There is a world of difference between visiting a country as a holiday-maker and living there as a resident.

Take France, for instance. Great tourism, great food and shopping, set to please visitors. Once you move here permanently, you discover all the rules and regulations of the French bureaucracy! ( please read my post “French Bureaucracy blocks EU IDs”).  I have lost count of British people, who move to France to live their dream, only to discover their nightmares. They soon return home!

My home country of Ireland is no different. A weekend city break to Dublin does not reveal the social and political difficulties beneath the tourism glam.

I feel most sorry for the Americans, who spend a lifetime saving to visit the place where their ancestors came from. Many think that Ireland is still like it was in the 1950s movie “The Quiet Man”, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Then they get shocked to find that Ireland is a modern 21st-century country, full of motor-ways and housing estates and industrial complexes. You have to visit a museum to see the “Old Ireland”!

The same holds true for any country throughout the world. In order to truly get to know a place, you need to live there for a year or more. Weekend breaks and two or three week holidays will not reveal what lies beneath.

Ends.  author Veronica Smith