The List - First Iteration
Recently, I moved from importing information from the World Bank and the World Health Organization to getting information from Numbeo.com, which has cost of living information. What I hadn't realized originally is that it also has information on health care, crime, and pollution. So, I was able to get all of that information for a lot of major cities, which is nice. Since cost of living was what I was really waiting for to start looking at where we could live, I decided to import a couple other important items right away. First was the Political Terror Scale. I don't think I need to explain why political terror sounds unappealing. The second was this study, which gave countries a homophobia rating.
Once I had those imported, I immediately whipped up a query to see what a rough estimate of our options were. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more complicated than I thought to get the information, but in the end, I came up with a list of 66 cities. The criteria I used included information about cost of living, political terror, homophobia, and pollution. I then went to a doctor's appointment and didn't work on it for a while. However, last night, I decided to check why some cities weren't included. There was one on Fiji that I knew met most of the criteria. So, I went through the tables and discovered that the countries that hadn't made it into the homophobia study weren't being included. This morning, I rewrote the query to fix that, and Fiji showed up. I then looked online for info about homophobia in Fiji. After that, I looked at the other cities that had been added by this change. It turned out that they were all places that recently decriminalized homosexuality. These are not liberal places. Joel read a little about crime in Fiji, and we decided that it was better to not have it on the list, so I went back to the old version of the query. Another change I made was causing Poland to be included on the list. I don't know what the view of the average Polish person is, but I can say that the LGBT-free zones are shitty. I changed the query back to take Poland off the list. The last change I made was to include the information from the Rule of Law Index. That took Ecuador off the list, I think.
Of course, what everyone is interested in is the actual list. I'm not going to post the whole thing, but here are the countries on it:
Argentina
Canada
Costa Rica
Cyprus
Czechia
Germany
Estonia
Spain
Greece
Croatia
Hungary
Italy
Lithuania
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Slovenia
Slovakia
Uruguay
What do I think of them? Well, first, it seems that this list does cover a lot of what I wanted. Interestingly, the cities that make this list also fit the "very little malaria" requirement. However, I'm going to take Canada off, because there is only one city, which is located outside of Vancouver BC, where we could afford to live. I'm honestly fine without Canada. Only one city is showing up for Italy, so the situation might be similar. I'll have to look at it and see. Hungary is coming off. We absolutely loved Budapest. However, Hungary's government is going the way of Russia with homophobic discrimination (source), and as with Poland, I'm not interested in that. Estonia and Lithuania did not spark joy, so they'll probably come off the list too. There are a lot of Asian countries that didn't make the list because of homophobia, sadly.
My plan is to look up the visa requirements for each of these countries (probably even for the ones that are coming off the list, because I can't help myself) to further whittle down our options. I already know that Argentina, Uruguay, and Portugal will work for immigration, so I'm not worried that we are going to end up with no options at all. I have to admit that I'm very curious to visit these places and see what they are like. While I didn't like Prague as much as I liked Budapest, I know that I would be okay living there. Will Montevideo in Uruguay spark joy? What will I think of Porto in Portugal?
It was quite easy to choose St. Petersburg when we last tried to decide where to live. It just felt like home. I'm hoping that once the pandemic is over we can go look at these places and see what we think. Until then, though, it is time to look into immigration.
Previous: Part 11 - Financial Indicators | Next: Part 13 - Decision
Once I had those imported, I immediately whipped up a query to see what a rough estimate of our options were. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more complicated than I thought to get the information, but in the end, I came up with a list of 66 cities. The criteria I used included information about cost of living, political terror, homophobia, and pollution. I then went to a doctor's appointment and didn't work on it for a while. However, last night, I decided to check why some cities weren't included. There was one on Fiji that I knew met most of the criteria. So, I went through the tables and discovered that the countries that hadn't made it into the homophobia study weren't being included. This morning, I rewrote the query to fix that, and Fiji showed up. I then looked online for info about homophobia in Fiji. After that, I looked at the other cities that had been added by this change. It turned out that they were all places that recently decriminalized homosexuality. These are not liberal places. Joel read a little about crime in Fiji, and we decided that it was better to not have it on the list, so I went back to the old version of the query. Another change I made was causing Poland to be included on the list. I don't know what the view of the average Polish person is, but I can say that the LGBT-free zones are shitty. I changed the query back to take Poland off the list. The last change I made was to include the information from the Rule of Law Index. That took Ecuador off the list, I think.
Of course, what everyone is interested in is the actual list. I'm not going to post the whole thing, but here are the countries on it:
Argentina
Canada
Costa Rica
Cyprus
Czechia
Germany
Estonia
Spain
Greece
Croatia
Hungary
Italy
Lithuania
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Slovenia
Slovakia
Uruguay
What do I think of them? Well, first, it seems that this list does cover a lot of what I wanted. Interestingly, the cities that make this list also fit the "very little malaria" requirement. However, I'm going to take Canada off, because there is only one city, which is located outside of Vancouver BC, where we could afford to live. I'm honestly fine without Canada. Only one city is showing up for Italy, so the situation might be similar. I'll have to look at it and see. Hungary is coming off. We absolutely loved Budapest. However, Hungary's government is going the way of Russia with homophobic discrimination (source), and as with Poland, I'm not interested in that. Estonia and Lithuania did not spark joy, so they'll probably come off the list too. There are a lot of Asian countries that didn't make the list because of homophobia, sadly.
My plan is to look up the visa requirements for each of these countries (probably even for the ones that are coming off the list, because I can't help myself) to further whittle down our options. I already know that Argentina, Uruguay, and Portugal will work for immigration, so I'm not worried that we are going to end up with no options at all. I have to admit that I'm very curious to visit these places and see what they are like. While I didn't like Prague as much as I liked Budapest, I know that I would be okay living there. Will Montevideo in Uruguay spark joy? What will I think of Porto in Portugal?
It was quite easy to choose St. Petersburg when we last tried to decide where to live. It just felt like home. I'm hoping that once the pandemic is over we can go look at these places and see what we think. Until then, though, it is time to look into immigration.
Previous: Part 11 - Financial Indicators | Next: Part 13 - Decision