A lower cost of living. Affordable health care. Enhanced quality of life. Better bread.
By now, many Americans are used to hearing a variety of reasons why life across the Atlantic has tempted more than a few fellow citizens to uproot and settle down anew in places such as Portugal, France and Italy.
But for some who’ve made living overseas permanent, less obvious facets of what can make life in Europe so appealing often come in the form of an absence of some of the smaller worries — or “microstressors” — they’d grown accustomed to back in the United States.
Think: a constant temptation to buy things you don’t really need, feeling like you have to helicopter-parent just to keep your kids out of harm’s way and being asked to leave a tip at every turn.
We spoke with Americans living overseas for years about some of the smaller ways life in Europe has cut down on their cumulative stress.
Safety nets in many forms
Josh Yudice, 35, left California in 2013 to pursue his master’s degree in neurocognitive psychology in Munich, Germany, and has called the country home ever since.
He said living in Germany has come with a reduction of certain microstressors, which he refers to as “hidden culprits that really ratchet up one’s overall stress level that are overlooked or not stated.”
“They’re things that really exacerbate a difficult situation by making people feel quite overwhelmed – even though, taken individually, they’re not particularly stressful,” he said.
Universal health care on offer in many European countries, including Germany, helps reduce his overall stress level, he said. But in Germany there’s another safety net that helps protect people from “little things” that might go awry.
It’s personal liability insurance called Haftpflichtversicherung.
“Most people here have it, and it’s really affordable and covers situations like if your child spills coffee on a stranger’s laptop,” he said.
“Of course, liability insurance exists in the US, but I feel like the prevalence of it here in Germany is a lot higher and the cost is a lot less. And that really enables me to go through life not constantly worrying about those little things that might happen.”
And while Germany might be known for its many layers of rules and regulations (after all, this is a country that requires anyone who wishes to get a driver’s license to also complete a first-aid course), Yudice said it can provide some peace of mind that he appreciates.
Whereas in the United States it can be hard to know how much practical experience someone has in their vocation since many careers take varied paths, Germany sets a “really high bar for professionals” across the board, he said.
Many people in occupations including kindergarten teachers, carpenters and hairdressers complete an apprenticeship, or Ausbildung. It’s a dual-training system that combines classroom learning with hands-on experience that can take years. For example, the Ausbildung for hairdressers typically takes three years to complete.
“If I need help from a certain professional, knowing they’re so highly trained gives me a feeling that by default I can trust the work they’re going to do,” he said. “That sounds like a small thing, but if you’re needing to repair your house and you don’t want someone to mess it up that’s a nice thing to know.”
A more soothing holiday season
Kate McCulley, who writes the travel blog Adventurous Kate, is originally from Boston and has been living in Prague since 2020.
She recently became a permanent resident of the Czech Republic and said that since settling in Europe, she has also become less of a Grinch.
“My whole adult life, I’ve never been a huge Christmas person. I find Christmas hugely stressful a lot of the time because of having to get gifts for people and the way all the stores in America bombard you with ‘Buy stuff! Buy stuff! Buy stuff!’ ” McCulley, 40, said.
When she moved to Europe, she really came to understand and appreciate European-style Christmas, calling the lack of retail stress “soothing.”
“You go to Christmas markets, you go out with your friends at night and eat sausages and drink glühwein and eat gingerbread. And there’s zero pressure to buy anything even though there’s plenty of stuff for sale,” she said. “I love that Christmas here is about enjoying the good cheer — not buying everything in sight.”
“In general here, there’s not so much temptation to buy crazy, random, really niche things that we don’t really need, it shuts off the noise when you’re not tempted to buy that kind of stuff,” McCulley said.
Kelly Williams, 44, who moved from Florida to the Costa Blanca region of Spain with her mother, daughter and husband in 2022, agrees.
“When I go to the grocery store here, I don’t have 500 options for everything staring back at me,” she said.
“It’s a completely different thing when you’re standing in a grocery store and have two options of brands for ketchup or milk — it’s not 10 different brands to choose from, spending an hour reading labels and a whole laundry list of chemicals you can’t even pronounce. You don’t run across that here,” she said.
Williams also appreciates the less-commercialized take on not only Christmas but other holiday celebrations in Spain.
“The holidays in general are not driven by consumerism. They are celebrated for what they are and what they mean,” she said, adding that it lessens overall stress.
A sense of security without a huge police presence
Brooke Black, 43, has lived in Denmark with her husband and two young daughters since 2020. She said living there made her realize the absence of something she hadn’t even registered as a microstressor when she lived back in California.
“The lack of a police force the way it is in the US is kind of nice. It makes it feel calm,” she said.
“When I was living in Jutland, I saw a police car maybe two times in three years, and I drove everywhere in the country,” she said.
But it doesn’t feel like a “free for all,” she said.
“People are just kind of responsible for themselves,” she said, adding that just knowing there are speed cameras across the country automatically makes her more aware of not speeding.
And while she’s noticed more of a police presence since moving to Copenhagen, Black said it’s nothing compared with what she felt when living in the United States.
Certain parenting microstressors she remembers from US life are also noticeably absent for her now in Copenhagen, thanks to society’s general acceptance of “free-range parenting,” she said.
“I can let my kids wander to the other side of the park, and if I can see them from a distance I’m OK with it,” Black said. “I’m much more on top of them in busier places, especially back in Los Angeles and the US.”
Greater sense of trust
Black feels more of a sense of trust overall in Danish society, too.
“I’ve seen people on trains get up and leave everything there to go to the bathroom, and that’s pretty shocking to me, there’s just so much trust in society,” she said.
The microstressor of tipping culture in the United States is another thing Black has enjoyed parting ways with since moving to Denmark.
“While there’s no minimum wage set (in Denmark), there’s an agreement with the unions and people are paid well. So there’s no expectation to tip,” she said.
“I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is when I go to a coffee place and they give me the machine to pay and cross out the tip before even giving it to me,” Black said.
“I’m glad that people get paid well. And I don’t have to think about it and have this awkward moment with tipping.”
Dialed-down dating culture
Before moving to Italy 15 years ago, dual citizen Tina Ferrari went on her fair share of dates back in the United States and in her hometown, Seattle.
“Something that I didn’t even realize was a bit of a stressor, until I lived here, was just the culture of dating and relationships in the US versus in Italy and Europe in general,” said Ferrari, 47, who lives in Bologna and is currently in a relationship.
In the United States, she said, she always felt like there was a set of rules to be followed.
“Like you must call or must not call after so many days, and you must have the talk about the relationship at this particular point, and it’s goal-oriented. And you have to have a proposal by this point in the relationship. And you never say this, and you must always say that …” she said.
Ferrari said when she moved to Italy and was ready to start dating, she had to unlearn such behaviors.
“I realized that it just doesn’t work like that. Things just develop naturally and have their own time. They could be faster, they could be slower,” she said.
“There’s not really the same schedule and milestones you must accomplish within a certain time frame in relationships.”
Bidding adieu to car culture
Having to drive everywhere wasn’t something Gaby Marine realized was stressing her out as much as it was until she moved to the village of Cambridgeshire in England with her family in 2018.
“We walk, we cycle everywhere, we are a one-car family, which is something you absolutely can’t do in Tampa and in Florida, where I’m from,” she said. “There are buses and trams. I really love that we’re not as dependent on having to drive everywhere.”
She said she also finds not having to see billboards, strip malls and other suburban American trappings she remembers from life back in Tampa on a daily basis soothing in a way she didn’t anticipate, too.
Sera Goto, a dual US and Japanese citizen who moved from California to France, similarly enjoys a less car-dependent life in Bordeaux.
“I have a car, but I never use it to go to the city center. I just hop on the tram. It’s really nice not having to worry about car-related things like parking and traffic,” she said.
Keep in mind, of course, that Europe is not a magical, stress-free continent. France and every other county has its share of stresses large and small.
“Francophile dreamers need to remember that France is a highly developed country with its share of all of the pressure of daily and professional life,” said freelance writer Betty Carlson, 65, who moved to France in 1990 from Olympia, Washington.
Of course microstressors such as long commutes, too much email and disagreements with neighbors — to name just a few — all exist in France, too, she said.
“I’ve now been living in France for 35 years and have dealt with way more stress in France than in the US, but I think that that is just because my life has unfolded in France,” she said.
And some of the aspects of French life that may be considered relaxing can actually feed into stress, Carlson said.
“It’s great to have an hour and a half off at lunch, or even two hours, but this break also makes for a longer work day,” she said.
And those multicourse dinner parties for which the French are famous?
“Preparing them, with the hours of planning, shopping and cooking involved, was often a microstressor for me — as well as watching the clock turn as guests stayed on until one or two in the morning,” said Carlson.
Far less election-season bombardment
While politics might feel like a serious macrostressor these days, Arturo Blohm has found election season in Germany to be less all-consuming.
Blohm, 43, is from Hudson, Ohio, but has lived in Hamburg since 2007.
“The election period (in Germany) is six weeks, so there’s no being bombarded with political advertisements for years on end. The pollercoaster isn’t much of a thing here, the whole get-out-the-vote and voter-suppression games don’t exist,” he said.
Every time he’s back home in Ohio, particularly around election time, Blohm said he feels “bombarded.”
“I have the contrast of getting on the plane in the sane world and getting off into just craziness,” he said about the contrast.
But there’s always a flip side when it comes to the little things in life that add up in the pros and cons columns.
One of the day-to-day things Blohm said he misses about life in the United States might count as a microstressor for more reserved Germans.
“When you’re at a cash register and have those little meaningless conversations in the States, they may be superficial. But at the same time, when you don’t have them, they’re missing,” he said.
“It is that friendliness and constant conversation that brings everyone together back home.”
Florida-based travel writer Terry Ward lives in Tampa and is working on her Italian citizenship through jus sanguinis.