I Asked People What They Gave Up To Move To Europe. One Answer Kept Coming Up.

The Aug 30 post asked people what they gave up to move to Europe that they didn't expect to miss.

I figured I'd hear about food, space, convenience, air conditioning, cars — all the predictable stuff.

And I did.

A different answer kept showing up too.

A woman who moved to France said she had willingly given up "simply knowing what to do."

Back in the U.S., she knew whom to call when something broke. She knew where to buy things. She knew how the bureaucracy worked and how to get a medical appointment.

Living abroad, she said, felt a little like being a teenager again. You're an adult, except suddenly you're relearning how the world around you works.

She speaks the language. That didn't make the feeling disappear.

Another person in France, only three months into the move, called it losing the feeling of competence.

She hadn't realized how much confidence came from knowing how to handle ordinary life without thinking very hard about it.

Now she Googles things. Translates things. Asks questions she never would have needed to ask before.

Her line was that it's hard to be bad at basically everything in your late 40s.

She also finds the whole experience rewarding.

Another commenter gave me a list: driver's license, rental applications, bank transfers, GP appointments, figuring out who you're even supposed to contact when something goes wrong.

Someone living in Croatia described going home and being reminded what it feels like to simply know how everything works.

That's the part I hadn't really accounted for.

There's an enormous amount of knowledge you accumulate simply by living somewhere for decades.

Most of it doesn't feel like knowledge anymore.

You know whether something is normal.

You know which number to call.

You know whether you need an appointment.

You know what the person behind the counter is probably asking for.

You know which problem is serious and which one will sort itself out.

You don't wake up every morning thinking, I am extremely skilled at functioning in this country.

You just function.

Move somewhere else and a surprising amount of that resets.

Some things can be researched before you arrive. Some you learn quickly. Some probably only become obvious after you've done them wrong once.

What struck me about the comments was that the people describing this weren't necessarily unhappy with their moves.

Several were very clear that they still found the experience worthwhile.

They were describing something they hadn't realized they possessed until they temporarily lost it.

That gives me another thing to think about in all of this.

I spend a lot of time evaluating cities, properties, transportation, healthcare, social life and everything else that might make a place work.

I haven't spent nearly as much time thinking about how easy or difficult a place is to learn.

That feels different.

Two cities can both have good healthcare, good public transportation, gyms, banks, restaurants and all the practical things I care about.

One might still be much easier for me to function in.

Maybe I already know people there.

Maybe there's enough English around to help while my language catches up.

Maybe the local systems are relatively straightforward.

Maybe I can find a trusted person who knows how the bureaucracy works when I don't.

That starts making support while I'm learning feel like a real criterion instead of an afterthought.

It also makes me think differently about the whole idea of renting or spending longer stretches somewhere before buying.

I've mostly thought of that as a way to answer: do I actually like living here?

There's another question hiding inside it:

How exhausting is normal life once I'm responsible for it?

A two-week trip can tell me whether I like the neighborhood.

It probably can't tell me what happens when I need a doctor, a repair person, a bank appointment, a document, a delivery problem, or some random thing I didn't know I'd need to know.

That may be one of the better arguments I've heard for testing a place beyond the fun part.

I've spent a lot of time comparing what different places offer.

I may also need to pay more attention to how difficult they are to learn.

Not whether I can figure them out.

How much energy it takes before I no longer have to.

If you've moved abroad, I'd love to know when ordinary life started feeling automatic again.

— Joe