Where to live?

[cjsmith]

Question stolen from aleeceh: If I could move anywhere, and the people I care about most (rfrench) would come with me, where would I live? I have the assets and skills I have today.

I have been thinking about this. I don't know the answer, but I have narrowed down some of my criteria.

1. Must allow general aviation and have a small airport nearby (for Rob to teach). Would be nice if it's uncrowded enough to have hangars available (for the nice aerobatic airplane I'd like to own).
2. Salary to cost-of-living ratio must be better than Silicon Valley.
3. Physically beautiful landscape. I will not be happy in an area that appears to me to be ugly. This probably implies uncrowded. Finland looks awfully lovely in the fall. So does New Hampshire.
4. Climate not beastly hot. Phoenix or Austin probably wouldn't agree with me. Winters are fine, though. I grew up with them and I miss them.
5. If outside the US, resident alien status must not suck or (Rob and?) I must qualify for citizenship. (I am willing to and would consider it my duty to learn the language. Rob might not enjoy it, though, so that effort would have to be taken into account.)
6. The laws of the state or country must not be personally abhorrent to me. I won't be happy in an area where what I perceive as the wrong things are supported and rewarded, while what I perceive as good and valuable things are penalized. Widespread and accepted corruption would bother me.
7. The local prejudices of the area must not be major limiting factors for me. I can't be in the closet about being an intelligent and capable woman. I probably can't be closeted about coming from the USA or having lived in California. I won't be happy any place I'm barred from driving a car because of my sex. I won't be happy living anywhere that's likely to be at war with the US, not only because that's a really bad situation to be in, but because there are many people here I care about.

I'm not sure I've caught them all here. It's a start.

Comments

[platypus]

You might like Madison. The way people talk about Austin usually puts me in mind of Madison, and I'd probably move back there in a second if Ken didn't prefer to live here. (And, well, San Diego has a fair amount going for it, but I do get homesick for seasons and lakes and liberalism.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Madison's liberal and San Diego isn't? Not how I would have guessed it! Thanks for the info!

[platypus]

Lots of military presence here, which tends to skew conservative. It's not quite what I would have thought myself, but San Diego went for Arnie for governor, went for Bush for president... I voted as hard as I could, but to no avail. Luckily I work for a university, and although the conservative student newspaper occasionally makes me choke on my lunch, I work with largely open-minded people. The poor students seem a bit divided.

Madison's hippieism is only slightly moderated by being a smallish city in Wisconsin. A quarter of the population of the place is in college (second largest university in the US, or it was when I went there). Between that and the state government being located there, they tend to be pretty progressive (and there's a fair number of save-the-turkeys protests and stuff). Madison is the kind of place that is amused by a kite festival in February. I love me some Madison.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I would probably be happiest in a moderate-ish place. A liberal town surrounded by conservatism, or the other way round, tends to keep people on both sides more focused on real-life issues than a monoculture clear out to the horizon would do. From the description, Madison is a lot like that.

[genderfur.livejournal.com]

San Diego is SO conservative. It's always been a Navy town, is a lot of it.

My lovely wife has a dyke cousin who's a teacher there, and she's utterly closeted to keep her job. Utt. Er. Ly. Won't join gay volleyball, etc.

And there's a lot of, erm, interesting political/social stuff because of the nearness of the border. (Our cousin's parents are also teachers in the area.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I've been to San Diego on business - yah, with the Navy - but never realized the military presence was strong enough to swing local politics entirely. Wow.

[windsea.livejournal.com]

Halifax, Nova Scotia

http://www.halifax.ca/
http://www.halifaxairport.ca/
http://www.novascotialife.com/

I'm just sayin' ...

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

You say that a lot, I'm noticing. It's tempting, I'll give ya that. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

pretty pretty

I'm a sucker for hills, water, and green.

[jtidwell.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, Nova Scotia.... We went to Cape Breton on vacation a couple of years ago, and I almost decided to stay there. Beautiful, beautiful place. Halifax is a neat city, too.

[windsea.livejournal.com]

Oh, Cape Breton is lovely -- my grandmother was from there, and I still go back whenever I can. But it rolls itself up and tucks itself away for the winter. Too small for me :-)

Halifax, otoh, is vibrant all year round, and it's only 3 hours and a bit to get to CB :-)

We moved down here in 1982 -- I'd spent a lot of time in the Maritimes, as all my family are from down east, but I was born and grew up in downtown Toronto. Hal's from Winnipeg, then Toronto. We lived in Montreal for four years, and then, on a whim, decided it would be nice to spend a couple of years in Halifax -- you know, slower pace of life, take a break, then move to brighter lights/bigger city again.

Yeah, well, that was almost 23 years ago. We fell head over heels with the lifestyle here -- a green, walkable, heritage city with great night life and restaurants, lots of political activism, and one where you can be out of town and in the woods 10 minutes from our downtown house. And it's on the seacoast, 3 hours' drive from Cape Breton and PEI, and 2 hours by plane from Boston, NYC, Montreal ...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I might just have to visit Halifax and Cape Breton some day. :-)

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

Yay, so I would have someplace to land on that mythical day when I get a B55 Baron. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

If I put an airstrip in my back yard, you're welcome to land there & come visit. :-)

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

New Zealand, if you can find a job there (pretty much a prerequsite for qualifying as an immigrant, last time I looked at their points system).

In my case I don't think the natural beauty and low costs would in the long term make up for the wacky politics, poor economy, and loss of my entire social support structure and accustomed leisure activities. But it is very beautiful.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I haven't sufficiently researched New Zealand, but snippets I've heard and read about it agree with you on this. I would love to visit NZ some day though.

[gjo.livejournal.com]

Melbourne, Australia easily meets all your criteria.

look we have this nice gliding site:

http://www.gliding-in-melbourne.org/site.htm#top

Construction has just started on another 20 glider hangar.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Nice! Aviation is not only not shrinking, but *growing* there? I'm impressed! :)

[eichin.livejournal.com]

I don't know what aviation is like there, but Sweden (in the outer parts of some of the major cities, like Stockolm, Uppsala, maybe Gothenburg - yes, the three places I've been) seems likely to qualify. Way ahead of the US on 6 and 7; 2 pretty much says "Oh, not DC or hongkong then"; as for 3, I liked the cities and found things like the bus ride to the airport to be quite pleasant. As for 4, "more temperate than boston", though far enough north that the daylight change is dramatic. I don't know the details on 5, other than that if one of you had a job there, the other one gets residence rights by filling out the "partner" paperwork and that's about it (ie. I could move there if I weren't tied down here...)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I haven't researched this enough yet, but my initial information says Sweden is too socialist for me to be happy. There's a two-income couple we have stayed with a couple of times when we've been there -- they can't afford more than about 1000 square feet of apartment no matter how hard they work, but then it doesn't seem to matter a bit to their budget if they're *not* currently working.

Norway, now...

2 also says "not Japan, probably not most of the EU (remember it's the *ratio*, and I'll want to fly), and not Manhattan."

[eichin.livejournal.com]

Norway is just as socialist - it's just *oil-subsidized* socialism :-) It also has an absolute language requirement and I recall some other things that make it more restrictive.

Apartments in stockholm are a little strange (there's a List, so most of them are "black market" rentals anyway) but most people seem to have houses in the countryside as well. From your list, I would have figured living near-but-outside those cities made more sense. Also factor in "working public transit" which you might recall from your time in Paris, but in a more modern form (ie. unlike anything in the US :-)

Looks like www.luftfartsstyrelsen.se is the new agency in charge of civil aviation, split off from lfv.se just this year, so such a thing exists, but I couldn't tell the practical aspects from a quick look.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Norway is just as socialist

That's not at all the impression I got from being there. Maybe it's just that socialism works a lot better when there's something to subsidize it with.

It also has an absolute language requirement

I deeply respect a language requirement, although Rob's effort level does have to be taken into account.

Apartments in stockholm are a little strange (there's a List, so most of them are "black market" rentals anyway)

That says a lot about how well the system works. (The couple I mentioned, by the way, does live 40 minutes outside Stockholm. They commute into the city daily. That's not the life for me, but I know people who would love it.)

Still, I gotta smile at any country who (so the tour book told us in 2000) allows breastfeeding in the meetings of its Cabinet.

Also factor in "working public transit" which you might recall from your time in Paris

...or from my time in Sweden, even.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Tangentially...

http://www.airportgeocaches.com/

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Nifty! They don't list the ones near Palo Alto airport -- maybe they haven't heard of them yet. :-)

[irascignavojo.livejournal.com]

http://www.bebenhausen.com :-)

1) Medium-sized international airport (STR) nearby (20mins). Several smaller airports for flying enthusiasts of new and even old machines in the (comfortable driving distance) area.

2) While Tuebingen is more expensive than most east-german towns (or most of Iowa or Poland), the ratio of the area is good, and with german headquarters of HP and IBM around there are job opportunities - and people are used to get something for good money.

3) We score quite high on No.3 - with one of the largest natural forest reserves right around us here (think Tetons), lots of small mountains and rolling green hills.

4) Climate is moderate, though I've been found to complain if it climbs over 30°C in the dog days of summer. Last winter was as snowy as they get, skying is possible in the "swabian alb" (also only 20 mins), in the Black Forest (starts 40 mins from here) and the Alps, which can be reached in 3 hours if you drive the right car in the right time of day (Munich is only 2h away for me).

5) With the german HQ of IBM, HP and DaimlerChrysler in less than 30mins from here, and some US barracks (plus EUCOM) in the area, people are used to (and friendly towards) Americans. (Plus: Immigration isn't to difficult for citizens of rich & friendly countries.)

6) The german laws are very liberal (think pro choice, gay legal partnership, data privacy protection) from 7 years of liberal government, even though the right wing backlash is around the corner with new elections due in autumn instead of next year and a wannabe-supporter of the Iraq war is the likely winner.
Nearly all german states are "black" (conservative) now, which makes our parliament (majority: social democrats and greens) less powerful because the second chamber (think Senate) can block a lot. Still, our conservatives are more like the right wing democrats and changes will not be as radical as some Bushes would make them. Taxes are relatively low compared with some neighbours and tax rates have been dropped over the last decade. Corruption is more or less restricted to the building sector and comparatively low.

7) Local prejudice is extremely low as Tuebingen in its history of 500 years of university town always had an influx of thinkers from everywhere. One third of the population is students of the University with a very mixed background. While africans (or african americans) are rare, they do not get raised eyebrowsß, neither do muslim women with or without scarves around their hair (the latter disallowed in public office, though).
7a) Intelligent women are cherished and elevated to good jobs (head of state, head of the country, supreme court or head of HP are nor out of the question for an intelligent women of the area (from all sides of the political spectrum). While "the pope formerly known as Ratzinger", who is not a liberal concerning women, has been teaching at our University we have to say two things in defence of our town: a) he was much more liberal back then and b) he left town long ago.
7b) War against the US is out of the question for a longstanding NATO member. War side by side with the US, sadly, is much more probable. I said that EUCOM is here, so US attacks against Libya, for example, have been directed from this area. Germany has been with the US in Bosnia and has the largest contingent in Afghanistan.

Maybe you come over for a short visit? Stuttgart International Airport is close and the airport shuttle brings you directly to my doorstep (or close enough even for your current tastes). It would be a start. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed Tuebingen when I was there for a short visit many years ago. I wish I could have spent a bit more time there.

Travel for me is unlikely right now but in another handful of years I will be in northern Germany again -- I might come and ask if you want to chat in a coffee house or something!

[irascignavojo.livejournal.com]

> I wish I could have spent a bit more time there.

Feel invited to do so. While we do not sport great luxury, we have up to four guest beds - and a hotel with honorable mention in Guide Michelin and and a restaurant with 15 Gault Millau "toques" are just around the corner (literally).

I'm willing to meet you for a tea or coffee anywhere between Frankfurt and Munich (which is about the range I take customers from), and of course to welcome you to my town (which is Tuebingen, though it used to be Brunswick -Braunschweig- in Lower Saxony in the north).