2,304 Words of "So You Think You Want to Expat"

and it's only a start

Shortly after I moved my cats to Belgrade—the definition of home, for me, being “where my cats are”—I received a wave of inquiries from friends in the US. There was some awful, horrific week in which there was a mass shooting every day. If I recall correctly, on one of those days, there were three mass shootings in progress simultaneously. The aforementioned inquiries were all along the lines of “So, how’s Serbia working out?” or “How hard is it to be an expat?” and were followed by a bunch of emotional sharing. The main emotions shared were fear, despondency, and vulnerability.

At the time, I’d just moved. I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to stick the landing. It was illogical to form an opinion on the working out, or not working out, of something I had only just embarked upon in earnest. Similarly, I wasn’t able to comment on how hard it is to be an expat—I didn’t have enough data yet. I’d spent several months in the country in the preceding years, especially after the borders reopened following the COVID19-related total lockdown. But living somewhere is not like visiting somewhere, even when those visits are lengthy and with clear intent to eventually relocate.

My flight, with the cats, left JFK airport on the 28th of March, 2022. We landed early on Tuesday the 29th. Somewhere over the ocean, or at the Serbian border—sometime in the liminal space between those two days, or in the wee hours of the morning on the latter—I became a person who had moved to a country other than the one I was born in.

Once the results of the US presidential election at the end of 2024 were apparent, there was another wave of inquiries—at such a volume that I don’t have the free time and spare energy to have a one on one chat with everyone who has reached out. With nearly three years of experience under my belt, I do feel qualified to offer some insights. So we’re doing this in public, all at once, with an eye towards efficiency.

First up, a disclaimer. I do intimacy coaching, not expat coaching. I am not any kind of lawyer, much less an immigration lawyer. At no point will this post contain advice on the paperwork nuts and bolts of moving to any particular country—it’s too complicated, it varies too much depending on the person, and it’s way out of my wheelhouse. What lies ahead is what I can offer while staying in my own lane.

In 2015 I was brought to Serbia twice by a film production—first for the final audition, which involved a camera test, and second for the rehearsals and principal photography of the film. I liked certain things about Belgrade. People back in the US cautioned me that working on a film set is not existing in a country. That there were certainly downsides which weren’t apparent during a few weeks’ stay. So I took every opportunity to return. Some of those opportunities were related to post production and promotion of the film. Others were trips I undertook on my own. I took care to wander around by myself, to take advantage of chances to meet people, and to stay in different parts of the city. I gained a social circle. Half of that social circle dissipated or became much less frequently available when I moved. Partially this is because it’s one thing to make time for a visitor, and another to keep that pace of socializing up full-time. I suspect that another component is the step down in exoticism.

Depending on the part of America you’re from or currently in, you might be familiar with what I call the “You Gotta Know a Guy” system. The phone book or online equivalent won’t necessarily produce the required contractor, handyman, doctor, or vendor. Or, if it does, they may not be trustworthy. What you need is to know a (any gender will do) guy. The guy who knows the guys who can do the things you need done. Depending on the part of the world you’re thinking of moving to, you might need to use the Gotta Know a Guy system. North Carolina, where I’m from, used that system when I was growing up. Serbia uses that system. So at least the system is intuitive for me. Nonetheless, without knowing the guys, it’s hard to get things done, much less done well. So, you gotta have a network, and you gotta know people who know the guys. You will learn, through trial and error, who in your network gives solid recommendations. Some of those errors will be both expensive and highly inconvenient.

I sought out different types of education in the Serbian language, and did my best to practice as much as possible. If you’re one of those people with an innate talent for languages, and the luck to have significant early exposure to languages other than your mother tongue, good on you. You’ll be fine, wherever you go. I had two years of a “learn French from a tape cassette” course as a child, another (1? 2?) years of French in junior high school, and dropped out of German freshman year of high school after a week because it was too close to English and my brain couldn’t keep the vocabulary straight. My real world French skills stop at the ability to understand a producer telling me to go to makeup and to apologize for not knowing French. I can also say “everyone laughs”. I did, however, have a very creative mother who homeschooled me for the bulk of my education. She wasn’t able to teach me a second language well, so she made index cards—green for Greek root words, red for latin (Roman) root words, thinking that building blocks are always useful. I haven’t seen those index cards since I was maybe 11, but I’ll be damned if I don’t find myself able to decipher a Greek-based word out of what feels like nowhere pretty regularly.

Whether you’re thinking about moving, or just visiting for fun, the best piece of advice I can provide for stepping foot outside of the USA is to learn “I’m sorry, I don’t speak [language]. Do you speak English?” in the language of wherever you’re going. Even Parisians get a little more friendly when greeted with that. If the language has distinct formal and familiar versions of “you”, learn the formal one.

Immersion does work. But it doesn’t work like magic. People will, through a combination of desire to be hospitable, to be efficient, and to practice their English, use English with you. I took note of every person (acquaintances, waitstaff, anyone) who was willing to be patient and let me use my meager Serbian. Especially if they had the patience to use simple language and speak slowly with me, and even more so if they were willing to repeat themselves several times in order to help me. There’s a restaurant I’ve been going to for nearly ten years, in no small part because the waitstaff there has taken the time to nurture my language skills. Last week, for the first time, I had what I would consider a basic conversation with the main waiter—entirely in Serbian and I only had to ask him to repeat himself once.

On the subject of conversation, a note about language proficiency categories. About a year and a half after I moved, Lydia put me in front of a computer to take a Serbian proficiency test. I scored a B2—intermediate and supposedly “conversational”. I assumed the test was flawed, because I was in no way able to have what I considered an actual conversation. I still can’t. For me, a conversation involves the intricacies of feelings, thoughts, philosophies. I can tell dogs I love them, and comment about the weather. Turns out the definition of conversation, in this context, is a lower bar than my own. The point is that you should be prepared to work, hard and for a long time, before you’re able to truly express yourself with nuance and understand the same from others.

The good news is that most places which are friendly to Americans are full of people who speak English well, thanks to Hollywood’s generations-long global reach and the widespread availability of language education in the rest of the world. That said, you can’t rely on it. You’ll find yourself alone at the doctor with someone who knows their job well but doesn’t speak your language. You’ll have to make it work, starting with “I’m sorry, I don’t speak [language] well and only understand if you speak slowly”, and relying on an annoyingly flawed Google Translate. Unless, of course, you want to carry a half kilo of dictionary around with you. You’ll find yourself in a government office (a common experience for ex-pats and immigrants) with no help in sight and no sympathy given by the government worker. You’ll find that your hard won language skills come and go, depending on the day and context.

For instance, I’m great when I’m drunk. Some education specialists have suggested this is because I get most of my practice during social conversations at night where alcohol is involved, and has to do with a concept called “state-dependent learning” along with general lowering of inhibitions. Since I can’t stay drunk all the time, this results in a significant amount of mild frustration.

Some areas of the world are judgmental of and even offended by less than perfect language usage—Parisians are the starkest example, and every cartoonish-feeling stereotype you’ve heard is literally true in about 60% of my experience with Parisians. When I first started coming to Serbia, every single person I encountered gave me a big smile and, often, positive reinforcement in the form of “bravo!” when I exhibited the ability to eke out a simple word with a pronunciation reminiscent of Leeloo from The 5th Element, saying “multi-pass” repeatedly when checking in for the space cruiser flight. When a few hundred thousand Russians showed up—starting in spring of 2022—at the same time that the amount of visitors from all over the world increased, everyone’s patience began to wear thin. Once I leveled up, I began to receive that positive reinforcement again.

Standard language classes are going to teach you grammatically correct language with clear pronunciation. As you move around your new home, you will encounter native speakers who don’t use grammatically correct language, or don’t pronounce things clearly. You will encounter lots of slang, and translation apps and dictionaries won’t be able to help you with that. You will probably have to visit a doctor, and, if you’re anything like me, your basic lessons won’t be able to help you explain your medical history or your presenting problem. Any engagement with the language is useful, but be prepared to feel completely underwater when you’re actually out in the world. Be prepared to get laughed at, over and over. Get comfortable with the fact that strong emotions, such as embarrassment and shame, help the lesson you just learned stick in your head. Learn to value feeling mortifyingly stupid.

I’ve got a theory (and, I want to remind you, I’m not a linguist) that each first language uses English slightly differently. It’s well documented that speakers of different individual first languages tend to have similar accents in English (for instance, in Serbia, people use a sound halfway in between W and V for both letters), but there’s also a way that quirks in word order and word choice show up. You’ll develop an ear for how people in your chosen home speak English. It’ll get easier to hear them and understand them, even when their English is only as good as your [local language]. Eventually you won’t even notice their accent or quirks. These quirks, though, can help you understand how the local language arranges things differently from English. There’s useful information there.

You’re going to feel like an alien at times. You’re going to wonder how badly you’ve fucked up. You’re going to feel like there’s no way you could ever possibly fit in, or speak well enough to take care of yourself, or have a full and fulfilling life. You’re going to imagine yourself dragging 250 kilos of books back across the ocean, crossing the US border in shame, and facing all your friends with the news that you gave up because you couldn’t hack it. Hopefully you find a way to push through and hack it anyway. After I moved, I didn’t visit the US for nearly 16 months. I’m happy I didn’t—it would have been too tempting to keep going back to where basic things were comfortable. What I did do, which was pretty helpful, was go to other places that felt even more foreign. A week or two in the EU, where I really didn’t speak the language and really wasn’t familiar with the culture, or food, or literal lay of the land, made the return to Serbia feel like coming home. This phenomenon is recognized by other expats I know.

Are you tired? I’m tired. That feeling of tiredness is nothing compared to how tired you’ll feel when you’re living somewhere else, trying to adapt to the culture and learn the language and also doing all the things you have to do to take care of yourself and earn a living. If you don’t have a passport, that’s step one, and, as the weeks go by those are taking longer and longer to process. Start there, if you still want to move. I’ll be back in some unspecified amount of time with more potentially useful insights.