Maybe this will help others to make their decision.
Almost 2 years since I'm here. 40yo electronics engineer, also 10 years of game design experience in large and small game development companies. In my home country I was a respected senior professional, paid 5 times the minimum wage. All the jobs they would gladly give me here would be newspaper distribution and vacuum cleaning. Don't ask me why I'm here or why I'm still staying, Life is more complicated sometimes than we want, expect or imagine.
- Very formal people and behavior. -
- Everybody is wearing suits. Nowhere in the world I've seen so many people wearing suits and eating sandwiches while walking their office suitcases on the sidewalk.
- Bad western food, almost as bad as the food in US. They import a lot of food from Belgium, and is really artificial and full of growth hormones and chemicals.
- so many young children especially girls are really fat and I presume because of the bad quality food - lot of meet, eggs, milk, chocolate, etc, vegetables and fruits are bad quality. Restaurants are expensive. Soups are bad for someone which is not from the West.
- Don't be fooled that they speak so many languages here, so if you speak one you'll be ok. No. Unless you are so skilled and with such a strong background that they are almost forced to desire you, Otherwise, you will be required 2, 3, 4, even 5 languages for a job. If you want to do cleaning you'll be good even you don't speak at all.
- The "games" are made by French, Luxembourgish, Belgian folks which are full of pride and prejudice. Unless You are a full bread Westerner (UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, etc) citizen, they will tend to look upon you.
- I have seen here the worst nazi and racist and religion discrimination in my life. It is disguised, not open, and makes me vomit. I've lived in the USA and Australia, but here in the heart and Capital of Europe it is very very much worse.
- no life for you, for your spirit, for your soul. Very small city which becomes empty during non-working days because half of the people here are commuting from nearby countries. Locals have strong country-side attitudes and mindset, and generally the people you will encounter here will be one of the three: 1) countryside (small town) mindset, 2) natzi/discriminator, this guy is also the smartest on earth 3) money money money - this guy can be a manager or director crocodile which cuts throats to advance the hierarchy ladder in his Institution
- Healthcare is a joke. For a dermatological routine 15 minutes consultation you will wake up at 6am to leave the cabinet at 11 after you've waited for a few hours for your turn in line. An appointment date can be available only after 3-6-12 months. Yes I said 1 year for an appointment. Until then you die or survive anyway. Or pay a consultation in Germany.
- shopping: selection very limited and very expensive, you'll do your shopping in germany, france
- nothing to do during the weekends, after a few months you've done and seen everything around
- everything moves sooo slow. Example: You want to open an internet service contract? 1 month wait.
Overall it's worth unless you are extremely skilled, extremely crocodile, are from western europe wealthy countries so you can't be discriminated, (greece, spain, italy, portugal - you're half-bread, think twice bofore coming). Eastern Europe and rest of the world think thrice if you're white. Blacks, hispanics, indians, chinese - think four times before making your move.
Good: if you are very skilled - in finance usually, are from the west, are white, speak french fluently, can cope with crocodiles and all the negatives above, want to sacrifice life for money - YESS this is the place to be! Lots of money.
For me it almost feels like selling the soul to the devil though.
I'm in hurry now, I will add more if there is interest.