, feel of isolation from rest of country (although this isn't necessarily a bad thing), very industrial

[mrmitchell]

I live in Arkansas, that's all I can tell without getting worried someone will hunt me down and kill me.

(Arkansas USA of course)

If you don't mind having an idiot for a governor, or being surrounded by fools, it's the right place for you. It's actually got some pretty scenic places, although they don't compare to other scenic places...however, it's got so many scenic places that you can generally drive to a lot of them in only a few hour's or less drive, some great scenic places though. And oh yeah, if you don't mind being sure to meet more than your share of rednecks in your life, Arkansas is for you too.

If you're a liberal, move here. Maybe we can move enough liberals here to win Arkansas's electoral votes for a liberal. (The better solution would be to abolish that system, but first if we find a cheat around it maybe we can get it abolished.) In other words, you're going to find that the state is not that non-conservative. And oh yeah, you're going to have to face a lot of conservative rightwing christians if you are not another conservative rightwing christian.

The state does not seem to be in good shape but maybe it's just my city, it sucks like a mosquito (which is another problem down here.) Hrm...I want to be able to say something good about The Natural State...um...

Uh...Our last President came from it, and nothing went majorly wrong during his administration!

I'd recommend not moving into Arkansas, unless you really like the quiet serene natural places where the hunters pull up their trucks and shoot the crap out of everything that moves.

Ugh

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by El Awrence
Buenos Aires, Argentina. And yes, I'd recommend it to anyone foreign (for a holiday at least).

You're really desperately looking for $ at the moment over there, aren't you?


Anyway:

I live in Graz, Austria.

Pros: Not too big (~250000), but you get almost everything; Pretty good University; nice girls, or so I've been told by visitors; cultural activity is good, although the density of good programs obviously can't hold up with big cities; Graz is a city with lots of green areas; no natural disasters whatsoever, not even the floodings which raid throughout Europe

Cons: The minds of people are a bit provincial; they can be nitpicking or simply xenophobic, but this holds true for all Austria and is not really a threat; the weather in winter is controled by fog and "headache-weather"


Overall, I think it's a good place to dwell.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I live in Arkansas,

I can recommend not living there because Clinton came from there .

[Provost Harrison]

Hey, Clinton went to my university, in fact, the same college

[Imran Siddiqui]

No wonder you can't get a job .

[Provost Harrison]

He was just a Rhodes scholar for a year. Apparently he would never have got in otherwise Not got the brains Imran

[Dauphin]

I live in Kent, "The Garden of England" and to quote Dicken's Mr Jingles: "Kent, sir - everybody knows Kent - apples, cherries, hops and women"


Check out http://www.kenttourism.co.uk for more info.

[Provost Harrison]

And we all know about Trevor McDonald and 'The Kent Countryside'

[Asher]

Country: Canada
Recommended: No

City: Calgary
Recommended: Yes

Contradictory? Somewhat. Calgary is great, despite Canada's shittiness in general.

[Pekka]

Finland.

If you like cold and dark, come here! Though summer is nice here, never gets dark.
Low crime.

You will find nothing to do here. Nothing. Very very expensive. No, you can't get a job in here, no one can. If you get it, they won't pay you.
If you get injured, you get treatment, free health care for everyone, so make sure you get injured at least once.
If you like people, don't come here, you won't be able to strike a conversation with anyone. If you're new to the place, forget it, you're a loner, no social skills here.

So I won't recommend this place for anyone. Execpt for artists, who want to feel that pain to be creative. They can go to Lappland, where it's -40C, dark, and 50 kilometers to next person, and likes to wrestle wolves. On the other hand many great books has been written in jail, so why bother.

[Provost Harrison]

Is Finland really that exciting?

[Datajack Franit]

Now I feel really positive about getting a degree and teach in a foreign country, thanks Pekka

[Buck Birdseed]

1) York. The only reason I can imagine anyone would want to live here (unless you're after a fair-sized town with low crime and relatively safe surroundings) is if you're after History. Few places are so horribly over-historical compared to current importance as York. Yes folks, it's been a celtic farm. It's been a roman fortress. Constantine the Great was crowned emperor here. It's been the viking capital of northern britain. It has the largest ****ing mediaeval cathedral in england. It was beseiged in the War of the Roses. It was an important city for many centuries. It even was a bloody railway centre. And a military base during WW2. And what is it today? Nothing but a faux-mediaeval romanticist set of city walls, boring nightlife and astouding amounts of shitty high-street shopping. And one of the top universities in britain, ironically opened in 19-bloody-63 and not before, which is why I came here.

Oh, and the Merchant Adventurers Hall is nice.

2) Stockholm. Ahh! Venice of the North, Beauty on Water! Record-shopping capital of Europe! City of a million beautiful walks, of a thousand scenic vistas and a hundred islands. Compared to it's relatively small size it has one of the largest, most diverse and most cosmopolitan city centres in the world. I love you, Stockholm! I wanna go home!

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
2) Stockholm. Ahh! Venice of the North,

Well Brugge, St Petersburg and Birmingham make that claim too.

[Datajack Franit]

I thought it was Amsterdam

[Buck Birdseed]

Stockholm is aikin to Venice in the sense of being surrounded by water, there are no canals anywhere. No, Stockholm really has it's own characteristic shape unlike any other city I've ever been to, with a big lake to the west, the sea to the east, and a very short "river" (of around 200 metres in length and more than that in width) joining the two, around a smallish island, which is the place where the city used to be (it's now the Old Town).