Preparation for Moving Abroad

I still remember that one afternoon. I was sitting on the couch in my apartment watching TV. My life was pretty boring. I worked in retail full-time as a manager. Since I started my apprenticeship in my teenage years, I haven’t been on a vacation for many years. I haven’t seen the ocean for many years. Then in 2018 I did my first ever solo trip to Bulgaria. It was the beginning of my solo travel-adventures.

Back to that one afternoon. As I was sitting on the couch, one thought crossed my mind, and I remember it like it was yesterday: ‘Is this really how you want to spend the rest of your life? Working all day, then coming home to this apartment, sitting on the couch and watching TV before going to sleep and waking up the next day just to go to work again?’ The answer was clear.

That was the first time I felt the urge to move to a different country. To be honest, I always dreamed of living in a different country, ever since I was a little girl. My parents used to own a house in Spain, and we drove down there once a year. I was 9 years old, when I begged my mom to let me buy breakfast for the family in the morning at the supermarket down the road. Looking back now, I still can’t believe she actually let me, but I’ll be forever grateful. I couldn’t speak any Spanish at the time except the numbers, but I was eager to learn, and a language barrier certainly wouldn’t stop me from grocery shopping. So my mom taught me “de eso” which means “of that”, so I was able to tell the shop assistants how many “de eso” I wanted and point at the things I wanted. From that moment on, I always felt like Spain was my second home.

As soon as I knew I wanted to move, I had to figure out where. I fairly quickly chose Australia, as it was certain to me that I wanted to move to an English-speaking country, and back then the media was reporting a lot about tensions, and there was a little fear that there might come a war at some point, and I thought I wanted to be as far away from it as possible. Nowadays, I know better than to believe what the media writes, but back then I wasn’t so smart. So Australia it was. I started researching the requirements to live in Australia and soon discovered that a work and holiday visa would be the easiest option. At the time, it was very important to me to have a job and an income. I worked for H&M and they had stores in Australia too, so I reached out to HR in Melbourne, and we started to chat via mail. Additionally, I also started to prepare for the English test I needed to take to get the visa. It wasn’t an easy exam; it was split into four parts: 45 minutes of writing, 45 minutes of reading, 45 minutes of listening, and 15 minutes of speaking to an examiner. I started to study in October and took the exam in December. I switched my phone settings to English, only watched movies and series in English, and started to read English books. That was super helpful, and sure enough, I passed with the required grades.

But that was the easy part. Moving to a different continent certainly takes more preparation. I looked up living costs and found YouTube videos from other people who moved to Australia, which helped me too. I researched banks, insurance, minimum wages, and accommodations; those were the most important things to me. So I guess the three things I recommend preparing are a job, finances, and housing. I actually forgot to tell my Austrian bank I would move, and I tell you, it was a nightmare to fix the access from overseas, but luckily with digital tools it was possible. I also opened an Australian bank account as soon as I got the visa, which was in February. I actually moved in April, so it took me less than two months to figure everything out because I researched most of the information before my visa was granted.

Before I actually left (and at the time I didn’t know how long I would be gone or even if I’d move back at some point), I visited my sister in Paris and took a short trip to Bratislava because Slovakia was the only neighboring country I hadn’t been to before. Then it was time to say goodbye. My first destination was Bali; I had a crazy time there (including a hospital visit), and then finally I arrived in Australia. And all that happened because of a thought I had one afternoon.