What country would you like to move to?

[Travis]

New Zealand: because what we consider to be "sluts" here would be just "virginal" there.

However, there is that chance that I couldn't get laid even there in which case I would just go off and establish an Antarctic Research Station. Population: ME!

[Eddie Dane]

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Ok, so you spent a night on a pissup with the Handels-crowd and then left the county to go up north? Or did I missunderstand something there?

I visited Gothenburg on several occasions. I have friends who moved there from London. My former account was simplified for readability and attempted humour.

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There are a few things that the lucky tourist may be unaware of after a short visit. Things like the miserable infrastructure, the casual racism and misogyny spouted by 80% of the inhabitants, the horrible weather, the perpetual gang violence, the burning cars, the exploding restaurants, the fact that if you spend enough time there your car _will_ be broken into, your dog or cat _will_ be attacked and possibly killed by a psycho, the local's missapprehension that they are "funny" when they spout their racist crap.

I cannot be sure here, but Scandinavians have a very dark sense of humour. If the people spouting racism were reasonably intelligent, they might have meant it ironically. Here in Holland we have a similar cultural trait. Some stand-up comedians that cater to the educated audiences will happily fire off some Anne Frank jokes. People laugh because they are shocked at the how utterly wrong this is, not because they agree.
Then again, you may just have encountered a bunch of racist twits.

half the people I know in Gothenburg are of Persian descent, not much racism there. Not even to Jews.

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Just imagine en entire city populated by 40% archetypal "taxi drivers" (the "I'm no racist, but..." kind) 40% gangster wannabees, 15% advertising company employees or "mediatypes" on the dole (hard to tell them apart, they look the same) and 5% poor schmucks trying to make an honest living while dodging stray explosives, offensive jokes and braying laughs.

They seem to have a gang problem, mostly of the Albanian variety if I remember correctly. Their police force looks like it was configured to counter these problems. They all look like Dolph Lundgren on steroids and have a semi-military outfit. Very intimidating.

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Add to this neo brutalist architecture, a dodgy police force and a sense of abject boredom as only conveyed by old super 8 films from East Berlin before 1989.

I kinda agree. Now we know where Albert Speer is hiding.

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If you haven't killed yourself by now. Then you may venture a walk in Haga, a kind of "old town" part of the city aspiring to Notting Hill status, with cobbled streets and media students. Galleries (where they saw you coming), or one of the fifty to the power of a gazilion woo shops provide ample shopping for the terminally rich and stupid. In Gothenburg, you are never more than three feet from a joss stick. If you don't like patchouli... ...it's not your city.

Not my experience.

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Try to think of it as a city populated almost entirely by Vinnie Jones and Daily Mail Readers.

I hang with DJ's, teachers and (Persian and Greek) restaurant owners. You may have ended up in the wrong part of town.

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Oh, and the housing is crap. If you are not either loaded or connected or both, it's off to the projects with you (Millionprogrammet, as we call it) where you will be knifed for your iPod on the tram. One girl I knew didn't want to be knifed on the tram, so she lived centrally in a shared house, with a basement loo (earthen floor), no lock, you climbed down a ladder through a hatch in the floor to get there, and you flushed with a garden hose, and an uncovered outdoor shower - with cold water only - where the builders working on the house next door would watch her shower. (She got herself a special shower t-shirt to avoid that.)

Sounds like you took a wrong turn into Latvia. I was told that social housing in Sweden was quite good.

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And you have never seen so much yellow brick in your life.

Yellow brick is very ugly. For this reason more of the allied bombardments of WWII should have been concentrated in Bavaria. But I digress.

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(I bet it looked good through beer goggles though. Even Greenock would look inviting with beer goggles.

Thick beer goggles.)

On my four visits there, I was royally pissed much of the time.
This may have influenced my opinion, social skills and gun safety.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by bookitty

Scotland. Mainly Edinburgh. I could keep the same job, have some nice cold weather, and be well-situated for exploring Europe and Africa. I even looked into UK citizenship but my grandfather got himself born in South Africa.

You'd love it today! I'm sitting here in my office just outside Edinburgh, with a view over to the Pentland hills. There isn't a cloud in the sky, the sun is blazing down and there's a very pretty half-moon also visible. It is, however, downright chilly. We had a heavy frost this morning and the temperature was about -3C when I left for work. Great weather to wrap up warm and go walking in the hills, or to hole up somewhere cosy.

Rolfe.

[whatthebutlersaw]

Eddie: Nope, not Latvia - central Gothenburg, and no, there was no irony there. I am talking about the kind of people to whom irony means "sort of made of iron". I saw plenty of racism while living there and was subject to it, as the target of continuous harrassment. But the saddest bit was the institutionalized racism you would encounter so regularly it became boring. I will give you an example:

At one occasion, I was on the tram on my way from work. (my weekend job) I sat on a bench on the tram stop, reading my book and thinking of nothing special when my ear picked up a rowdy bunch at it next to me. I looked up and saw three of Västtrafik's ticket inspectors - although in plain clothes. During the weeks they would have a blue uniform, but these weren't. I knew they were ticket inspectors, because they talked about it. They spouted a lot of racist stuff, and talked about how they would take the effing "blattar" who "always" rode without tickets. I didn't see them drink, but they behaved as if they had been drinking.

I, and them, was the only one gettin on at that stop, and for two stops only people looking "Swedish" got on. Then, on the third stop, a man I would have guessed to be Syrian got on. He had to run to catch up, and got on at the end of the carriage and started to move towards the ticket puncher. (At the time, the trams operated so you either paid the driver cash, and got a ticket, or you bought prepaid cards that you punched in a machine that counted down your money and issued a date and time on the card. You had to punch differently for how many zones you were travelling and you got to ride on one punch for an hour and a half, after which you had to re-punch)

The three immediately rose and cut him off just before the punch and demanded to see his ticket. He gave it to them and they said "You haven't punched this, that's a 600sek fine". And he explained that he just got on and that he was just on his way to punch it when they stopped him, but they said that he obviously was not going to punch it. He said that he was and surely they were not mind readers. Realizing that this would probably not hold up, they then suddenly claimed that he had got on two stops ago, (Something I knew to be perfectly untrue as they and I got on two stops ago) and that if he intended to pay he would have punched it then.

By this time he was getting stressed and upset. I sat, mouth open, and watched this unfold. (I was still new to Gothenburg and hadn't started to expect these things yet). So he turned to the carriage and said "Didn't any of you see me get on just now?"

I was not the first to find my composure, it was an elderly couple who - like me - had seats next to the door where he had just barely thrown himself into the carriage and therefore exchanged relieved smiles with him in a "yes, you made it" kind of way. When they found their tongues, so did I and when the three of us stood up, the rest of the people from the back of the carriage found their tongues as well. We said that we saw him get on, we explained that we saw him immediately starting for the punch as soon as he got on. I explained that not only did I know myself to be the only one, except for them, to get on two stops ago, but also that I had heard them talking at the stop even though I may have looked deeply entrenched in my book. This finally got them to back off, but not without actually going something like "You got away _this_ time".

The man was visibly shook up and a little shocked, they had ganged up on him and intimidated him to the point where he got unsure himself where he actually got on. Everyone else in the carrige was, or looked, Swedish and there was no guarantee that the people he was travelling with would have stood up for him. Thanks to the elderly couple, we did, but had it been up to my incredulous self I'm not sure I would have found my tongue in time.

I gave him the number of my spare cellphone and said that he should get in touch if he decided to take this any further. Fortunately, a friend met him in Brunnsparken so he had some support when the rest of us had to shove off. I never heard from him, so I guess he never did take it further. I wrote to Västtraffik and asked them if their inspectors really had mandate to behave like this, and got a nonchalante reply that they didn't condone racism, that they had the utmost trust in their ticket inspectors and that we must have been the victims of frauds. Thing is, they identified themselves with official ticket inspector ID (which I pointed out in my letter) and I saw one of them (with a quite recognizable, weaselly face) in uniform, checking tickets on another tram just a week later. So obviously noone had looked into this even though I was able to give line, time and stop and a description of the perps.

Did they abuse their inspector IDs on their own time? Or were they on the clock when they did this? I don't know. But Västtraffik sure as hell didn't want to know.

But hey, what do I know. You might hang with people who find it funny to intimidate people under the guise of authority and relieve them of sums of money that surely wouldn't inconvenience them, but that may be the difference between eating and not eating for the rest of the month to other people.

[GlennB]

Well we have already moved to the country 'we would most like to move to' - Greece.
The dream ticket for me would be to live in Greece from Oct-May and south-western UK (Somerset, Dorset) from Jun-Sep, for the fishing and the mild UK summer. Won't happen unless we win a lottery or something but we've easily got the better end of the deal so far.
For another entire move, though, rural southern France would be my choice. Somewhere near some nice rivers.

[Soapy Sam]

As a Scot, I should never admit this- but there are some places south of the border I rather like.

[Rolfe]

Speaking of someone who lived 6 years in Hertfordshire and 18 in Sussex - if you're going south, do it right. There's a whole continent over there....

Rolfe.

[Highly Selassie]

I've already lived in Canada, and it's not much better. I'd rather live in Norway, the Netherlands or Switzerland, in order of preference. Even France would be better.

Originally Posted by rockinkt

I would stay in the Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada.
Vancouver consistently places high in the rankings of the most desirable places in the world to live.
The Economist ranked Vancouver 1st in quality of living in 2009.

The scenery is spectacular, the women are gorgeous, and a couple of hours drive takes you to North America's best ski resort - Whistler. (Home of the 2010 Winter Olympics).

Vancouver also boasts an atrociously wide rich-poor gap and one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in North America. It's quite possibly the most overrated city in the world, and I have a feeling the Olympics will expose this once and for all.

[Antiquehunter]

I too, chose to leave Vancouver. Probably for different reasons than those specified above (my issues were cost of living as compared to quality of life, tax treatment for non-residents etc...) but I think that 'over-rated' probably does sum it up. Yes its a pretty city (in most places), yes it is relatively cosmopolitan, yes it attracts a diverse population who generally get along. But I do scratch my head as to why it ranks so highly as an international city.

[The Drain]

Originally Posted by learner

Well im going to Ireland, march/april 2010. I shall have my largest rucksack and will be walking with the sea to my left all the way around. I may take detours, may not, see how it goes. If im not back home in a year, il be staying. Maybe.
Its a beautiful country sparsley populated with beautiful people.

Until I get there of course.

What's your starting point?
If Shannon Airport, keep an eye out for the remains of 'famine villages' on the west coast. They're a reminder of the fact that Ireland (possibly uniquely in the world?) has a smaller population today than it did in the early/mid-19th century.
If Dublin Airport, you'll have to go through Dublin City first. Maybe consider going the other way with the sea to your right?
And don't miss the lakes of Counties Fermanagh/Cavan/Monaghan/West Meath - just because they're not on the coast!
Have a great time!

[Blackadder]

With enough money, I would emigrate to Great Britain with a nice condo in London and a nice little house somewhere in the middle of nowhere probably in Scotland or Yorkshire

With less money I already live in my favourite country on earth (The Netherlands) although Norway or Sweden would be great alternatives.

[BTMO]

Originally Posted by Travis

New Zealand: because what we consider to be "sluts" here would be just "virginal" there.

This is true.

You can go for the low hanging fruit, or you can try for the slightly harder ones.

Either way, you will score so much and so often your dangly bits will fall off.

Incidentally, I am typing this on a laptop. In bed.

[Burning Beard]

Seeing lots of interest in New Zealand here.

No shortage of woo here that's for sure.