Living Abroad

One of my guilty pleasures is House Hunters International (https://www.hgtv.com/shows/house-hunters-international), on HGTV. There is a domestic (House Hunters) version as well, but for many reasons, it is utterly uninteresting. I’m sure there are many interesting apartments and homes in Los Angeles, New York, and Peoria, but after a long day, for refocusing the mind, these cannot compare to a flat in Zurich, a canal house in Amsterdam, or a pied-a-terre in London. In each episode a local real estate agent shows three options, and after much deliberation, usually over a beverage in a local watering hole or café, one is selected. Most participants are relocating temporarily for work; for some the move is permanent (or so they think).

Over the years, I have traveled a fair amount, but certainly not extensively. Besides emigrating from the former Soviet Union to the United States at a young age, I have never lived abroad. Although next year it will be forty years since that momentous experience, I still have mixed feelings about moving to another country for longer than a short period of time. At the same time, it is perhaps due to this initial experience, leaving the familiar, that I am open to the possibility.

Our attraction to the exotic is longstanding and foundational. Much ink has been spilled chronicling international travels, and while for a multitude of reasons most of us cannot be Phileas Fogg or Mark Twain, we can aspire. While the benefits of sitzfleisch are many, and it is difficult if not impossible to accomplish anything worthwhile without this, our natural inclination is to explore and expand our horizons, to venture outside our respective fishbowls, if not momentarily.

The world is rapidly shrinking, largely due to technological advances. Just in the last month or so, I gave a technology licensing presentation to attorneys in Australia. The videoconference link was flawless, and, while I would have preferred to have been in the room, the experience was still very real (and rewarding). Similarly, last week I sat on a panel, on marketing, data, and ethics, at a local business school, where most of the students were visiting from South Korea. Add to this meetings with colleagues visiting from various points around the globe and the usual flow of cross-border work, it soon becomes easy to see, at least from my perspective, that the world is increasingly interconnected, and while, as the saying goes, all politics is local, it is imperative to have a baseline level of fluency on global matters as well as an appreciation for the fact that there may be different approaches to seemingly the same problem. Living abroad, even for six months, can ameliorate this. Of course, this needs to be balanced against affording proper attention to local issues.

This then brings me to my House Hunters International moment. In a visit to Norway last July, I was pleasantly surprised, and ultimately extremely impressed, by Oslo (above). It reminded me of Seattle, but with old-world, European charm. Tons of parks, including the Vigeland Sculpture Park (http://www.vigeland.museum.no/en/vigeland-park), water everywhere, clean, modern (but with a connection to the past), comfortable, and … expensive (at least with respect to food, transportation, etc.). I can only imagine what a nice 3-bedroom apartment in central Oslo would cost. At any rate, my spouse joked that if I could find a job there for 8 million Norwegian krone (practically, given the comprehensive services, and higher taxes, it ought to be a much lower number), she would readily support a move there.

From time to time, I still think about this, weekend trips to the countryside, or further west, to the fjords, to Flam or Voss, but this may need to wait. In the meantime, I will live vicariously, through my guilty pleasure.

Comments welcomed.