We always had this dream back in Canada: retire to Europe, “ideally somewhere south”. This post is about how that plan half-worked, twenty years early, and how it landed us in Bratislava instead.
How Valencia actually happened (it was never a plan) #
In 2012 we did our first ever trip to Spain (Madrid → Valencia → Barcelona), triggered by our daughter’s stay in Madrid. It was part of the student exchange where Silvia spent 3 months with a Spanish family in Madrid and we had a Spanish girl from that family with us in Ottawa. We loved the experience - it was different than Italy we knew, but intriguing. So we started to consider Spain as a possible retirement destination.
The trip from 2012 was followed by two more Spanish-course “edu-holidays” in Valencia; the city stuck: right size (vs Madrid/Barcelona), sea, food, climate, walkability, Turia city park. We stayed for 3 weeks, got a bit further with Spanish and had a great time.
Then came 2015 when the company opened a Valencia office (a whole Hybris team inherited from a shutting-down firm relocated to Thinkwrap) and suddenly we had an EU office. The 6 hour time difference opened an interesting opportunity: the late-night 2-3 AM deployment of ecommerce systems would become more pleasant 8-9 morning jobs if performed from Spain. An opportunity and a good use case for a DevOps department inside the Valencia office. Unlike most of my colleagues, in addition to a Canadian passport I also had an EU passport which allowed me to live and work in Spain without the administrative barrier of a work permit.
So in April 2016 - we moved. After ~18 years in Canada we switched climate, ruling monarch, language and lifestyle and learned to navigate the Spanish bureaucracy. It was not always easy but very rewarding and definitely worth it. Living in a walkable city without owning a single car was a huge change. I have very fond memories of our lovely apartment at Joaquín Costa with terrazas, company office at Calle Colón, long walks in Turia, tostadas con tomate and jamón serrano, incomparable taste of fresh orange juice of Valencia oranges …
Also at work - the years 2016–2019 were some of the best years of my professional life: I had a rare chance to experience the vibe, dynamic small-growing-company energy, second time around. As with many things in life - this time I was able to enjoy and experience it much deeper than the first time during the Thinknostic days.
The return nobody improvised #
A good thing about Valencia is that it is only a 2.5 hour flight from Vienna, and thanks to low cost airlines (I remember tickets for 25-30 EUR) we could visit Bratislava and Slovakia much more often than from Canada. My wife started to teach at the university again and so we established a second base in Bratislava - bought an apartment to support that, while living in Valencia - most of the time she commuted, sometimes I worked one week a month from Bratislava. We had no plans to change that arrangement.
We even managed to convince our daughter to take a break from digital nomad life around Europe (she spent time in Germany, Italy, Spain) and to check out the “old country” (actually for her it was more like a new country - she was 2 when we left Slovakia) and establish a home base in Bratislava.
And then in March 2020 Covid struck and luckily the shutdown caught all 3 of us in Bratislava. The travel stopped for several months, and the company went fully remote. The one thing pinning us to Valencia disappeared - it was absolutely the same to sit in the Bratislava apartment or the Valencia one and work remotely.
So my visit to Bratislava in March 2020, planned for 10 days, lasted 5 months and I found out that
- Bratislava of 2020 was a very different city than the one I was leaving in 1998
- it had many unique amenities one cannot find anywhere else (forest hiking trails starting in the city, coffee-bookshops culture, very agreeable climate)
- I actually loved it here
So we decided to stay. An important factor was the proximity of the closest family: my parents are in their 80s. My brother and sister live in Slovakia and we could see each other much more often than from Spain. So Covid was the trigger and mechanism/enabler, not the only cause. If it had not come, our Spanish phase would probably have lasted much longer, possibly until now - but that is the “road not taken”. We gave up our Valencia flat and settled in Old Town, living about 200 m away from the place we lived before departing for Canada in 1998. Life makes strange loops ;-)
The next years were interesting from a logistic perspective. As I was living in Slovakia, I inevitably became a tax resident of Slovakia, while being employed (and paying taxes, deductions etc.) in Spain. From a legal point of view, I became a “trabajador desplazado” - a worker living abroad who is paid from Spain.
In theory, it is perfectly normal to live in one EU country and work in another. After all, this is what the EU labor mobility is about. And it works reasonably well as long as both parties are used to working together. Thousands of people from Slovakia work in the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Germany and organizations on both ends work reasonably well together.
The situation is quite different when it comes to Slovakia and Spain (the famous “Spanish inquisition” sketch comes to mind for some strange reason, with tagline “nobody expects the Spanish bureaucracy”). The thing is that contacts and experience between Slovak social security and Seguridad Social offices are virtually non-existent. Regarding communication - on the Slovak side, nobody speaks Spanish, the only languages present are English/German/Hungarian. There are many bilingual people on the Spanish side, unfortunately they are bilingual in Spanish/Catalan, not English … In the end, it took us several months to get the paperwork done and for each renewal several more months to re-establish the coverage.
The company I worked for evolved meanwhile - the Spanish office did not grow, cost cutting took away the awesome office at Colón and eventually even the second (much less amazing) office at Alfahuir. At the time of this writing, it still has an office in Valencia, but it is a coworking space (ironically, in a street in Eixample, 2 minutes away from where we used to live). The company’s focus seems to be India.
Spanish employment ended in May 2024 and in the same month Klassify s.r.o. entered the Slovak register; my freelancing years began. The circle closes again, for the second time - I became a one-man company, same shape as the Ottawa contracting vehicle two decades earlier and very similar to what I used in Bratislava in the ’90s, before emigration.
Why Bratislava, again - or wherever you go, there you are #
I really enjoyed and liked the years we lived in Ottawa as well as in Valencia. Every city has something unique, available only there - cross-country skiing in Gatineau parc, Turia, Malé Karpaty. That is what you give up when you move. You also gain some. But there is only one country where you have cultural roots, whose history you truly experienced and understand. No amount of blending in or assimilation can replace this. Slovakia is where my parents, siblings, relatives, most of my old friends and half of my children live. One can make lots of great friends (and we did) but nobody can re-acquire childhood and school friends that share the world of your youth. As I said to one friend - emigration is something that one must live through to fully understand; it cannot be explained.
Last but not least - only Bratislava has Martinus and Foxford café on Obchodná. Those who know me understand ;-).
I still consider Canada one of my countries. I am a dual citizen, our son and daughter-in-law live there as well as many dear friends. There is still a box of documents on the other side of the ocean … But for now, we are staying - unless Russia invades (again) or Slovakia turns into a second Belarus. Unlike before, there are a few options where to go.
It was Mečiar and his mafia government that made us leave in the ’90s. Our current government is something I deeply disagree with, but there is a hope - if Hungary could get rid of Orbán, maybe Slovakia can eventually get a more reasonable government too.
But the southern dream is not dead. We plan to spend a semester as students at the University of Padua in 2027 to experience life in Italy for a few months and improve the language.
And maybe one day I may find an irresistible project in Spain or Italy - who knows?