Reply to: Best city to live in

[Viktor]

Actually I'm looking at this and the tax implications are huge. Apparently Estonia has a flat rate of income tax set at 23%. That would be nice.

Taxation tends to be complex in Eastern Europe.
In other countries you can find a flat rate of income tax as low as 16% (Romania). However, NIC and other taxes on salary can be very high.
I presume that you will invoice through your UK based company, in that case you can live tax-free in Eastern Europe, but you will pay tax in UK.
With all this EU enlargement we might have very complex tax situations in a couple of years e.g. resident in Hungary (but stay there and work only for 6 months/year), holiday in UK 3 months, a 3 months contract in Netherlands. At the same time invoice a small piece of work to a client in Germany through a company based in UK ...
I wonder what will happen because there are some unusual tax cases like this one already...

[AlfredJPruffock]

Senior Network & Video Engineer

My client are looking for a Senior Network & Video Engineer to work in an leading edge porno communications environment. Main duties: maintain cleints billing for girls rooms. Help in the design of corporate & demonstration deployment plan and work with product teams/engineering and porno artists to define best practice deployment guidelines. Maintain statistics on use, frequency of problems, resolution of problems, time to resolution, etc. Help train girls to use various eqipment in the proper use of more ->

Type: Contract Location: Sofia Country: Bulgeria Start: ASAP Posted: 04/08/2006 12:09:51 Reference: JSHH408887

Cheers Paddy !

As an IT Whore Id love to work in the porno industry ... tell you what Ill doorit for a fiver an hour ...

At this point in time I feel obliged to tell you all the origins of the FIVER saga.

On old buddy of mine related a rather grizzly story of how he came to be wakling through the Soho backstreets one rainy February evening when suddenly he was approached by a slime ball character with no teeth and shabbily dressed who said

Ill blow yer for a Fiver mate

Needless to say my friend declined his generous offer yet I found it hugely amusing and hence the FIVER quote was born.

Anyway Im off for a quick game of Polo ...Toodles all !

[Francko]

Actually I'm looking at this and the tax implications are huge. Apparently Estonia has a flat rate of income tax set at 23%. That would be nice.

Pretty much the same in Lithuania and Latvia too.

[DieScum]

Actually I'm looking at this and the tax implications are huge. Apparently Estonia has a flat rate of income tax set at 23%. That would be nice.

[Paddy]

My tip for Eastern Euope would be Sofia, Bulgaria,

saw a contract in Sofia in my line recently...worth keeping an eye on.

Senior Network & Video Engineer

My client are looking for a Senior Network & Video Engineer to work in an leading edge porno communications environment. Main duties: maintain cleints billing for girls rooms. Help in the design of corporate & demonstration deployment plan and work with product teams/engineering and porno artists to define best practice deployment guidelines. Maintain statistics on use, frequency of problems, resolution of problems, time to resolution, etc. Help train girls to use various eqipment in the proper use of more ->

Type: Contract Location: Sofia Country: Bulgeria Start: ASAP Posted: 04/08/2006 12:09:51 Reference: JSHH408887

[AlfredJPruffock]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Never been to Berlin but I hear it is a great place. I'm going to be spending a month in Duesseldorf soon might travel there for the weekend.

I like Toulouse. Lovely to visit but a bit too small town for me. Never been to Lille but I imagine it would be the same. I suppose in France it would either be Paris or somewhere with a great beach... but I'm not sure I can do that and save any on living costs.

I don't speak Spanish but would love to learn so Madrid sounds interesting. Barcelona seems to be the more obvious spot though, maybe?

I would not want to live in Scandinavia. Nothing against it just not my style.

Anyone ever lived in Eastern Europe? Recently? Any good spots there?

Berlin was a great place before unification,I have lived there for spells before and after the wall,now Berlin is not as exciting as it was,its expensive and too much unemployment.

But check out Hamburg, one of the best places in Germnay to be you can find IT work there too.

My tip for Eastern Euope would be Sofia, Bulgaria,

Its an extraordinary city, great food,and outside of Kali Colombia some of the prettiest dames Ive seen, also an economy which is growing fast, saw a contract in Sofia in my line recently...worth keeping an eye on.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Try the Hungarian (Malev) airlines as well. At least their equivalent of BA's dried plastic muck served by the trolley dollies (Deli) is better.

Although Hungarian belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family, which includes Finnish and Estonian and both are agglutinative languages, meaning that it relies heavily on suffixes and prefixes, they are quite different. Hungarian is an unique language and cannot be understood by Finns visa versa.

:

The lights darkened as the talk turned to Finland ...

[hyperD]

Try Budapest. They have REAL cheap flights to / from Ferihegy (I flew from Heathrow to Budapest this year for 89 pounds return with BA), living costs are low and Budapest is a great city indeed! Geographically speaking very close to Vienna and Prague, Transylvania and Austria are also within driving distance (about 7 hours to get to Cluj / Romania, 5 hours to arrive in Salzburg / Austria).
In Budapest people speak English, but in the rest of Hungary only local language and maybe German (hungarian is very close to finnish - Hungarians have a common origin with Finnish people).
Food is great (goulash - one of my favourites) and the girls...hmm....

Go and see on some week-end!

Try the Hungarian (Malev) airlines as well. At least their equivalent of BA's dried plastic muck served by the trolley dollies (Deli) is better.

Just want to be a little pedantic and correct something there Vik:

Although Hungarian belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family, which includes Finnish and Estonian and both are agglutinative languages, meaning that it relies heavily on suffixes and prefixes, they are quite different. Hungarian is an unique language and cannot be understood by Finns visa versa.

My favourite food is vaddisznó (wild boar) - nice with a bottle of Tokay Aszú (száras) or some Medoc Noir from Eger.

Girls? Well, can't really comment...

[Clog II The Avenger]

Try Budapest.....
In Budapest people speak English, but in the rest of Hungary only local language and maybe German (hungarian is very close to finnish - Hungarians have a common origin with Finnish people).
Food is great (goulash - one of my favourites) and the girls...hmm....

Go and see on some week-end!

I can vouch for the girls, I’m dribbling over my keyboard thinking of them. Food good as well, try chicken breast wrapped around apricots.

[Viktor]

Locals salaries are immaterial. Or rather a low local cost of living is good for me. I am paid in the UK, work from home. The only things I need to do my job are good, reasonably priced flights to the major European cities.

Try Budapest. They have REAL cheap flights to / from Ferihegy (I flew from Heathrow to Budapest this year for 89 pounds return with BA), living costs are low and Budapest is a great city indeed! Geographically speaking very close to Vienna and Prague, Transylvania and Austria are also within driving distance (about 7 hours to get to Cluj / Romania, 5 hours to arrive in Salzburg / Austria).
In Budapest people speak English, but in the rest of Hungary only local language and maybe German (hungarian is very close to finnish - Hungarians have a common origin with Finnish people).
Food is great (goulash - one of my favourites) and the girls...hmm....

Go and see on some week-end!

[DieScum]

"Salary are not that high, unfortunately."

Locals salaries are immaterial. Or rather a low local cost of living is good for me. I am paid in the UK, work from home. The only things I need to do my job are good, reasonably priced flights to the major European cities.

I'll look in to Vilnius. That never even crossed my mind.

[snaw]

I don't speak Spanish but would love to learn so Madrid sounds interesting. Barcelona seems to be the more obvious spot though, maybe?

Both wicked but very different cities, especially if you wanna learn the lingo - think catalan in Barca! Madrid IMO is a lot more laid back, Barca is more like a northern European city than most other Spanish cities in terms of the people, more 'businessey'. Madrid is cool (Love how all the locals only get going in the wee hours) but the weather can be extreme, real crappy in winter and super hot in summer (Part of the reason the locals spend all night outside, only time you can move around). I like how Barca is a wee bit closer to the rest of the European action, but probably slightly prefer the Madrid people.

If it's a toss up then go check em both out, you won't be disappointed either way. In terms of work though you may struggle, most jobs are through introductions and they expect good Spanish normally and they pay pretty crap in Spain. I've got friends in both cities (Ex-pats) and they're getting by teaching english or doing some import/export, depite being there around 3-4 years now and both them are IT (Project manager and a sysadmin).

Scratch that last bit if you can work form home. That's the single hardest thing for ex-pats to break through in Spain, very different business culture to ours.

[DieScum]

"Salary are not that high, unfortunately."

Locals salaries are immaterial. Or rather a low local cost of living is good for me. I am paid in the UK, work from home. The only things I need to do my job are good, reasonably priced flights to the major European cities.

I'll look in to Vilnius. That never even crossed my mind.

[DimPrawn]

You should move to jeopardy.

I keep hearing on the news that there are 1000's of jobs now in jeopardy.

[Francko]

Anyone ever lived in Eastern Europe? Recently? Any good spots there?

Vilnius is very cool. Rather cold in the winter though. If you can speak russian you are fine. Salary are not that high, unfortunately.