My experience of moving to Europe (from Asia)

This is not a step by step guide how to emigrate to Europe or anywhere else. It is simple, whenever possible, cheerful and, I hope, an instructive story as I moved from Bangkok to Prague.

Why go?

If the question “Why should I go somewhere?” Is for you, then you can stop reading. For me, he was not standing, and it was finally decided to go, and not for the first time. And not in the same way as in the old joke about “I want to go to Paris, and last year I already wanted to”. Once already decided and went to Thailand. Having lived there for 7 years, I decided that I should go further, there was only the question “where?”.

Why go to Europe?

When you look at the world from Bangkok, it looks a bit different. And the unknown Singapore is here in the background, and in exotic Hong Kong you can just wrap over the weekend with nothing to do, and distant Australia is no longer so distant. I practically did not consider other Asian countries for life for a variety of reasons that have developed in my life over the years in this very Asia. The three above were pleasantly European exceptions. But Hong Kong is almost completely China, it’s too hot in Singapore, and I'm really tired of it. And Australia is like a tattoo on the face - seriously and for a long time. You need to be 100% confident in your chosen place of residence, even if you need to fly 4 hours by plane to the nearest town, but in order to fly to your parents you have to spend half a vacation on this plane. And at some point a solution came: no need to look for Europe in Asia, you can just go to Europe itself.

Why go to the Czech Republic?

With the choice of a particular country, everything was much more complicated. I would like it to be warm and the sea (Greece, Spain, Portugal) and that salaries are higher (Switzerland, Germany) and that the language is simpler (Eastern Europe and Britain) is a mentality and this is important, after Asia, I wanted people to be more understandable around. In general, he bothered for a long time, built graphs of the standard of living, housing costs, taxes and average salaries in the industry. One of the most adequate sites for comparing the cost of living, from my point of view is www.numbeo.com, but you can’t believe it, a more accurate method is to simply open an online grocery store, for example, the same tesco and compare it yourself. But even this will not give you real information about the cost of living, so all these comparisons are simply the structuring of leisure in the intervals between interviews. In fact, in the Czech Republic, I stopped almost by accident, and now looking around, I am very pleased with it.

So the advantages of life in the Czech Republic:

• Tasty beer =)
• Prices in the Czech Republic are among the lowest in Europe.
• Mentality. This is more important than it seems, and the Czechs, nevertheless, are brothers-Slavs. The correctness of the Germans or the sloppiness of the Greeks can finish off. It’s not even worth talking about Asians, but with the Czechs everything is more or less clear.
• Tongue. It is ridiculous, it is complicated like all Slavic languages, but you already know about 50% of the words, which at least allows you to read signs, price tags, and so on. And if you know a couple of Slavic languages ​​like Russian and Ukrainian or Belarusian, then you can still explain yourself somehow, on a wild surzhik, but they will understand you. In addition, the Czech Republic is one of the most English-speaking countries in Europe. And in general, how can you not love a language in which such melodious tongue twisters:
  

  Strč prst skrz krk
  Or quite a brash, more like a demon summoning spell:
  Chrt zdrhl z Brd. Vtrhl skrz strž v tvrz srn, v čtvrť Krč. Blb! Prskl, zvrhl smrk, strhl drn, mrskl drn v trs chrp. Zhltl čtvrthrst zrn skrz krk, pln zrn vsrkl hlt z vln. Chrt brkl, mrkl, zmlkl. Zvlhls?
  Yes, the vowels are overkill, I think so too.
  

• Location Czech Republic is located in the geographical center of Europe, although it must be admitted that Europe has the centers of a couple of dozen. Nevertheless, the opportunity for 10 - 20 euros to get on a bus to Berlin, Krakow, Vienna, Munich and even heaps of interesting cities is a nice bonus.

• Prague is a big small city. Small, because it is really small compared to Moscow or Kiev (or Bangkok from which I came to Prague). From virtually anywhere in the city, you can be in the center for a maximum of 20 minutes. And you can even go through it in a couple of hours (at least the central part) and I like it. And the big city, because you do not feel here in the backwater, here something happens all the time: concerts, exhibitions, festivals. It turns out that there are all the advantages of the capital and at the same time, according to sensations, you live in a small and quiet town.

Work searches

I began to look for work in advance, and if specifically - six months before the end of the contract and it was a bust, employers simply were not willing to wait for so long. Although, in fact, if you consider how much the process of obtaining visas and other bureaucratic games takes, this already does not seem so long. But it went very sluggishly, a total of several hundred resumes were sent, several dozens of telephone interviews were completed, but somehow everything did not get off the ground.

Then I took everything acquired by overwork and went to look for work on the spot, and I will say it was the right decision. I found work in a week, or to be exact, 3 different jobs: in Krakow, in Frankfurt and, actually, in Prague. Everything happens much easier and faster when you answer the question “When could you come for an interview?” - tomorrow. And do not care that you are in another country, there are no visas, there are no borders, I sat down and went. And then, as they say, it all depends on personal charm.

Interview in the sauna

Oh, I have these free European morals. Everything almost collapsed when my wife saw that I was invited to the sauna for an interview at 9 pm ... Thanks to Google’s smart services =) who decided that I was still in Thailand and transparently and unobtrusively counted the time in Thai time zone ( +6 hours from Prague), and “sauna” is just the name of the conversation. At least the wife still believes in it =)

Magic Visa

And here the most interesting begins. Not all companies are aware of the process of how to hire someone who is not from the European Union at all. A concrete example is in the company where I now work, at the time when I got there, people from 13 countries worked. From Vietnam to Costa Rica. But when the question “what to do next?” Arose, it turned out that no one has a clue. And this position lasted for a long time, until they hired a separate specialist, from a company that deals with job placement specifically for residents of the post-soviet department.

Now for some fun specifics.

To hire a foreigner, a firm must go through 9 circles of bureaucratic hell. What is interesting about this is that a specific vacancy must be approved by the Ministry of Labor and hang in free access, with a description of the requirements and salary for at least a month.

Further more fun, enrollment is now carried out only through the visapoint system and everything would be fine, but in Ukraine there are no free places in this system since its launch, but special people have these free places for very special money (from 800 to 2500 Euro per person, just for the right to apply). As it turned out, this problem has a solution, at least for the citizens of Ukraine, and it is called the Pilot Project: Special procedures for the employment of highly skilled workers from Ukraine (Pilotní projekt: Zvláštní postupy pro vysoce kvalifikované zaměstnance z Ukrajiny) or simply the “ pilot project ”

In theory, the entire procedure for a pilot project should take about 30 days, but in reality everything was much more fun. The process began in May, and I officially got a job in mid-November. Be ready. And also realize that for such a procedure as moving to another country, this is still a very short time. Moving to Canada or Australia, at best, takes about two and a half years, and usually even longer.

All for the convenience of passengers.

While spaceships ply the big theater ... The Czech Consulate will send the result of your visa application by paper mail. For example, I still have not received this letter of happiness. Even from the interesting in Ukraine (and not only), in the Czech Consulate you can only pay in euros. I remind you that the Czech Republic has not entered the eurozone. To make it even more interesting, you are warned about this and they say - do not forget to bring 25 euros. And you honestly bring exactly these 25 euros and in a low parabola you fly out of the consulate and run to look for another 2.5 euros. Why? Because the VAT.

Work remotely

Waiting until half a year without work is dull enough, but I was lucky with my employer. I could not legally find and work in the Czech Republic at that time, I did not want to illegally. But no one forbade me at this time, completely free of charge, to help the company. Fortunately, all I needed was the Internet and a laptop that I was provided with. Well, after that, just because I'm so good, in the first month of formal employment I received a bonus in the amount of ... (drum roll) ... my salary for all the months of waiting. As for me, this is a great option, everything is legal, everything is beautiful, everyone is happy.

Well, and then a completely different story begins, not about how to move, but about how to settle down in a new place, transport a reunion wife, find an apartment, get rights, learn a language and other trivia and details, if anyone is interested - write in the comments, otherwise the second part and I can not move.