Newcomer from Greece

Hi and welcome to Expat.com Iphestos!

I hope the members of the forum will answer your questions soon
Why have you chosen Bratislava by the way?

Regards
Armand

Hi Armand. There are some things that you are not able to choose.

Hi there.
Safety: very good. I go anywhere at anytime.
Salary: the problem is the housing. Once you've solved this issue you can live here for less than other European capitals.
English: this is BY FAR, the worst country in the area. No one speaks English. Even the foreign police where all expats have to get their visas do not speak English !!!
Unemployment, sorry I can't help.

Iphestos wrote:

Hi people. I am considering to come to Bratislava. I have some questions.

How safe is the city? I have heard mixed opinions.

Which is the lowest acceptable salary in order to live on your own? (rent and all other expenses)

Does most of the citizens speak the english language? It would be a major problem in the start if we can't communicate.

If someone gets unemploeyed from previous work (i hope this ever never happen to anybody) how much is the financial help from the government per month?

Thanks in advance

Hi Iphestos,
I am Slovak, living in Bratislava. I would not say Bratislava is not a safe place - I live here 27 years and nothing ever happened to me. But it's always better to know which places are more dangerous than the others - at night. I would tell you, if you decide to come for real.
The most of citizens does speak English - however, the older the person, the higher is the probability they will not speak English. Let's face it, English made it to schools just 20 years ago ;-).
Regarding the salaries - it is very different by the industry. If you're IT, you can very well have 2500eur, however a seller in a shop earns just around 500eur. The support in unemployement is 50% of your salary for the first 6 months (however, now the government is considering some change to implement a descending mechanism - starting from 60-70% in first month, going down to around 30% in the last month...it did not make it through yet!).

Hope this helps :-).
Have a nice day!

Katarina

Hello wonderful people Thank you for posting some opinions. It's very helpful to me. I will be back with new questions. Stay tuned

Iphestos wrote:

Hi people. I am considering to come to Bratislava. I have some questions.

How safe is the city? I have heard mixed opinions.

Which is the lowest acceptable salary in order to live on your own? (rent and all other expenses)

Does most of the citizens speak the english language? It would be a major problem in the start if we can't communicate.

If someone gets unemploeyed from previous work (i hope this ever never happen to anybody) how much is the financial help from the government per month?

Thanks in advance

Hello, so here are answers.

City is very safe, compared to most US cities and also EU capitals. Problem could be if you are not white, pretty racist country Slovakia is.

Speaking about Bratislava, you can live from 600 euro NET salary, if you are renting on your own, else you would need to share, in that case you can go down to 500-400 euro, depends on are. If you share, from 500 euro you will have pretty good live.

No, most people dont speak english. Actually you would be happy to find someone clerks on major universities speak english. If you work in international company, no problem. There is big expat community, just search expatblog, erasmus, couchsurfing etc. you wont be alone.

Support from government, you need to work at least 2 years and they will support you for 1/2 year, you will get money depending on your previous salary. Usually it is not enough to survive, probably you will need to share a room and also cut on eating. If this happens, people usually use their savings.

Thanks Lucas, great post.