It’s clearly time I started another of my mini series of blogs. Just as I published my latest property blog someone emailed me about moving from the East to Europe. On a political level I think that’s a bad move, but very often the political charades that are played out often dont affect those of us who can insulate ourselves from all the nonsense. So let me have another stroll around this benighted continent and see what’s worth saving from the rubble. In other words, is there any point in buying property in Europe, and if so, where?
I guess the first topic to look at is whether one has family and friends here. That does count for a lot. And even if they are in another country, getting from one side of the continent to the other is very easy. Flights are frequent and cheap. Motoring is feasible, but a lot more expensive.
The second thing to consider is the cost of living. Most people do have a spending limit, which in an inflationary environment can be rather sensitive. Typically northern Europe is expensive. I did do a run down of what it is costing me to live quite comfortably in Southern Portugal in last week’s Letter from the Algarve. Basically it is costing me half of what my daughter spends in the UK. For most people that is a rather important issue.
Then we have to look at risks. Northern Europe is riddled with risk issues in this new global environment. If you live in Norway the cost of living will be high, but you will find less risk there than most European countries in terms of self sufficiency, especially with regard to energy.
An island like the UK is riddled with risk. 80% of its agricultural requirements are imported. That’s suicidal in these days. And politically speaking the UK is more anti-Russia than many EU countries. Quite why that is, I dont know, but the whole of Western Europe is hell bent on committing suicide in that respect, but I’ll come to the political angle in a separate blog. What I will say now is that I have lived in almost every Comecon country during the cold war, and loved it. I have lived in Russia and also the Ukraine, and although I found winter in Ukraine to be unbearable, I find Russian people generally charming, the living cheap and comfortable, and the cities far cleaner and nicer than most Western cities, and the infrastructure works, whereas most Western countries’ systems seem to be at breaking point. I’d happily move to Russia tomorrow if the climate were more hospitable.
And that brings me to my next point, the weather. Most of the people living around me are ex-pats from Northern Europe. They are here mainly for the weather. For the last couple of weeks we have had frosts overnight. That means the temperature out in the sticks drops to about -1C or maybe a little lower, but that is all, and by 9.30 a.m. it is pleasant working in the garden, and we have been having lunch on the patio for all that period. Things do get too hot in the summer, but maybe that is the time to take a break and holiday somewhere else. Julie and I used to winter further south, and holiday in the North during the summer months, but recently I have stayed put, and winters are not that bad at all. Also, I noted that last summer was less hot than usual, so maybe it is true that we are about to enter a cooler spell. I maintain that weather is unpredictable, and over my lifespan the climate has gone from extreme to extreme like some manic yoyo.
Back in the eighties I lived on the edge of London, and there was a four acre lake at the bottom of my garden. One day my son took an axe to the ice, and dug down six inches before he hit water. Then, for a laugh, we lit a bonfire on the ice and had baked potatoes for supper.
In the nineties I lived in St Leonards. There is a walkway under the sidewalk along the beach. It was the first week in february and I walked along that walkway to Old Hastings stripped to the waist because it was so hot.
Another issue is language. Most Brits dont speak other languages very well. I dont speak any German or Italian, and although I learned Russian in my late teens and even had a Hungarian girlfriend, I have forgotten pretty well the lot. And a slight snag is the fact that many East European languages use the cyrillic alphabet. That is probably the main problem with buying in that part of the world.
Some years ago I used to feature Bulgarian properties on the Unique Property site. I remember a three bedroomed house with a half acre garden with outhouses going for €3,500. The problem was that the language was a social barrier, and work was non-existent. When I lived there we used to eat out. Breakfast was available for €1 (a light breakfast cost half that), lunch €1.50, evening meal €2. At one stage Julie and I rented a three bed apartment for €3 a night.
We spent a late summer in Southern Italy and travelled over the straight onto Sicilia. The place was deserted, and almost no-one spoke English. I thought Italian would be similar to Spanish, but that didn’t help. If you dont speak Italian, life there may be difficult.
The French do speak English but they can be unfriendly if you dont speak French. Luckily my French is good enough to get by, and Julie’s French is native, so we get on just fine.
In Spain, it depends on where you choose to live. On the costas English is spoken just about everywhere. My favourite parts of Spain are Catalonia (my apologies to Catalans for that sentence, I am aware of what I just said, after all, once upon a time Barcelona was my home town), also the Northwest corner, and the province of Cadiz, mainly because they are more authentically local rather than international. And the Costas are too busy, the roads jammed, and there really are too many tourists intent on getting drunk, or littering up what gets called God’s Waiting Room.
I have settled in Portugal, but now we come to more personal reasons for choosing a place to live. I am a writer and a musician and at the end of the last century I decided it really would be a good idea to settle somewhere quiet where I could work undisturbed instead of traipsing around the world. I deliberately chose somewhere on the following criteria.
I dont like the cold, and Portugal’s winters are mild. I hate Northern Europe’s dreary weather. In Germany it seems to rain all the time. In Scandinavia winter seems to last for three-quarters of the year. Italy was out because I have problems with the language. Eastern Europe was out for the same reason, and the winters can be seriously cold. I used to like Yugoslavia, especially the western coastline, and I have had some good times there, and used to own land there, but although life was pleasant and cheap the social life was a bit thin.
I suspect I made a mistake in rejecting Southern France. I like my food and wine, but didn’t like the constant winter frosts. I also like the idea of living close to a frontier. We did briefly settle in Northern Catalonia. We had the Med to one side of us, the Pyrenees to another, a charming culture, Barcelona was within driving distance, but we kept travelling further and further south. We lived for almost a decade in the Jalon valley, but then moved even further south.
We spent some time in Malta, which was a pleasant place, but the main island is really one big city. You will find the view from our penthouse apartment as a background to many of my web pages on the john-clare.com website.
In the end I chose the Algarve. I rather liked the idea of living right on the edge of the continent. I am approximately twenty miles from the edge of Europe. I thought things would be quiet and I would be away from political upsets. The place is inefficient, which can be both a thorough-going nuisance and a blessing. The weather is benign, the people mostly speak English, and when I first came here property was relatively cheap away from the tourist centres, although that is no longer the case. The Western Algarve also has a very vibrant social life which you can either join or ignore. There are also regular cheap flights back to the UK where I have friends and family.
I should admit that I think Europe as a whole is a doomed continent. It is seriously short of some essential items, and is troubled by American interference. Nato is a menace, and has started and proliferated no less than three wars on the continent during the last twenty-five years. That is a sad and indeed an appalling situation, and looks to be escalating. The current US administration sees Europe as a useful province which they can plunder at will. They also use the EU and the UK as minions in their hate campaign against Russia, which is doing Europe no good at all. I see that continuing, which will doom the continent to an ever declining social mess, and turn the area into an economic basket case. But I will deal with that issue in a later post.
Next week I will start to look at various places where I think people might fit in.