It also takes a significant investment and effort on your part to find true acceptance and getting to stage where you really feel you ‘belong’ in your Spanish community will take time, effort and above all perseverance.

Expectation versus Reality

Moving abroad won’t necessarily ‘fix’ your life - if you do move abroad you won’t escape your history, you won’t escape who you are, you won’t escape all of day to day grind and you may not always improve your quality of life! So make sure you have realistic expectations of your new life in Spain before you go and know that living in Spain will be very different to holidaying in Spain.

YES your new life abroad can offer you so much more …but just make sure your expectations can match reality and remember saying – life isn’t necessarily a beach just because you live beside one!

Health & Wellbeing

One of saddest reasons people cite when giving up their dream of a new life abroad is health and wellbeing. The trap is price, availability and quality of health care in their ‘new’ country. Please look at local Spanish health care facilities, think about long term and respite care, consider health insurance for all your family and basically don’t bury your head in sand! If you consider worst case scenario and protect yourself against it, chances are you will be prepared for everything and will financially survive.

Last But Not Least - Money

THE most common reasons for people returning ‘home’ with their dreams shattered is that they simply run out of money.

If you’re moving to Spain and hoping to find work you need to know that unemployment in country is way above EU average, if you don’t speak Spanish you’ll struggle and some of your qualifications may not be recognised in Spain. If you’re considering downsizing when you move to Spain it can be more than just a shock to system to leave a well paying job to become a pool cleaner. If you’ve sold up and released equity to live on have you honestly thought about how long you can practically live on this amount? What about affording your retirement years, trips back to your home country, health care, transportation and unexpected costs that spring up when we least expect them?

There are ways to afford to live on less and there are ways to make what you have go far further. The bottom line is - to survive in Spain you simply MUST consider your financial position before you make ANY move.

Good luck in realising and securing your dream.

I am a huge fan of ice hockey. During eighties and nineties, many of best players were Russians. In interviews, they almost always talked about learning English by watching television. If it worked for them, it would work for me. Not exactly.

As Grae showered, I flipped through eight available channels. Sitcoms were a non-starter, but I eventually found a news channel. I see images. I know what images are. I hear words being spoken by reporters. I have absolutely no idea of what words go with what images. Okay, let’s back up. What words do they use over and over? Damn, do they have to talk so fast? After 30 minutes, I have learned nothing, nada, zippo. My respect for Russians playing in NHL has never been higher.

Might as well sleep on it. Yes, day three of trip was finally done. My original prediction of a 2-day trip was out window. Still, we were in Russia, so how much longer could it take? Pull out a map and take a look at country. It is twice size of U.S.

Next – When Stairs Attack…