I have no experience with Europe or the UK but do with Japan, and I do see this type of cultural whiplash and regret quite often from expats there. Very few are willing to speak about it due to the prevailing online opinion of Japan being amazing in all ways. I also spent over a decade living in Hawai'i and Guam, and see this type of issue there due to the much larger difference in lifestyle than most would assume.

I tend to think that those who get the whiplash were blind to what they were giving up as much as what they thought they were gaining, which seems to agree with the article.

> “Things in the UK that are considered luxury items are very common” in America, like a dishwasher and dryer, she adds.

It is a fact not all homes are fitted for a drier - mine isn't, so the drier is in the shed. It's Ireland, so a little bit different from the other island. That said, it is a change in lifestyle: streets are narrower, cars are smaller, I don't earn 10x what an entry level job gets, but, at least here, the Irish are not mean - quite the contrary: they are exceedingly welcoming.

I also find it amusing that the "healthcare isn't really free because I pay taxes" argument is used. Ireland, again, is a bit different, and public healthcare has triage criteria that make it slower (unless you are dying, which is not something you want to constantly do), but we do have a two-tier system with private healthcare where you can get immediate access to a specialist, if you are willing to pay a (small) premium.

Europe is not the US - it's different, and YMMV depending on where you land, what job you have, on which company (I work in an American one), how far from home, and your public transit options. In Dublin it's especially bad and you might need to drive and spend some time in traffic. And FSD is not available, so you need to drive.

If you're going to regret not having all luxury, then don't move. I moved to a country with much less luxury and I don't regret it at all because not having to run the rat race is far more important to me than having a dishwasher and a dryer. There's the sun, after all.

While amusing enough in a schadenfreude way, a lot of this article is dedicated to "people post dumb things on reddit". Just stop reading reddit posts, people.

Where are journos gonna get their material then? They are paid to read Reddit and Twitter all day, and then write articles about the world at large out of posts from likely deranged fools getting mad about something.

Leave it to USA to move to UK and expect Europe.

That as well - I would imagine some un-Europeanness if you land on a very Brexit-ish place.

And Berlin is almost not Germany - A friend of mine lived there for 3 years and had to force himself to learn German. Every time I ordered something in German, the other person answered in English.

Here in Cyprus, although our culture is deeply connected to British since every second Cypriot was either born in UK or has British relatives, and it is a former Crown possession - dryers and dishwashers are standard equipment even in cheap rental apartments.

I can imagine in US it is harder because voltage is 110V vs our 240V, requiring thicker wires.

Most houses have 220-240v sockets for the dryers. Newer homes have one in the garage for electric car chargers.

The other outlets in the house are 110v.

And what is the voltage that enters the house? 240V 3-phase?

Exactly.

Turns out, not quite.

The US has a "split-phase" system - two opposite 120 phases off one transformer that get split 50/50 among the breakers in the house. To get 240V outlets, you go across both phases instead of from a phase to neutral, so they add together.

That was a hilarious read, and the author didn't really bother to add any facts alongside opinionism. I'm sure that there are plenty of Americans who've had a poor experience trying to settle in an European country, as well as many that established themselves there without any major complaints, or at least expecting to find differences, both culturally and materially.

To start, there is a sweeping geographical generalisation in there. You know, "the Europe", that country with baguettes, nuclear warheads, turkey roast, trains, and some version of English spoken, and not a list of countries with radically different economic structures, old cultural differences, political systems, labour markets, languages, transport networks, housing conditions and social norms.

One interviewee says:

> She says she had negative experiences with the NHS maternal care, compared to the smooth experience of her private health insurance in the US, and didn’t expect it to cost her anything: “I pay huge amounts of taxes and an immigration surcharge to access the NHS services—so no, the health care is not free here.”

UK's healthcare system is in a bit of a pickle right now after all the privatisations and neoliberal applications (imported from - or developed in tandem with - the US) of the last 50 years. That said, of course universal healthcare is not free - medical treatment has some kind of economic cost, but that's not what free means in that context. What she talks about is an immigration-specific charge, not the ordinary healthcare payment arrangement for all British residents. If you're not a citizen and if your country doesn't have a treaty with the UK covering that, you'd be daft to believe that you can simply move to or visit a country and get all your healthcare needs sorted out like that.

It compares British public maternity care with American private care, without explaining what that means in practice. If you have the money for private healthcare, you get the same posh experience in the UK in the majority of cases. And UK is not Europe anyway, it's but one system out of quite a few.

> She also expected train travel to be low cost, based on what she’d read about Europe

Clearly, she hasn't read anything about it beforehand.

She also claims that British quality of life is significantly lower than American quality of life, but we're never told how that's measured and what it actually means. She may very well believe that leisure is for schmucks, that personal safety is of zero importance and that cheaper tech is the most important thing to live for; who knows?

Ah, well. We've been presented this nonsense in order to stir shit, and shit has been stirred I suppose.

> I found it particularly surprising how people feel so comfortable mocking my accent and culture

Perhaps we learnt it from all the US shows we watch that regularly mock cultures. Family Guy, The Simpsons etc

It always makes me chuckle when US folk are smacked with the reality that they aren't universally adored, contrary to their programming

Europe is best either visited or retired to if you're American. Your wealth will take you a long way there.