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> She thinks we'll finally have some sunshine, lots of affordable fresh food, perhaps live in a house with garden, beautiful nature close enough to actually go camping for the weekends, and friendly and approachable people. That sounds kind of like Italy. Maybe not as much sunshine as California here up north, but it's certainly better than the UK or Belgium from that point of view. Of course, the economy is in the tank, but maybe you can work remotely or something. Going to the US is not easy: you'll have to find a company willing to hire you. That said, if it's what you want, don't let the naysayers get in your way - go on a vacation there, travel around some, meet people, see what day to day life is like, and then go for it! It's not perfect, but there's a lot of good stuff there - much more than some of the haters here give it credit for. Some people work crazy hours, many people don't. As someone who is likely to have a good job, you'll have decent health care, even if the system is a bit screwy. Edit: a few other places to check out might be: * Colorado (Boulder, Denver, Ft. Collins). Snowy, but still quite a bit of sun. If I ever went back to the US, this is high on my list of places to check out. * Austin, Texas. I don't know much about it, but it's supposed to be a nice place, and definitely sunny/hot. * Bend or Ashland in Oregon. Not as sunny as California, and cold in the winters. Not as many jobs either, but nice smallish towns. |
For work, Foco has offices for Hewlett Packard, Intel, AMD, Avago, National Semiconductor, LSI, and Wolf Robotics. If the start-up scene is more your taste, Fort Collins-Loveland was rated 2nd in the "Top 10 Metro Areas for High-Tech Startup Density" in the United States (with Boulder at #1) in 2013 [1], and is also home to a start-up incubator called Rocky Mountain Innosphere [2].
There are miles of bike trails [3] all over the city and many places to hike nearby as well [4]. Needless to say lots of people are out and about being physically active around here and biking is often the preferred mode of transportion.
Other than that I just personally enjoy the atmosphere out here. Since we have a university in town there are tons of little hole-in-the-wall coffee shops open 24/7 (or close to it) and lots of specialty food in the form of restaurants, food trucks, food carts, ect. Old Town area is the main social scene and is always bustling whether people are out getting a bite to eat, walking around, or there are often various festivals taking place. Micro-brew Beer is also a huge part of the culture around here (at least in my circles), as fort collins is home to New Belgium, Odell, and many other micro-breweries and holds a huge beer festival called New West Fest every year. In all, it's a quirky little city that I quite enjoy.
Disclaimer: I've lived in the Loveland/Ft. Collins area for 6 years now and just finished my CS degree at Colorado State University.
[0] - http://www.fcgov.com/visitor/fcfacts.php
[1] - http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2013/08/young-hightech-firm...
[2] - http://www.innosphere.org/
[3] - http://www.fcgov.com/bicycling/pdf/bike-map-front.pdf
[4] - http://alltrails.com/us/colorado/fort-collins?ref=header
edit: formatting