Twenty years ago, I would have said “move to Portland, Oregon.” Very friendly to vegans, cycling, recycling, and liberal politics. Sadly, the city has gone to hell in a handbasket, is too expensive to live in, has a large drug problem, and tons of homeless people.
I miss the Portland that I used to live in and I hate going back to visit my friends there because it makes me sad.
Lived in the UK, now France. Same thing with the roads.
Many of these roads had things built around them long before cars. Tearing occupied down buildings just to widen roads is problematic.
I’ve seen that a lot when I lived in both the UK and the Netherlands (though more commonly in the latter).
American, currently living in France.
My (French) wife and her mother would often argue. I’d step in and tell them to calm down and they would look at me like I had spontaneously grown a second head or something. They were confused that I thought they were arguing.
The French often passionately discuss topics. They are direct, they are forceful, they work to get their point across. To the US eye, it looks a hell of a lot like an argument. To the French, it’s often how the communicate about important things. I’ve heard other Americans (and Brits) say the same thing.
In fact, it’s the reason I almost didn’t marry this wonderful woman. The first time we met, in London, I thought it was going terribly because she was really, really interesting (and beautiful), but she argued against everything I said and I was pretty sure she didn’t like me.
Turns out she wasn’t arguing with me. She was having a great evening. We’ve been married 13 years, but this still catches me off guard.
I was 39, single, no pets, mortgage, or anything to tie me down. Was living in Oregon and got two job offers in the UK. After a bunch of paperwork, I move to Nottingham in 2006. Been living in Europe ever since (currently the south of France near the Italian border).
As for the job offers, I have a deep specialty in building and fixing large-scale database-driven software products written in Perl. It’s getting harder to find people with my skills and I’ve authored a couple of books on the topic, so it made it easy to get offers.
This may not help, but I think of this differently. You enter a relationship because you’re on the same path. Breaking up is hard, but it’s because you’re now on different paths. When that happens, ending a relationship is a success, not a failure. It’s hard at the time, but I find that keeping that positive outlook helps.