The way that I'm going to make NL's codeplatform entirely pink, to compensate for having to de-pink my house 🥲🌸
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"But Gina what's wrong with your house in Amsterdam?"
Yall, I used to have a beautiful garden, where my cats could play outside, and now I live in a soulless shoebox for 2k a month that gets NO SUN. Literally none. It's entirely north facing. Plus, I'm so over Amsterdam. I'm old. I want peace and quiet and greenery and gardening.
@Gina I feel this. Not sure I'd recommend moving to the UK generally given the state of our relations with the EU but I love where we live in London. We are surrounded by so much green and then it's just 25 minutes to Liverpool Street station on the overground. You can walk for something like 12 miles out from where we live through woods and plains here and cross maybe 5 roads in that time.
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@Gina @h3artbl33d lots of really nice houses in Groningen for less than 500k

@chasalin @h3artbl33d bruh if I'm going to move that far I'd rather live on the Waddeneilanden.
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@Gina @h3artbl33d lots of really nice houses in Groningen for less than 500k

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@chasalin @h3artbl33d bruh if I'm going to move that far I'd rather live on the Waddeneilanden.
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@Gina
Having to currently live under said climate, I totally understand. I'm cautiously optimistic that things are going to get better next election cycle. Idaho is beautiful county. That is where I'm actually looking to build my retirement "hermit cabin" as my ex wife calls it.
@Darkasvim it's a gorgeous state. Ironically I barely saw any potatoes!
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@Gina There may come a day when you'll have to choose between working a job you love and living in a place where you feel alive. Maybe that day is already here, but ultimately only you will know when it's time. When that day arrives, my only piece of advice is, think of "Ten years in the future Gina" and consider what she'd want Today Gina to do.
@Legit_Spaghetti that's literally my dilemma currently 🥲
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@Gina (I also miss the paychecks, but we got priced out of Seattle and then out of the neighboring area. From what I understand most of my former tech cohort in the PNW is struggling with staying sufficiently employed to afford life)
@randomgeek it's crazy that people being priced out is happening everywhere rn. I wonder how things will look like 10 years from now.
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@Gina I generally would recommend Maastricht. It's a lovely city with a bunch of NS IC connections. But also a train to Germany every half hour and an easy connection to Liège from there you're fast in France, Luxembourg or even the UK and Cologne or Frankfurt.
And some interesting landscapes are just 15 minutes by bike from outside of the city center. I took these pictures yesterday with my GF on a small cycle trip :3
@Gina Ah and if you have a car you can just go get gas over the border in Belgium for cheap and do your weekly shopping cheaply in Germany. Yes you would need to drive a bit but you often only pay half of the price.
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@Gina I feel this. Not sure I'd recommend moving to the UK generally given the state of our relations with the EU but I love where we live in London. We are surrounded by so much green and then it's just 25 minutes to Liverpool Street station on the overground. You can walk for something like 12 miles out from where we live through woods and plains here and cross maybe 5 roads in that time.
@interpipes not to hate on your country, but I feel like the UK is in a much more dire state than the Netherlands, with the cost of living crisis, deteriorating public services, and wealth inequality. I'd never consider moving there (even though the countryside looks beautiful).
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@Gina Ah and if you have a car you can just go get gas over the border in Belgium for cheap and do your weekly shopping cheaply in Germany. Yes you would need to drive a bit but you often only pay half of the price.
@sad_electronics I like cheap gas

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@randomgeek it's crazy that people being priced out is happening everywhere rn. I wonder how things will look like 10 years from now.
@Gina I don't know. I'm starting to understand why Marx felt a violent snap-back was the only way things would change.
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@interpipes not to hate on your country, but I feel like the UK is in a much more dire state than the Netherlands, with the cost of living crisis, deteriorating public services, and wealth inequality. I'd never consider moving there (even though the countryside looks beautiful).
@Gina hate on it all you want! I'm Swedish as far as I'm concerned. This place has lots of problems, and I'm just lucky not to be on the rough end of the economy. Being here without wealth would be absolutely miserable. But our particular corner is lovely and green and helps me cope with the rest.
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This is me manifesting moving out of Amsterdam btw. I don't know where to yet, as long as there is more nature, sun and a house with a garden.
VERY open to suggestions 🫶
@Gina Don’t know much of NL, sadly, but fell in love with the coast northwest of Amsterdam and Texel. Tourists galore and hellish prices I guess, but beautiful?
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@interpipes not to hate on your country, but I feel like the UK is in a much more dire state than the Netherlands, with the cost of living crisis, deteriorating public services, and wealth inequality. I'd never consider moving there (even though the countryside looks beautiful).
> even though the countryside looks beautiful
It really is. Ruined castles, Neolithic sites, country walks, open fields, and just generally glorious.
But, yes, your broader point...
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@Gina hate on it all you want! I'm Swedish as far as I'm concerned. This place has lots of problems, and I'm just lucky not to be on the rough end of the economy. Being here without wealth would be absolutely miserable. But our particular corner is lovely and green and helps me cope with the rest.
@Gina This (London) isn't a liveable place for the majority. It's just a place for crooks to hide their wealth. Brexit was a means to an end for people like that.
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> even though the countryside looks beautiful
It really is. Ruined castles, Neolithic sites, country walks, open fields, and just generally glorious.
But, yes, your broader point...
@neil @Gina @interpipes FWIW, as a person living for 3.5 years in UK, then another 8 in NL, I'm still missing Yorkshire. But I wouldn't get back here. And UK being a TERF-island is just a cherry on top of all the other problems.
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"Okay, but why not just rent somewhere else in the Netherlands?"
I'm not joking when I say that there are no rentals in NL. There are a few other 2k shoebox apartments, but that's it. This is mostly due to disastrous housing policies by the previous governments and decades of barely building new housing.
To anecdotally add insult to injury, my current landlord is a pension fund. The Netherlands is a boomers paradise.
@Gina I haven’t regretted moving to Vienna in 2012.
Good public transport, bike routes, and general infrastructure, good food, good restaurants and so forth (not that I get out much with 3 kids but I try), good summer weather, excellent biking and mountains close by.
We live on the edge of Vienna and have the best of both worlds - open space and nature, a big climbing wall 15m away, water sports on the Danube, and all the arts that Vienna has.
I don’t know how it compares cost wise to NL ofc
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@Legit_Spaghetti that's literally my dilemma currently 🥲
This is where I'm at currently and I feel your pain

Put roots down somewhere affordable (therefore up North in the UK) and hope Reform don't get into power and climate change makes the weather up there tolerable, or find somewhere non-EU (thanks Brexit) that tolerates British people... or just blow everything on a boat and worry about it later
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This is me manifesting moving out of Amsterdam btw. I don't know where to yet, as long as there is more nature, sun and a house with a garden.
VERY open to suggestions 🫶
@Gina Sun?

Well, I'd suggest Denmark. Jylland in particular has many small villages with (relatively) cheap houses and apartments.
But the Sun thing kind of spoils it. Yes, we do have lovely sunny days, like today for instance (or the entire week with the exception of yesterday) but we consider 20 °C to be a warm day, and 25 °C to be quite hot, and any warmer to approach unbearable

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The way that I'm going to make NL's codeplatform entirely pink, to compensate for having to de-pink my house 🥲

@Gina You moving out or in?
You made me laugh out loud.