I'm thinking... Budapest!

Hi!

Good thinking :-)
If you like it, you'll have fun making it work no matter what.


Does your husband have Hungarian citizenship?
If so, I think everything should be fairly simple, his eligibility to all kinds of state services should either automatically cover you, or can be extended for a nominal fee (e.g. ~10EUR/month for health coverage)

In healthcare you either bribe your way to acceptable treatment in the "free" (covered by the state run insurance) hospitals, or pay full price for private care.

Do you intend to bring up the kids to speak Hungarian? That would simplify their schooling a lot, and save you tons of money.

Some state run schools are great, some are worse, people who care fake their place of residence to fall within the zone of good schools. There are private schools as well, your only option for German or English as the first language.

Wages are an order of magnitude below german wages. Taxes and prices are on a similar level or higher. (except for real estate, that's still cheap here, but not proportionate to wages.)

Is that 3 kids or 2 BTW? :-)

I'm biased, being a villager myself, but I'd recommend you to explore the options of living in a smaller town near Budapest, or at least the suburb-districts if you can afford.
This way your husband can commute to work in Budapest, while you and the kids are safe and healthy in a nice and welcoming community.
My island village of Szigetmonostor is an inconvenient commute but paradise on Earth for my wife and kids.
City living on the other hand is great while you party all night and enjoy being close to everything. Manageable with kids as well, a lot of people do it, I couldn't.

There's of course plenty of middle ground.

Pilisvorosvar, Pilisszentivan and other places nearby have significant ties to their german heritage, the term being "svab" village or town.

Mplk05 wrote:

.... i do have two children 3 and 1 1/2. how are the schools? insurance? hospitals? would it be worth the move? is there really as many americans or english speakers there? ....

I live in Budakeszi with my Hungarian wife and kids (5 and 1 year old). Budakeszi is also a German village, not very far from Budapest - about 15 minutes by car. As others say, there are quite a few villages with German origins around Hungary. Like most German villages, there are state funded German speaking kindergartens but kindergartens are not compulsory until age 5. However, I think there's very few people actually speaking German on a day to day basis in their interactions with the State. Nearly everyone speaks Hungarian even if they might be ethnic Germans. Most educated people speak some level of  English  (ranging from excellent to basic) and some speak very good German indeed. I have no problems with using English for things like dental care. I think if you lived in a village, not speaking Hungarian, then you'd find it difficult on a daily basis. I speak very little Hungarian. When interacting with the locals, I start out in English, then failing that, I try German and if that fails, I have a go in Hungarian or use sign language and just point.

thank you both! i have two children by the way. i dont care for the german language at all particularly. i just care about the english as i am American and obviously the Hungarian. my husband was born and lived in hungary until he was about 10. then fled the comunism. which is why  he's a german citizen. i'm shure he'll switch back. Germany had nothing to offer us even him being a citizen no one wanted to help and he never got a good job. speaking three languages and being fluent in all three you'd think there would be more than a fork lift operators job out there! ha! no! anywho.. thank you both so much! take care!

Mplk05 wrote:

which is why  he's a german citizen. i'm shure he'll switch back.

Careful with that, Hungary might turn out worse.

Mplk05 wrote:

Germany had nothing to offer us even him being a citizen no one wanted to help and he never got a good job. speaking three languages and being fluent in all three you'd think there would be more than a fork lift operators job out there! ha! no!

Speaking 2 foreign languages well is still considered an asset here, but he'd need to have some other skills, education or experience to find a good job here as well: With just the languages, he's competing with all the recent university graduates flooding the job market, and half of them have better boobs than he does. And they work for peanuts: Minimum wage is around 70000 HUF a month, that's around 250 EUR! The average salary is less than twice that, but let's say he finds a job for 500EUR. It about covers your rent and utilities (for now...)
If you can also find a full time job and pitch in your 500EUR (unlikely), then you can afford food, clothing, and child supervision because you are away from home all day.

Here's a breakdown of average salaries by industry:
portal.ksh.hu/pls/ksh/docs/hun/xstadat/xstadat_eves/i_qli029.html]http://portal.ksh.hu/pls/ksh/docs/hun/xstadat/xstadat_eves/i_qli029.html

(yes, there's a 800 EUR average in one field: accountants, attorneys and tax experts...)


We'd love to have you here, heck, the house next door is for sale and I'd love to have you as neighbours... But if I'm trying to imagine what's best for you, it's staying in Germany. Moving to a different bundesland can be all the difference: I loved Saarland and its blend of French and German mentality!
You might get a better job at the many US military bases and he can stay at home with the kids, whatever.

What about the US? With your citzenship the rest of the family has expedited immigration.


At least make sure he has a sound job offer before you take the plunge!

the u.s it out of the question for now its such a mess there.. i definately DONT want to be there.. there was canada but that kind of fizzled down to a naah.. Germany at this point is not an option either.. i cant speak a damn word and.. well more personal reasons..

Ok, so no German required.

To be here, in Hungary, these days, one has to have some added value, like another skill, apart from the language requirement. Most graduates being churned out will have done English and/or German at school and while not fluent, will be able to converse to a reasonable level. Without a specific profession to layer on, like engineer, electrician, IT specialist or medical skills, there's not a lot going on here.  Just speaking another language is not enough. Apart from that, Szocske is right. Salaries are pretty dismal in HU, taxes high and the state doesn't help much.

I've worked in a few places in Germany and Munich's one of the best. So is Koln (Cologne). Maybe just a change of scene to say, Austria might work for you, perhaps in Vienna which has a lot of international businesses. The only problem with Austria are the Austrians.  The salaries are much higher there than in Hungary and it's only a short hop to the border to get back some sanity, some Sunday shopping and (mostly) sensible thinking. 

Another choice might The Netherlands. I've lived and worked there on projects several times and it's really easy to live there while speaking English. Dutch is also very easy to learn for German speakers.

If work is difficult to find, the usual standby is to fall back to teaching English or German.

Like I said: If you like it, you'll make it work, and enjoy doing it, no matter how much it sucks.

We just wanted to help you be prepared :-)

Do you guys have a job offer yet?

If not, and you have some capital, and you think you guys could do much better than the kind of jobs you get, you might want to think about starting your own business.


What kind of university do you have in mind? The first Bachelors level degree is state-funded for Hungarian citizens (so you pay no tuition fee, but everything else) but the admission criteria for these courses is higher (limited number of people each year), and if his high-school papers are not from Hungary, things might get complicated.


I don't know much about moving within Europe, the only time I did it I could pack my one-man apartment into our car at the time and haul everything in one go :-)


We are here to help, ask away!

quick question.. is there dog grooming there? how do you think that would do? im an experienced dog groomer and always though of opeining up my own shop..

Great idea!

Yes, it's an existing market, no idea about the fierceness of competition.
The term is "kutyakozmetika", "kutya" being dog and "kozmetika" beauty saloon.
You may need to get your certification localized into the equivalent "OKJ" certification, or team up with someone with one, but that's probably just the tip of the iceberg administration-wise.
Alternatively as this is clearly a service, you should be free to incorporate anywhere in the EU (i.e. in Germany) and provide your service anywhere in the EU including Hungary.

Just make sure to set up shop in a suitably rich neighborhood: being foreign can be a great selling point for the "newly rich"!

There seems to be just one of these in Szentendre, here are her prices:
hozdide.gportal.hu/picview.php?prt=650157&gid=2632328&index=1

Seems to be running from her home:
hozdide.gportal.hu/gindex.php?pg=31603742#top


Gabor

hmm i have GREAT ideas brewing! are u on the Pest side?
Thank you for all your help by the way!

No, I'm in the middle of the Danube on an island just north of Budapest :-)
Szentendre is a town with lots of rich people just north of Budapest, on the western ("Buda") side.

There are of course more in Budapest (33 it seems from the phone book, google maps shows a hundred in the greater area), but that's a city with just below 1 million people:
google.com/search?q=budapest+kutyakozmetika
google.com/search?q=budapest+kutyakozmetika


Glad to be of service :-)