Whats living in Italy / Canada like? Prices and jobs etc.

[Saint Angelo]

Just checking things out, I hope our local Italians can provide me with some specific, accurate numbers.

Background: 26, Polish, living in Ireland atm which is 100% involuntary (very long story) but its fucking with me so bad I have let myself go horribly.

Been there for a year now, and while my general goal is to come back home asap (which looks like xmas of 2020 by now), I havent a clue as to what future holds. Current situation in Poland doesn't indicate a promising future. While living gets better, and honestly I didn't mind a simple, modest lifestyle before moving out (running away more like), current catholic-communist government's plans seem to point towards some weird social welfare utopia -> its not the worst, but it's not sustainable either. As much as I love my homeland, its future looks very scary. I might be staying abroad a bit longer than predicted.

I loathe Ireland with passion, and for the most part it's not even its fault. I am looking into some other options. One possibility might be acquiring a 2-years long visa to Canada, while complicated, I might be able to get it. Biggest problem by far would be the weather. In Ireland now, while 20C and sunny is considered a heat wave, for me its like late winter, I miss extremely hot Polish summers and literally melting down while outside. I can't stand this eternal darkness of North. On the other hand, money is way better and I'd love to see New World, maybe even move to Quebec and learn French again (I used to know quite a bit in highschool), so it's not that bad.

Then there's Europe. I was, for short periods, learning German and later Dutch while in Ireland, hoping to move to either. Neither worked out for me, not to mention I work with plenty of Poles who lived in both and said they might be even worse in some matters (refugees, work culture, etc). I don't like Germanic languages too much either so, needless to say, I got bored very quick

Yesterday I was in Polish bookstore and randomly there was a special issue of one sports magazine, 140 pages about our own Milan's killer El PIstolero. I'm actually playing MIlan in Master League at the moment. I always liked Italian football culture. Haven't watched football for years, but I still consider getting into Serie A for real. And the weather there is godly. What's not to love?

It's complicated. I have no education whatsoever (heh), so only simple jobs are an option. I'm a warehouse fodder, albeit a very good one It's not a problem whatsoever to land a job like this in Ireland, go to any given recruitment agency and you're more than welcome to start the next day. That's what happened with every warehouse job I've had here so far. And that 10,50/11 euro per hour is more than enough to rent a room and save monies. From what I gather its very similar in Canada, some agencies are willing to send you into the job asap.

I know Italy is in far worse situation. Even if North is much better off, and I'd totally go for a city like Genoa or Parma, there might not be enough warehouse jobs available as easily as in Ireland. Learning Italian will be mandatory, I intend to start today, doing it mostly for myself since I realize there's a very slim chance I'll be able to move there. I had a look at some price comparisons: prices are similar, purchasing power is noticeably lower in Italy, but the rent, the goddamn rent, is so much cheaper apparently. I can't compare, I haven't seen any room/house rental ads. I have no clue how much can you make per hour in a warehouse.

And that's where you guys come in, you will definitely have a better idea. What would the average costs and income be? Are there any cities better than the others? Are there recruitment agencies even? Do you get paid weekly or monthly? Even if doable, it would take a good few months before making a move, it's mostly just wet dreams and fantasies of mine. But maybe you can help, maybe you can shed some light on all of this for me.

Thank you!!!

 

[gabe.paul.logan]

@incas36

 

[*aLe]

And that 10,50/11 euro per hour is more than enough to rent a room and save monies.

I don't think you'd be making that much (talking about net income here?) in Italy working in a warehouse (unless you get promoted and start coordinating other people or unless you work on shifts), but it might aswell be my perception.
Anyway, companies like Adecco are posting job offers like the ones you're after on a daily basis so I also think that if you're interested you could make up your mind pretty easily about availability and salary.

Pay day comes once a month unfortunately and it's like that everywhere here (I wish I could get . Some are paid on the 10th, some on the 15th, some on the 27th of each month.

I don't know how Genoa is in terms of warehouses, but considering that there's the harbour I'd expect it to have many 3rd party warehouses/shipping facilities.
I think Emilia-Romagna is not a bad place at all for that: along the A1 highway you can see several warehouses (both in-house and third party).
For example, not far from Parma there's Piacenza where you can find Amazon and IKEA's main Italian hubs, but not only.

PS: about recruitment agencies, I've only experienced Adecco and they're pretty trustworthy. I can't tell anything about the other ones.

 

[Chuny]

I always wanted to live in England.
I guess that idea should now be vanished with the Brexit.

But I did live in Italy for two years and I didn't like it (Sorry guys).

 

[Saint Angelo]

At the moment it's 10,50E per hour before tax. So weekly, depending on overtime, I can get anywhere between 360 to 450 euro.

Rent is 270€ bi-weekly, fortnightly? With bills lets say 600€ a month, for a room.

@*aLe whats the most popular website for room/house renting in Italy? I would check various locations, as long as its wealthy and sunny

Thanks for the ideas!

@Chuny how come, what was wrong? As of British Isles, weather alone gave me a depression. I almost broke down crying after 2-3 sunny days in a row this March. But Im very prone to lack of heat and sun. I cant live without it.

Thanks!!

 

[*aLe]

@Chuny how come, what was wrong?

Fog. And mosquitos. At least at the North where I live (approx. 1 hour from Piacenza here, where @Chuny used to live).

Rent is 270€ bi-weekly, fortnightly? With bills lets say 600€ a month, for a room.

Well, depending on the place you live in, for 600€ a month you could afford an entire house (although not very big).
To make a comparison, I've bought the house we're currently living in and the mortgage is a little less than 400€ per month.

I don't know a site where you could check for rents apart from airbnb (but I'm not sure it is what you need).
Real estate agencies like Studio Casa (the biggest one I could think of "off the top of my head") should also have houses for rent. You could also check Tecnocasa or Re/Max just in case.

 

[Saint Angelo]

Yeah I can see fully furnished flats in Genoa for 500 euro, and the small ones (we have similar in Poland) for 400 euro.
You literally wouldn't be able to rent anything in Dublin for 400 euro atm. Maybe a shed

I was looking around the Internets at work and I cannot find it, goddamit, but I found a very handy table of average expenses in total, and for single adult it was in 700-850E range. Is it possible? I am calculating in my head rn...
-400E of rent
-50E of bills (water, gas, electricity)
-50E of medias (phone and internets)
-300E for food (thats more or less what I spend here)

Adds up to more or less 800+ euro? Does that make any sense?

Now onto actual income. I tried looking at warehouse jobs on Italian indeed but they never display potential earnings anywhere. But I found out that you get 7-8 euro per hour on average? Let's go with optimistic option and assume 8 euro per hour, 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month.

That's 1280 euro, according to online calculators its 900 euro after tax...oh my God is this real? I feel so sorry for you!!! It would probably be as bad in Ireland but there's tax credits system here so, in my case, every week 64 euro is free of tax. What a good system that is. I didn't even think about it, guess I imagined they have tax credits everywhere in Europe.

To sum up this would mean that, if I moved to Italy, I could be alive...and that's about it Can you confirm my suspicions?

Oh well, a man can dream...we'll see what future holds. I can still try and get that Canadian visa or, idk, just rot away in the Emerald Isle lol Thanks nevertheless!

 

[Chuny]

@Chuny how come, what was wrong? As of British Isles, weather alone gave me a depression. I almost broke down crying after 2-3 sunny days in a row this March. But Im very prone to lack of heat and sun. I cant live without it.

Oh, nevermind mate. I wouldn't want to hurt any of the nice italian people we have here, like Ale himself.
Let's just say that it felt good to be back home after those 2 years.

 

[darui]

Italy has beautiful nature and cities

 

[Saint Angelo]

Italy has beautiful nature and cities

Yes, but 7€/hour in a warehouse is just not enough!

I looked around Europe and did some research, the most viable option seems to be Denmark. So I started learning Danish last week instead, hopefully 2-3 months from now on I will be able to abandon this cursed island!

 

[*aLe]

I was looking around the Internets at work and I cannot find it, goddamit, but I found a very handy table of average expenses in total, and for single adult it was in 700-850E range. Is it possible? I am calculating in my head rn...
-400E of rent
-50E of bills (water, gas, electricity)
-50E of medias (phone and internets)
-300E for food (thats more or less what I spend here)

I'd say you could spend less than 300€ a month for food (my wife and I spend around 300€/month for food and other things needed at home, of course we go out for dinner from time to time but it is counted as "extra"). Let's say you'll end up spending moer or less 200€ per month.
Probably you'd end up spending a little more than 50€ per month in bills though, even if not much.
50€ per month for Internet and a phone sounds about right, but maybe you'll be able to stay in the 30-40€ range though.
And the rent... Well, it sounds pretty accurate too.

So you see that, yeah, it's more or less 700€ per month. To this you must add transportation (public transport? A little car?), that's a thing I didn't see in your calculations.

About the 7-8€ per hour average, I'm not that sure about wages in warehouses but I think that yeah, you should be able to start from... 1K a month, after tax?
Consider that when I started (aged 22) I was in the 400€/month range for a part-time job (80 hours a month) and it was considered low but acceptable for a university student with no experience at all.

To sum it all up... Yes, you could easily survive with a warehouse job and maybe also put some money aside if you spend carefully, but unless you start moving up the ranks I doubt you'd be able to put big sums aside here in Italy.

 

[Saint Angelo]

About the 7-8€ per hour average, I'm not that sure about wages in warehouses but I think that yeah, you should be able to start from... 1K a month, after tax?

I did the tax calc thing, looks more like 800-900 euro range. Sadly

There is more to this. I did some research and asked questions. Many Polish workers in Italy, well there aren't many but still, often complained that they are not exactly equal to their Italian counterparts. It doesn't sound as bad as Netherlands (horror stories, I'm telling you, so glad I stopped learning Dutch earlier this year ), and honestly sunny weather would make up for a lot, but here's a thing - it's not about survival, I want to save money, I need to save money, plenty of dolla, and then come back home where I feel the best.

I love Poland. My international adventure(s) are 100% involuntary. Coming back is a rough and complex matter.

In Denmark, expenses would be a bit higher - my estimate is 1000 euro while renting a flat, around 700 when renting a room, but I could earn around 1600-1800 euro after tax, and save a lot more. Similar to Ireland, except here a shitty room where a mould pops out of fucking nowhere all the time (like today morning for me) and things break when its too windy, and you can have up to five people living in the other rooms all the damn time (fuck!!!) costs as much as a small, cozy flat in an average Danish building, this is all I am wishing for at the moment. Give me my own place, I will sort my life out momentarily.

I wish Italia could work out. I'm a heat addict, and my solar power deprivation depression is kicking in again. If it wasn't for PES I would be dead and bodied But it's way too risky. And I need money, sadly. I will keep this info in mind however, maybe one day?

Thanks!

 

[*aLe]

I wish Italia could work out. I'm a heat addict

Oh well, forget Piacenza then. Most of the northern part of italy has to deal with fog in the autumn, it's not that good trust me.
@Chuny can tell something more specific about Piacenza as I've seen fog there but I've been there just for work so I haven't had the chance to see the city for several days in a row.

I live and work 1 hr away from there more or less and boy, fog DOES exist here.

 

[Saint Angelo]

Hello it's me again, the unfortunate Polski stuck on the shite Emerald Isle. Let me thank everyone involve in the first edition of this thread where we were debating how viable a move to Italy is. Long story short, in my situation, it's not

This thread was actually supposed to be...Denmark Edition at first, as I continued my research throughout Europe. Netherlands and Denmark stood out because of overall decent level of English speakers and okay housing costs, although at this point literally anywhere in Europe with exception of London, Paris or Moscow would be better.

Few of my co-workers and friends were in Netherlands and for the most part the opinions were negative. I had a look at Denmark then and it seemed like a dream at first. I tried to ask questions among Danish people online but they didn't offer me a lot of insight. Once I was literally told they simply won't tell me. I did some Danish on duolingo for a week and tried some basic google searching in Danish. In short, there are warehouse jobs, but oftentimes they offer 2 to 5 shifts a week, and I'm not looking for a part-time job so welp! Also, admittedly it's easy to kill my enthusiasm, and since I couldn't dig out enough info from Danes my motivation just died. There is sizable Polish immigration to Denmark but it's mostly via Polish recruitment agencies and they are downright malevolent so let's not talk about them.

Few months ago I popped into that one tourist bureau in Dublin City, they are offering some holidays but also working visa to Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The first two are expensive, short, and too far away - not to mention I absolutely hate spiders, let alone ones with a healthbar above their head but Canada looked decent from the start.

I regret not signing up back then, I would be probably packing my bags right about now and fucking off to a better place!

I went in yesterday again and got all the details. As a Polski I'm eligible for 12 months visa indeed. No requirements other than a passport, police certs from Poland and Ireland , around 1400 euro for the bureau to cover visa, travel and insurance, and 1700 euro which is 2500 canuck dollars required to enter the country.

Any prospect of leaving this hellish island is bound to make me wet and horny and I started my research. Rooms are going for as low as 400-500CAD and with a bit of luck I can snatch a studio for 600-700CAD. My only job option is basically a warehouse, any warehouse really, average wage seems to be 15CAD, 13 at lowest, and I've seen as much as 18CAD per hour on indeed.ca. After tax calcs this seems to amount to anywhere between 1600-2000CAD a month. So basically similar to Ireland (if not slightly better), except for 700CAD I get to live on my own, and for almost 700 euro I get the smallest room in a shit ass damp house of shit with four other people two of which are from Portugal and occupy the kitchen from 7pm onwards it's not funny!

Average cost comparison can be found below and it says more than I could ever do. If it wasn't for rent, Ireland would've been great financially. As it stands it's not, and it might get even worse:

My goal will be the city of Montreal. I was looking for a reason to re-learn French again, I had it in school for six years and I remember a fuckton, but since I always use English (when Polish isn't enough) I never had any need for French. I could really sort it out and get my frenchie game going in few weeks, I promise! I really don't like English. Je voudrais travailler a Montreal idk it sounds right?? In a few days I'll know all that stuff again I think

Visa process is pretty straightforward but also flexible. If I get it - which is like 90% chance since its a lottery, I was told generally people who sign up get them - once all the papers are sorted and I have at least 2500CAD I can fuck off whenever I wish to. Gives me enough time to re-learn French and save monies. Extreme cases are getting a visa in December (bit too early) and May (wonder if I can keep myself from alcohol until then ) but the most likely scenario is January-February, which is perfect. January is very slow in warehousing, at least in Europe, and I could use a week or two to get things started. Go to interviews wherever I want, get all the licenses done again (forklift, PPT, manual handling if they even have it) and maybe even more. A week or two to settle in would be ideal. February is when warehouses are picking up the pace again and more jobs should pop up. I wouldn't mind going in March even, it's just a matter of keeping up composure and saving cash and not dancing with the bottle again. Funny and ridiculous as it sounds, stay in Ireland took a gigantic toll of my mental health, and in many cases it's not even Ireland's fault tbh.

Whining aside, the future looks somewhat bright again. I know not many canucks are playing PES, but if you are one, or if you know one, feel free to send him my way! I need intel, I need stuff like:

*most popular websites for renting rooms/studios
*most popular jobs websites I only looked at indeed for now
*anyone ever dealt with recruitment agencies? It's very straightforward in IE, I got my first job here like an hour after coming to Dublin City.
*any dos/donts in Quebec/Montreal in general? I imagine speaking English means being shot on sight and I don't mind really I would rather speak French as well!
*best bank to get account going, best phone provider?
*is public transport good? kinda terrible here tbh

*anything you have really. Literally anything. Any tips, any advice, any links, any anythings. I can search google yes and I do but you know yourself way better than uncle google, the best in fact. All and any intel will be accepted. If I'll end up in Montreal and you're there too I will offer alcoholic rewards in large quantities

Thank you, thank you for your time really and I do hope this will work out.

 

[mattmid]

I lived in Canada for five years. Fantastic place, absolutely loved it. Only thing I missed was family and football. Would probably still be there if I hadn't split up with my girlfriend (who was Canadian) I lived on the East coast but I spent about a week in Montreal on holiday. I don't speak French and got on fine there as they all seemed to speak both languages for the most part, but if you know French anyway I'm sure it'll be no problem for you. There's a metro that seemed great, so public transport was fine. If you need a football fix then Montreal are in the MLS of course so you'll get that. I felt the City had a more European feel to it, rather than the other bigger cities in Canada (Toronto etc) that feel a little bit more American.

Winter is frigging cold (-10 to -40), summer is hot (25-35). You get used to the cold though and unless there's a strong wind (wind chill is horrendous) then as long as you are dressed for it then it honestly doesn't feel that cold. Don't buy clothes for the winter here though, get them there. What I liked also, being English, was there generally wasn't that much rain, in the winter it was snow and summer's were generally dry and hot.

I can't speak for Montreal as I only spent a week there, but for that week and the entire time elsewhere I found the people really friendly and it reminded me of what England used to be like from my childhood.

I found it relatively cheap there, although the pound was much stronger when I first went there and I did notice it then seemed not so cheap. Not sure what rents are like in Quebec, where I was the province charged owners tax for having more than one property which as most had that what with living in one and renting the other they passed that tax on into the rent, meaning it was fairly high. But again at the time the pound was about 1.90 to 1 CD so it still seemed pretty cheap to me. I would imagine you could find a one bedroom apartment for about $500-600 at a guess but don't quote me on that!

The scenery in general in Canada is breathtaking. Great places to go and see like the Rockies and Cape Breton. Although bear in mind everywhere is a long way away. You'll notice if you ask how far it is to somewhere they'll tell you in time not distance

Useful bit of advice given to me when in the Rockies regarding how to spot what sort of bear is chasing you. If you go up a tree when being chased then if it follows you up there it's a black bear, if it shakes you out of the tree then it's a grizzly.

A good website is kijiji (dot ca I think but might be .com) kind of like a gumtree site. People listed all sorts of stuff for sale on there including apartments so if nothing else you could get an idea of rents.

Ah and one thing I just thought of. My girlfriend lived in Montreal for a short while before I met her and I remember her telling me that when you left an apartment there you had to find a new tenant yourself. Not sure if that is still a thing though.

 

[Saint Angelo]

Whoever merged it idk if it was necessary but hey more power to you!!

@mattmid whats the story man arrruuuite you okay?

irish aside, thanks for the big fat stack of intels man. Had a pop at kijiji and ye it seems exactly like OLX in Poland, all-in-one giant ads website, perfect. Wish they had an app though. Housing prices are incredibly decent btw and I am loving it.

Hopefully no bears in Montreal either way I'd just square up with the bastard and probably just die

Kinda sorry to hear that woman story, I wonder since England is so close to Ireland though, regardless, why would you ever go back? Those islands are cursed man, cursed!

Real talk though it's all decent intel thanks for being there for me pardner. I paid in the deposit today and there are Canadians working in that bureau so I can ask them anything I want I was told. If everything goes well I should be in Montreal in March 2020, maybe even late February. Could be April-May though.

I seriously regret not doing that earlier, entire 2019 is wasted for me. Oh well, at least PES is okay