There is a great change of consciousness on the planet right now

[DFW]

58. A few caveats

The weather sucks, the living space is small and expensive, and the bureaucracy is cumbersome. I just moved someone up there from elsewhere in Europe, and she is drowning in petty bureaucracy. To get to work, she needs to take 2 buses. To switch, she needs a different set of tickets because the bus company is split into two and they won't honor each other's tickets (no such animal here in Germany). Plus she can't get medical insurance until she gets a paper from the tax authorities, which they are dragging their heels with, whining about documents from third countries. So, she is praying nothing happens until this messy paperwork is done. Lots of Catch 22. That's the problem with a lot of Europe, certainly here in Germany as well. A short visit of a few months will not prepare you for the wall of paper and indifference you meet when you try to establish a daily existence here. I keep my Blue Cross in Texas because to get medical insurance here in Germany, even though I pay over 50% in taxes here, they want to charge me €2500 a MONTH. Even my wife, who retired at 60 when she needed her thyroid removed (tumor on it), and had already been out the better part of a year for her cancer treatment 10 years before, was suddenly kicked off her medical insurance by the state, so I now cough up €400 a month for it until she's 65, and can get government health insurance. If she had been on her own, she would have been up shit creek.

Plus there's the language. Yes, they all speak some English there, but to be part of society in Holland, you must speak Dutch. I learned it easily, but most people have problems with it. It does take some getting used to!