expenive cities

The world’s most expensive cities for expats 2016

Moving to a new country is one of the most expensive endeavours one can undertake. Enter Mercer’s 2016 Cost of Living ranking, a survey of the most expensive cities for expats.

With the UK recently voting in favour of Brexit, we at Atlas & Boots are reassessing our future. Prior to the result, we fully expected to return to France after our next big trip. Now we may have to look further afield. Whatever we decide, one useful way to choose where our future lies is to compare the cost of living in our new city compared to our old, currently London.

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12 most common expat problems

We list the 12 most common expat problems. The problems fall into three main areas: relationships, money and culture shock

Over the course of the past year, we have used our expat survey to gather advice for expats and their loved ones, most popularly 8 tips to know before you go and 6 things not to say to an expat.  

Here, we list the 12 most common expat problems based on InterNations’ broader Expat Insider survey.

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How to make friends in a new country

If you’ve just moved to a new country then it can be hard to new meet people. We offer a guide on how to make friends in a new country.

Last year, I wrote about the challenges of talking to strangers on the road or in unfamiliar social situations. I shared five ways to break the ice and endear you to your newly acquainted.

One recurring question since then has been: how do I meet people in the first place? This is especially important when you’ve just moved to a new country.

get-to-know-a-country

How do you really get to know a country?

So, how do you really get to know a country? The answer is of course largely subjective, however, there are certain factors that will always help or hinder

As Kia and I enter the last few weeks of our big trip, naturally we are wondering how well we have come to know the countries we have visited. Over the last year or so, we have spent anything from just a few hours in a country to over two months and everything in between.

Peter's father with his two friends from the 60s

Return to India part II: my father’s story

In the first of this two-part series, Peter recounted his tale of India in search of his father’s long lost friends. Five years after his initial visit, father and son return to India to reunite with those friends. Here is his father’s story.

This article was featured on National Geographic’s Traveller magazine website on 14th February 2015

Christmas Eve, 2013. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was warm on our backs. We stood on the roof veranda looking down on the dusty streets. A soft breeze was blowing which barely stirred the tangle of electricity and telephone wires that were draped between the houses in this relatively wealthy suburb of Bhilwara, Rajasthan.

Each house was painted in different pastel shades of blue, green and peach and set against an azure sky. It was quiet and the roads were almost empty.

This was indeed surprising, as this was India.

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Return to India part I: my story

Peter retraced his parents’ footsteps on a return to India to track down his father’s long-lost friends…

When I was younger my father would write out my name in Hindi Sanskrit on scraps of paper. I thought it was some magical language from a fantasyland like Narnia or Lilliput and Blefuscu.

When I was older I would sit with him and my mother in front of the TV and listen to him exclaim at Michael Palin’s latest travels through the foothills of the Himalayas or the dusty roads of Rajasthan. “We have to go back,” he would declare with gusto, turning to my mother. “The smells,” he would say. “The colours,” my mother would respond. “We have to go back…”