"You Can Get a Cheaper Apartment in Paris" From Colorado to Ireland to Paris

0:00English speakers are still a novelty here. And of course, I had two cats who basically destroyed their carriers on days one and three. There was a lot of discussion to make sure that we were aligned and that we were doing it for for similar reasons. What are the visa paths? Are you running towards something or are you running away from something? And then what?

0:25I can't believe we're finally here. This is Americans Abroad. On this week's episode of Americans Abroad, we are joined by Amber Haggerty, who's going to talk about life in Ireland, life in Paris, and moving abroad with a spouse with EU citizenship. Jen, I want to talk about what we got to enjoy last week, which was move abroad con. We just wrapped Move Abroad Con a little over a week ago. It's true.

0:55I just got home last night, so I'm a little, as you would say, any my Mimis. Yeah. But it was, it was incredible. We had 600 attendees. We had 67 experts, We had 30 talks. We had 751 on one meetings between like attendees and our experts. We had a huge party at Echo Park for the football game. Girl, I told you I was tired for the baseball game. Sports ball, sports ball.

1:32And I served all our international folks hot dogs and apple pie at the ballpark. I mean, come on, I don't know how we'll top it. And we have and here you haven't met Ron before, but he produces our podcast and he was at Move Abroad Con. And since poor Stephanie, explain why you were not at Move Abroad Con.

1:51Yeah. So you know, we we've talked before about sometimes moving abroad isn't a linear thing. So I'm here currently in Portugal on technically an expired temporary visa pending my residency appointment. Supposed to have my residency appointment back in March. We showed up, they go, we rescheduled, you come back in May. So because I'm on an expired visa, there is no guarantee that Portugal would let me back in the country. I can leave no guarantee that I can come back in because we haven't had that residency appointment. So so I helped as much as I could with Mover Broadcon before the event and switched to San

2:36Diego hours during during the event. Which is what, 10 hours? 9 hours off the your current it was incredible but I will tell you I just about had a heart attack. When you when you found out. You could not come to move abroad. Yeah, Oh my God. But thank God we had to, to navigate, to pull the puppet strings from abroad.

2:59And of course, we had to. Handle communication to our partners and our guests about their one on ones and schedule things and tickets to the party. So every anything that I could do from behind this laptop, I'm glad that I still got to be a part of it in in a in a little way. But you were. Part of it in a huge way, but we also missed you. Oh.

3:19God no, I missed being there. Yeah. Like to get to see all of our partners because inherently we're international, right? And so to see all our partners and see the people and see people in person who were helping move abroad is like it it it sustains us for a year because we do so much stuff virtually. So Ron, obviously it was your first move abroad Con Yes.

3:44What what did you expect? What did you think of it? Did it match what you thought? Tell us. I had. Bragged on us. Oh, I, I had so much fun. And yeah, everything ran very, very smoothly. It seemed. I mean, everything was, was kind of just moving according to schedule. There was just so much information, but in a good way. And I, and I felt like that was the consensus with everybody that I talked to.

4:10Like everyone was like, oh, I'm overwhelmed, but in the best way possible. So much to take in, so much brilliant from these people. And for me especially, it was so cool. I think my favorite part was just all the time and I spent a lot of time doing it just roaming the floor and talking to people and getting short clips from people because it'd be fun. I would kind of just just roll up to a booth and they'd be like, who's this guy with with all this camera? Like like he's using his phone, he has this little stand, he's recording.

4:39And then I'd be like, oh, I produce the Americans Abroad podcast. They're like, oh, cool. So it was really neat to just to just meet so many people and to just hear all of their expertise and to just learn about opportunities that I didn't even know existed. Even even producing this podcast, I learned something new every time we record. But there was still stuff that I had no idea existed in the world that I got to learn about.

5:06And it was also cool from the perspective of, you know, I got to form my own relationship with different partners and whatnot. So now I don't have to, you know, rely on one of you to like, feed me stuff. I can just, you know, kind of go out on my own now that, you know, just take one of the many, many things off y'all's plate. So, you know, it was a really cool weekend. Yeah, that's a great point.

5:26And you're interested, You would move abroad, wouldn't you? Yeah, I, I've been interested for a good number of years and, you know, have my own have my own hurdles that maybe we'll talk about in more detail on a future episode. But you know, the the short Cliff Notes version, I was one of the people impacted by the change in the Italian citizenship by dissent laws. And there were actually some of the panels that it might not be completely hopeless there.

6:00There was something out of the Supreme Court in in Torino. You know, don't have time to get into it now, but but yeah, maybe the future. Well, we should do an episode of that because it's an, you know, people are very interested to know more. It's a buddy ofide rods, a travel podcast that I actually did do like a breakdown episode where I just like told my story over the course of four years and I didn't cry, but I told my story over the course of four years and just how everything happened and how it related.

6:28Yeah. It's a safe. Space. It's been enough time has passed, I've reached the acceptance phase. And you know, I mean, there might be, you know, it's not completely hopeless yet. So I learned that and I learned I will share this real quick too. I I take the test periodically just because why wouldn't I? You know, bumping. Our numbers.

6:47Up bumping the numbers and and you have my e-mail like at least 5 or 6 times, but like I'll just take the test. Last time I took it, Ecuador finished first for me, which I was intrigued by that, so I spent a lot of time with the Ecuador booth learning more about it. Did you get a hat? I did not get it.

7:06I was not in time for the hat. Ecuador brought like 100 Panama hats because if you don't know this, the Panama hat is from Ecuador and it just, it got known as the Panama hat. He tells the whole story and I can't remember it now, but there's a whole lore as to why it's called Panama hat. But they brought hats. And so we have all these photos of of all of these people and their Panama hats together.

7:31And so Brett brought one home and and you know, we had after we left move abroad con we flew to New York for to present Expatsi to some folks. And then we flew back and he had to wear the hat every on every flight because it didn't fit in the luggage. So he's in his plain outfit in his Panama hat everywhere we go. I put a refutable though.

7:55Yeah. I think one of the things, you know, because I get all the feedback from both our attendees and our partners who were there. And I think one of the things that you cannot do on a webinar, that you can't do on a podcast, that you can't bottle up and send it as APDF is the the human connection. And especially between the attendees, one of the things that, you know, I heard over and over was I felt less alone. I felt like less of a weirdo for wanting to do this. And so, you know, Jen, you're Gen. X, so this will make sense.

8:32But the music video for Blind Melon, No Rain. And it's the little girl in the bee costume. And at the end she walks into this field and it's all these like people in their bee costume. That's what move abroad kind I think feels like for me is like I'm this little weirdo, like little tap dancing girl in my bee costume and getting made fun at school.

8:49And then I get to this place where it's like we're all these like little oddballs in our, in our big costume. And like, I finally feel like I can like let loose and be joyful about making a big change or exploring a change like this and not being, you know what, well, why do you want to leave?

9:05You know, America is the greatest country in the world. Oh, it's going to be so hard. Oh, you're going to come back and all this negative stuff that I think a lot of our clients here and just to be like, Oh no, I this choice, this exploration is perfectly valid because if 600 other people want to do it, then how can it be wrong? Yeah.

9:24And and and quick quick shout out to Blind Melon, Shannon Hoon, Rest in peace 1995. Side note, some millennials are into 90s music too, just FYI Was. Like do you all know what a music video is? You grew. Up with it too. All of the older ones did, at least the older ones. So yeah. Amazing. Speaking of Gen. XI pulled the data and I don't have it in front of me, but I showed at Move Abroad Con who was in the audience right from their Expatsi test results and it was like 2/3 of folks in the audience were Gen.

9:57X, maybe even more, 72%, something like that. And so that was that was interesting. We're a new generation. So we're not, you know, boomers were not Silent Generation. We're not. I was just on a call with one of our partners and he said that he started with moving the Greatest Generation abroad. And I'm like, I just can't even conceive of that.

10:20But how different it is for Gen. X and millennials who are doing it. And the process as we go through and the things that are important to us are so different from what it was in the in the past. And that's where I think, you know, this whole move abroad live like royalty clap trap just doesn't isn't why Gen.

10:42X or millennials and certainly not anyone younger is doing it. We're doing it to to see truth and beauty and community. And I think that Move Abroad con is a little sample of that because, because like you said, we're all in our peak costumes. It's so cute. Yeah, no, it was even from halfway across the world I could tell it was a fantastic event.

11:08I also want to shout out all of our volunteers and our staff. And yes, could not do it on on our own. God I wouldn't want to. But they absolutely killed it from making sure that they knew where to go for their one on ones check in, getting them into the park for the VIP party stem to Stern. All of our Expatsi staff and volunteers showed up to make it a great experience for for our attendees and our partners. So.

11:38Well, in the in the spirit of a shout out to them and, and just everybody involved, I will share this. One of the partners actually took me aside. You know, when he knew I produced the podcast and whatnot, he took me aside and he just said, look, I do events like this. It's like for a living, you know, like I go and I, I promote this company of ours and, and I do events like this about 30 to 40 a year.

12:01And he goes this event as far as the organization involved, as far as all the volunteers, as far as the venue, as far as everything, this is in the top 5%. These are the types of events you want to be at. And I was like, wow, thank you so much. I will need to share that. Yeah, that's fantastic.

12:19Well, next year, this year, last year 300, this year 600, next year 1200 and you can vote as to what venue or what city you'd like for us to have move abroad CON 2027 in. So we'll put the link in the show notes so you can come and tell us what weekends work best for you and what cities work best for you. I'll see you next year at Move Abroad Con. This week on the podcast we have Amber Haggerty. She was one of our very first ever local guys. Brent found her when he was looking for someone to come and talk about moving to Ireland,

13:07but she actually lives in France. So she kind of does double duty on what it is like to live in either Ireland or France and how to compare the 2. Amber, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Jen. I'm so happy to be here and so excited to be talking about one of my favorite topics, which is moving abroad and living abroad and everything that goes with that. I love it.

13:28So what made you decide to move abroad and where did you live in the US? So I have a little bit of a, a funky story. So I started, I was living in Colorado when the pandemic hit with my long time partner who is an Irish citizen. And so we had always thought about moving abroad. And it was something we, we'd kind of talked about living in Europe just on and off over the years. And we were about 5 months into the pandemic and we went on a walk and we were talking about maybe moving to Philadelphia. We were feeling a little bit

14:02done. We were living in Boulder, Co at the time, so we were feeling maybe a little bit over. We've been in Colorado for about 5 years. And so we went out on a walk one day and we thought, I just asked him like, is this now actually like the perfect time to move to Europe Because our jobs are online, everything's online.

14:19Is this just maybe the perfect time for us to move? And he said, why not? And so we literally got back that day and started compiling our what ended up 400 page application to move to Ireland. And we, we started, we chose Ireland. Really we didn't 1st, and I'm sure we'll get into this in a little bit.

14:41We did not understand how the EU treaties work. And because he was an Irish citizen and he had family in Ireland, Ireland just seemed like the natural place for us to go. So, so we ended up moving maybe three or four months later to Wicklow, which is a, a small town, like a, a region really South of Dublin in Ireland.

15:00And we just, we ended up on his family farm. We were there for about a year. That was kind of how we moved. And I can, yeah, happy to answer any other questions about that. I have How do you meet an Irishman? Well, I met him in college and, and he grew up in Philadelphia, but he so he's very much culturally American, but but his father is Irish. And so he was able to get an Irish passport by descent. He actually got it quite a while ago. And, and so because of that, because of his citizenship, we were able to move together in

15:36Ireland or to Ireland. And at the time, we were not married, so I moved as his de facto spouse, which is a common visa path in Ireland. And it's very, very similar in Ireland to moving as a spouse. But the difference is that it first, it's a lot more paperwork because you have to prove the relationship. We had to literally like find evidence of when we met, pictures of us together, emails like like communications that we had had like it was a very like funny kind of throwback exercise to prove when we met And improve, you know, how long we've known each other And you

16:14know, we had lived with family friends. So we so we had to kind of find some documentation for that living situation. So we got a little bit complicated. But anyhow, yeah, we, we ended up, we, we met in, sorry, we met in, in Massachusetts and then ended up, we had travelled to Ireland I think twice before we ended up moving. Amazing.

16:38So after about a year of living on this family farm, you decide to go to Paris. So why Ireland to Paris? So there's actually an intermediary step after here in Wicklow because my original goal was to get Irish citizenship. So as a de facto spouse or de facto partner rather, I needed to be in Ireland for five years. And so I was on that path, the rural part of Ireland, I think that that is a lot of people's dream. And I always like to say I think the Venn diagram of people who are happy in rural Ireland and central Paris is probably 2 separate circles.

17:19So I was really struggling with. It was just, it was the most kind of rural situation I had been in. So we decided to move to Cork, which is Ireland's second city. It's in the South. So we're actually in Cork for two years and then we decided after two years in Ireland, we, we actually had to had some of our some problems with our housing. So we lost our housing in Cork and we were going to have to move.

17:43And so we went out on another walk and we were talking about it and we, because his grandfather was French, he's a lot of European ties. His grandfather on the other side of the family was French and he had had this apartment that we were able to visit over the years. So we, we had just kind of developed a relationship with Paris over that time. And, and to be totally honest, kind of in the back of my mind, the getting Irish citizenship was a little bit of a path to moving to France and specifically Paris. So I've just, I've always loved

18:15Paris and well, I could, I could talk about my first experience in Paris if we won't. But but basically, you know, it's just a city that I that I really loved. And so kind of later when we knew more about EU treaty and things, that was when it made, that was when we kind of understood that it would be possible for us to move to France. So we ended up making that jump in late 2023. Well, you can't say I'll tell you about my first story in France and not tell story, so I want to hear this story. So, so to be completely honest,

18:50when I, we were first planning to visit Paris on my, my first trip to Europe when I was about probably 25 and I thought of myself as somebody who traveled to like very like I had studied abroad in, in Amman in Jordan. I had been my first ever trip abroad was to Guatemala. And so I'd always kind of had this image of Paris as being kind of like Disneyland.

19:11And I was like, I don't really know if I need to go to Disneyland. And he kind of talked me into it because we had a place to stay for free. And I was like, just because we have a place to stay for free. And so I was really not interested in going to Paris at all. And I was here for probably about two hours before I was like, I have aired, I've made a mistake. This city is actually great.

19:32And it's not, it's, it's a very much a real place. And so, yeah, so I really fell in love with it. But we it was kind of almost against my will the very first time. Amber, do you still work remote in that same job you had during the pandemic? No. So I switched. So I was working remotely for a company in the US and they, so I ended up leaving that job because they didn't want to have somebody. They didn't have an international presence. And then I started working remotely for a startup in Boulder.

20:05As a contractor about six months later. So I've been working for that startup since then. So I do work remotely, but not for that first company. So what are some of the things to note for Americans who are considering France, and maybe more specifically considering a big city like Paris? Yeah. So I would say the number one thing for France is that I it is very important to to, so for the French, it's very important that you integrate in different society.

20:41And I say that sort of as A to contrast with Ireland. Just very briefly, my experience in Ireland was that in Ireland people were very tolerant and I obviously already spoke English, which is the, the national language in Ireland. But the kind of difference was that that integration wasn't a top of mind topic. I never, I don't think I've really heard the word integration when I lived in Ireland and when I came to France, it's very, very top of mind. So it's very important to, to locals here that that immigrants are able to integrate in different society. And one of the number one ways

21:18to do that is by learning French. And so I, when I moved to France, I really didn't speak like a word of French to the point that I had to take at one point when we first moved, I had to take a hearing test in French. And the doctor said, you know, it's going to be just very simple words, things like basically like balloon red, like ball.

21:42And he was like, you can do that, right? And I was like, no, so we did this hearing test where we had to like, repeat words. And it was just mush, like, I really didn't speak a word. And he kind of just laughed and then moved on. So I don't know where the results of that test are, but anyway.

22:02But yeah, so the process of learning, learning French has been very important, I think to just feeling at home in France. But it wasn't important. I don't, it wasn't. I mean, it would be, it would have been great if I had spoken French before I got here, but I, I didn't feel, I didn't feel hindered when I first arrived in very many instances.

22:26But as I've been here, a big part of feeling comfortable and feeling kind of in my own skin has been, has been learning French. And I would say that that's probably going to be the experience for most anyone who moves. So I wouldn't want anyone thinking about a move to France to feel like like it's something they have to wait until they learn French to do.

22:45But just have in your mind that taking French and learning French is going to be a part of living here. And then another bit is definitely living in continental Europe. I mean, France is very, very central. It's in the Schengen zone. So there's a lot of really wonderful opportunities to travel. That's something I'd love about it. And I think being in Paris, we had three major airports. So it's just a lot of Europe is very, very accessible. I went to Sicily for a couple weeks a few months ago, and I'm going to Morocco later this month. So there's a lot of travel

23:21opportunity which is really fabulous and definitely an advantage of being somewhere where you don't have to, you know, we, we got to get to Morocco. I think there were €50 each way to go to Marrakech. So, so there's a lot of advantages to being in a big European city. I imagine the same would be true in London. But but yeah, definitely something to think about when you're considering.

23:44I know a lot of people are considering life and maybe a smaller French town versus a big city. And for me, I enjoy the big city. I think it's really, really fun. But I do also need to get out into nature. Paris in particular is not very close to any mountains. So we had to draw and I'm from Denver. So over the weekend we actually drove to Eastern France to the mountains and that was probably a 5 hour drive just to kind of get into some nature.

24:13So that's, I would say in terms of things that are the most challenging, I would say that the lack of not the access to greenery because there are a lot of really fabulous parks, but they're very manicured. It's not a very wild experience in the parks. So to kind of get into into, you know, what I would consider like very wild natural spaces, it just takes a little while from from Paris.

24:35And there are certainly other large European cities that are much closer. It's kind of a Paris specific thing. Yeah, but when you do go to the mountains, you have Alps and Pyrenees. I mean, big time. What is the cost of living like in, you know, both in a place like work and a place like Paris, You know, housing and food and everything?

25:00So one thing that shocks a lot of people and shocked me is that it is actually, I would say considerably cheaper to live in Paris, in central Paris than it was to live in Ireland. In Cork. Our rent is about €300 a month less in central Paris than we were paying in Ireland. And part of that is because Ireland's an island and part of that is that they're having a bit of a, or they not a bit of, but they're having a housing crisis.

25:29So, so just which like there are lots of really wonderful things about Ireland. But in terms of cost of living, I would say that the cost of living is generally more favorable in France from my perspective or, or what I've what I've seen. And I would say in Paris. And that's not to say that Paris is like an imminently livable city and it is an expensive city, especially if you want to be central in Paris. It can be aside from the cost of of living, it can be rather challenging to find a nice place to be because the system very much prioritizes people who are

26:07French and speak French and have French jobs. So you kind of run into this isn't maybe directly answering your question, but you kind of run into this being in this kind of other category of being foreign and that can kind of lead with that can kind of lend to you paying sometimes inflated prices or having fewer options. Gringo prices like gringo prices. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

26:32And, and that is, and so anyway, just just to say that that does exist here. And, but I would say in terms of, in terms of cost of living, you know, if within Paris, if you are able to live comfortably in AUS city, you will probably be able to live comfortably in Paris on a, on a similar salary.

26:55And certainly prices go down quite a bit when you get outside of the city. So you'll see a lot of people who choose to buy, will choose to buy in the suburbs. And there are some really nice suburbs in Paris and less nice sub. Like, you know, I don't want to say less nice, but there are there are some really nice suburbs and there are some suburbs that maybe are a little bit more dangerous or a little bit.

27:22Yeah, less expensive. Perfect. Sorry. What about compared to Boulder? Or didn't. Yeah. So I would say, I think Boulder, Denver is probably a pretty good comparison. I would say that the price for like a one bedroom, for like a minimal apartment, you can get a much cheaper minimal apartment in Paris. So just I always tell people when they're thinking about apartment sizes, just like shrink your expectation.

27:54So in Boulder, I think I was living in about a 600 square foot apartment and paying maybe 1200. And this is a few years ago at this point, $1200. But in Paris, I would say you could probably get like that amount of space would be actually pretty large in Paris. And so I think you'd be probably paying closer to depending on the location. Location is a big part of the price. But you know, for something similarly central, I would expect to pay maybe more in the 1700 to €2000 range. And there's a lot of, but the one thing that's very that's different about Paris and

28:30Ireland and Boulder is that you can get these very small apartments that are really not very, are not wildly expensive. So, you know, they're often apartments that are 20 square meters, which is. Very about 200 square feet. Yeah, but you can get apartment like that for less than €1000 and it can be sometimes very central. So there's just a little bit more diversity in terms of housing. There's also things to think about when you're when you're searching for an apartment in Paris is Paris does not have air conditioning.

29:04So if you're on the 6th floor and we also don't have a lot of elevators. So if you're on the 6th floor, like you can get a pretty affordable apartment on the 6th floor, but it might be A and you know, it's a European A7 floor walk up with no air conditioning. So just. Going to be. Be choosy, be like really read the the fine print because there are some. There are some cheaper options, but sometimes they can come with strings.

29:29What is that? Just briefly, what's the difference in taxes you have to pay in Ireland versus France? That's a great question. In France, I would say that the taxes are a bit higher in Ireland. My experience was that we, so I was paying, I would say for for my situation as a as a freelancer, I would say that the taxes are probably about 5 to 10% higher in France.

30:00But also the public services are quite a bit better in Ireland. I didn't qualify for any sort of public public health insurance in France. There's universal coverage. So, so it is a, the taxes are a bit higher and if you go up into higher income brackets, you know, the, the difference can be a quite, quite a bit more stark. So my situation might not apply to everybody, but I would say, Yep, there's there's higher tax levied in France, but also just quite a bit more benefit.

30:34Can you share a little bit about experiences you've had with the French healthcare system? Yeah, so I, I've had pretty fabulous experiences with the, with the French healthcare system. So I've had, I have a, a general physician, she does speak English and she has been just wonderful. So anytime I go to see her, she works in a public clinic. And so that means that there's a slightly longer wait and she so usually like the appointments are like 40 to 60 minutes behind, but she always will sit down and really take the time to, to talk to me and to ask me

31:12questions. I've also been pretty surprised. A lot of specialists will have the kind of imaging or the, the equipment in the office and it'll be included kind of in the, in the appointment. So when I had that, that ear, that ear problem and I went to the ENT, the guy had like the, the imaging equipment, he had the sound booth in his office and we did it all there. There wasn't, you know, I didn't get sent out for a bunch of I did get sent to specialists, but I didn't get sent to multiple appointments.

31:42It was it was sort of all encompassed, which I thought was really wonderful. And then I would say in terms of of other just I would say that the general quality of care in Paris is really high, but English is not universal. So a barrier can be find it if you don't speak French, can be finding providers who are able to communicate with you just because people come to Paris from all even doctors come from a lot of backgrounds and they might not all speak English or they might speak, you know, not not a ton of English.

32:13So I would say that's the big, big thing to be aware of. But in terms of quality, I'd say the quality is very high and the cost is very reasonable. Amber, is there anything that you miss, maybe besides natural beauty, about living in the US? Natural beauty and Mexican food. 100% of the time it's Mexican food. 100% of the time, what is your favorite Mexican food?

32:46That's what we should just ask people. What is your favorite Mexican food that you miss? Oh, for me at breakfast burritos, which I have, I and I desperate times. I have made flour tortillas, I've made corn tortillas. We have tortilla press. We have, we've brought hatch chilies. I've hatched chilies. I have, I have the whole setup. We found. We have also some like Mexican stores. So we have like pastries.

33:10So I have I we can make decent food at home, but but my dad learned when we when we were living or when he was picking us up from the airport, he's like we go straight to the Mexican restaurant. So just never quite compares. That's so funny, everybody. And Stephanie, the same thing. She's in some sort of started some sort of tortilla making.

33:33We also made I also made chorizo at home last week so we could have chorizo and egg tacos. So, you know, desperate times call for desperate measures that you find what's. In Spain. It's different Spanish chorizo, the sausage is different than the Mexican pork chorizo that you have with for breakfast. Tacos, Yeah. Yeah. Different. Well Amber, thank you so much for being here.

33:56We really appreciate it and hearing all about your experiences in Ireland and France and we wish for everyone to find an EU citizen to fall in love with. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so much fun to talk about, to talk about life abroad and yeah, just so grateful to for the opportunity to chat. And you can meet with Amber on the Expatsi Go platform. Jen, do you know what time it is? I do, and I have a new song.

34:37OK, let's go abroad from scratch just for doing Q&A. Are you ready? Let's let's go. OK, it's called 50 ways to leave your country. You just slip out the back. Jack, make a new plan. Stan, you don't need to be coy, Roy. You just listen to me. I mean, you just hop on the bus, Gut. You can't really hop on the bus.

35:01So you don't need to discuss much. You just drop off the key, leave and get yourself free. Ta da. Thank you. Thank you. I wrote that over the weekend. Totally original, never heard them before. I love it. Smash it. This week we have somebody who wrote in to ask about moving pets specifically to the EU. They say.

35:27My family is moving to the EU this coming fall and we have a £50 dog, IE not a lap dog. I I would say that depending on the dog, 50 LB dog squiggy more than £50. Definitely a lap dog that they would like to take their dog with us. Of course. Absolutely. Do you have any first hand experience of flying a dog across the Atlantic in cargo?

35:48They recognize that there's other options, but it's difficult to get reservation when Queen Mary things like that. So let's talk a little bit about taking pets to eat to the EU and a little bit about some of the folks that we know that have taking their pets cargo. My experience, we brought our two Frenchies, but we did a shared charter. That's what selling a 2022 Toyota Prius will buy you is your bikes on a on a shared charter. But we've had several of our partners take their animals and go cargo.

36:23I know Kelly who is our expert in Albania shipped her lovely little meathead dog Ace. I know, Oh my God, the cutest via cargo. And then Rachel Menz who is our expert for therapist also for our veterans, her two poodles came over via cargo from from Texas to to Spain. So we have Buffalo, NY to Albania and Texas to Spain.

36:53And we know a lot of other folks have also taken that option. I understand that it sounds scary that I have my, my dog, my, my, my family member in a box in the dark where the luggage goes. And, you know, we see the, you know, the, the sort of, but that's what we assume. That's what we assume we see. We see, man, they just throw our luggage into the plane. Are they doing the same thing with Fido? And I will tell you it is not that because I also thought it was, you know, they're, they're

37:26in there in the dark next to next to the luggage, No AC, no nothing there. You know, that sounds terrifying. Freezing. Burning up? Exactly. Scared loud, you know. And I always, I tend to remind myself the last thing that an airline wants us to get sued, the last thing that a big company wants is some sort of scandal that somebody's dog, you know, had the the unthinkable happen on a flight. The belly of the plane where the animals go is climate controlled.

37:59So a number one, that was something new that I learned when we were kind of exploring those options like, oh, climate control, there is somebody like escorting your animal into the cargo. So it isn't just you're not going to, you know, necessarily you drop them off with baggage and like, good luck, Godspeed. You know there there is some additional care that is taken when you are taking a dog to the EU. You still have to follow the same EU rules in terms of getting the health certificate, taking it to AUSD certified vet here in the states, having them

38:35ship it or send the report to the USDA, getting that embossed certificate back within 10 days of your your travel lease. That's for for most EU countries. But as someone who is anxiety ridden about, are my dogs going to be OK? If they weren't snub nose breeds and I had, you know, a meathead dog like Kelly has or, you know, standard poodle like Rachel has, I would feel completely comfortable having my dog travel cargo.

39:10Jen, Like do you have any experience from maybe from any of our customers or things that you've heard from Kelly, Rachel or any other or other partners about taking your dog's cargo to the EU? Yeah, so I'm nervous about that too. You know, my dog is we are in meshed, we are codependent in my pandemic baby. And so being able to drive to Mexico was a big benefit to me because I was nervous about that.

39:35He's not completely stuffed nose, but he's sort of half. So he's like half bulldog, half pit bull, which Kelly's dog is very much they're they look a lot alike. But what I will say, one of our move abroad coaches, Eileen is a pilot and she is the one who told me how nice it is for the dogs and that they take really good care of them.

39:57Now, of course, something you could run into a bad egg in the same way that if you board your dog or or you have a dog Walker or you know, we do house sits when we're on trips like when we were on a move abroad con and I read. An article on the way home about a man who had gotten a trusted house. We use trusted house sitters, not sponsored and, and they had a trusted house sitter and he stole the dog and they found the dog passed away in an abandoned car. Like just a really terrible,

40:35terrible situation and stuff, you know, stuff can happen. There are bad people in the world. There are people who might have a mental health break or something like that and stuff can happen and the same thing could happen on a plane, but thousands and thousands and thousands of animals. And we have, we have clients who've moved horses and they are well trained in doing that.

41:00And I think probably I'm just a little bit of a helicopter parent and then probably Squiggy would be fine. And I'm, I'm projecting, right, Because I don't want to be in the bottom of the plane by myself. And so I project as to what I would feel like. But the truth is he's a dog and he doesn't have exactly the same feelings as me. So definitely people do it all the time. Rachel's dogs seem to have absolutely no feelings about how they did it.

41:30Ace is, you know, when Ace is death as well. Kelly Stock, who went to Albania and absolutely could not be less concerned as she shows him walking all over Albania and now Romania every day. So they do it and they they come out. Just fine. Also, we do have some partners who can help you at Expatsi Go.

41:52If you go to expatsy.com/experts, you can look at our pet services for folks who can help you move your pets to Europe. If you have a question you'd like us to address here on the podcast, you can e-mail your questions at podcast at expatsi.com. Americans Abroad is an Expatsi production. Please like, share, subscribe and leave a review.

42:15Are you thinking about moving abroad? Start with our quiz at expatsi.com. That's EXPA tsi.com.