Location really does matter when it comes to mental well-being and satisfaction

[Lucas88]

@Winston is absolutely correct: location is paramount.

This doesn't even necessarily have to imply relocation abroad. Just being in the right city within a single country can make a hugely positive difference vs. being in a wrong city. The same principle applies regardless of whether you're abroad or at home.

I absolutely loathe the UK and find most of its cities and towns horrible due to their hideous architecture, bad vibe and antisocial people, but there is one single town in the UK — only one!!! — that is the exception and where I feel happy and at home. It's the same town I mentioned in my recent thread on "city egregores", the one situated about 7 miles from my hometown and whose football (soccer) team I've followed since being a kid. It's a market town of about 100,000 people, historically a mining town, with nice architecture, a strong community spirit and friendly people.

I often come here when I need to buy something and always find the place noticeably more pleasant than other UK cities and towns, but right now I'm temporarily living here since I'm looking after a friend's pet while he's on holiday with his girlfriend and I find it even more awesome.

To begin with, unlike most UK cities, the town has beautiful architectural styles, including classical and Italianate. Even its modernist buildings are rather well-made. Bright stone buildings and paving predominate. A few buildings feature Greco-Roman columns. Some areas feel more like a Mediterranean country than the UK. The vibe is amazing and I always feel uplifted and energized.

Then there are many cool things like 80s-themed nightclubs, Asian and Turkish restaurants, a Brazilian bar, shopping centers, a cinema that shows all the old classics, a few very nice and well-kept public areas such as the Town Hall and central plaza, and a state-of-the-art college. It's simple but decent for a town of its population size.

Speaking of population, the people here are really nice and friendly, so much so that I even forget that I'm in the UK. They're neither paranoid nor antisocial; often strike up conversation with you in the street; and are surprisingly helpful. Yesterday I was on the phone talking about how I needed to find a pet supplies store and a passer-by stopped and went out of his way to give me detailed directions. This place still has community spirit.

People even speak a better form of English here, one that's folksy and traditional, not like the faggy and aesthetically repulsive linguistic varieties spoken in most parts of the UK.

All in all, I feel a lot happier and mentally well here than I usually do in my bumpkin-filled hometown. I feel more relaxed and motivated to do things as well as less socially anxious. My feelings of misanthropy have also gone down substantially.

The right city makes every bit of a difference. It can determine whether you wake up vibrant and full of life or chronically depressed and hating life. If you aren't in a place that's suitable for you, you'll never find true satisfaction.

The right city can either make or break your HA experience too. You might find your own personal Shangri-la in a foreign country and find lasting satisfaction (like I did with Valencia) or you might choose the wrong city and end up thoroughly disappointed. Right location is essential.

[yick]

There are certain places in the UK where I feel a lot happier and one of them is North Wales where I have my ancestry. When I am on the train and the announcer starts speaking Welsh and I enter Wales with the train platform signs all in Welsh. I feel happier though a lot of the coastal towns of North Wales have the same blights and problems as back home - there is a different vibe but in the end it isn't enough. I need decent weather.

In Latin America. The people look like me, I can walk around and just slot into the background because I am the same as everyone else in the way I look which counts for so much. Even if people aren't hostile (though sometimes they are) in the UK, the way they look at you can sense they know you're not 'local' your ancestry is not the same as theirs and there's tension to it which is not there when I am in Latin America or Spain - less so in London and especially the nice parts of London - I would live there but who can afford that?

Most of the UK is just a f***ing grim place with a drug addicted population - if it isn't cocaine, ket, speed, spice, vaping, happy pills and now there is a drug to help you lose weight! The population is angry and helpless. The country is moving towards being a fascist state within the next twenty years and you need to get out of there because the road to fascism - and it is coming and you can see clearly it is coming - isn't going to be pretty, I for one won't be there.

[Lucas88]

In Latin America. The people look like me, I can walk around and just slot into the background because I am the same as everyone else in the way I look which counts for so much. Even if people aren't hostile (though sometimes they are) in the UK, the way they look at you can sense they know you're not 'local' your ancestry is not the same as theirs and there's tension to it which is not there when I am in Latin America or Spain - less so in London and especially the nice parts of London - I would live there but who can afford that?

I can relate to the experience of feeling more comfortable in a place where people look like oneself. I lived in Japan for a year in the early 2010s and, to be honest, I hated standing out among crowds. I'm an introvert and don't always know how to act when I receive unwanted attention. I'm sure that there are some people who are extraverted and don't mind the extra attention from standing out in a foreign culture — or who even thrive off it — but I'm not built like that.

I feel a lot more comfortable in Spain where as a European I fall within the natural range of phenotypic variation and where I'm viewed as simply another European foreigner among many in a fairly cosmopolitan city and with nothing strange about my presence. I'm hoping that I will have the same kind of experience should I choose to go to some city like Joinville or Curitiba in the Southeast of Brazil.

As for the UK, I don't even have a minority background and I already find a lot of people cold and unfriendly. I'm just not socially or behaviorally compatible with the culture here, a bit too quirky and not quite normal enough. But I don't think that normal White British people are that friendly even among themselves. The UK is just a cold and unfriendly culture where everything feels hostile. I started to realize this from about the age of 15 or 16 and soon intuited the need to move to Spain or some similar country.

But this one nearby town which this thread is about is a pleasant exception for me. I can speculate that the greater level of friendliness could be due to its being a former mining town with a close-knit community and without too extreme wealth disparities leading to a more integrated community without jealousy, its strong sporting culture which unites everybody under the banner of its beloved football team, or its attractive architecture that creates a pleasant vibe and presumably raises people's mood, but it might simply be that some towns are situated in places with better energy and just have an elusive something that most places don't.

At any rate, I do feel considerably more mentally at peace there than in other parts of the UK, which I think you'll agree is the most important thing to consider when it comes to relocation, whether foreign or domestic.

[Prince of Cups]

There are certain places in the UK where I feel a lot happier and one of them is North Wales where I have my ancestry. When I am on the train and the announcer starts speaking Welsh and I enter Wales with the train platform signs all in Welsh. I feel happier though a lot of the coastal towns of North Wales have the same blights and problems as back home - there is a different vibe but in the end it isn't enough. I need decent weather.

In Latin America. The people look like me, I can walk around and just slot into the background because I am the same as everyone else in the way I look which counts for so much. Even if people aren't hostile (though sometimes they are) in the UK, the way they look at you can sense they know you're not 'local' your ancestry is not the same as theirs and there's tension to it which is not there when I am in Latin America or Spain - less so in London and especially the nice parts of London - I would live there but who can afford that?

Most of the UK is just a f***ing grim place with a drug addicted population - if it isn't cocaine, ket, speed, spice, vaping, happy pills and now there is a drug to help you lose weight! The population is angry and helpless. The country is moving towards being a fascist state within the next twenty years and you need to get out of there because the road to fascism - and it is coming and you can see clearly it is coming - isn't going to be pretty, I for one won't be there.

You're absolutely right about the UK being a grim place. Most of the people are too f***ing stupid to realise what a mess the country is becoming. The right and the left are marching around shouting at each other, the government are milking the country dry, and immigrants are flooding in by unsustainable quantities. But most Brits don't give a shit, so long as they can afford their beer on a weekend.

I've lived in London before and the energy there is disgusting and totally alien to my soul. People there are like ants, scurrying around in a total rush all the time. That kind of lifestyle cannot he healthy at all.

In Latin America. The people look like me, I can walk around and just slot into the background because I am the same as everyone else in the way I look which counts for so much. Even if people aren't hostile (though sometimes they are) in the UK, the way they look at you can sense they know you're not 'local' your ancestry is not the same as theirs and there's tension to it which is not there when I am in Latin America or Spain - less so in London and especially the nice parts of London - I would live there but who can afford that?

I can relate to the experience of feeling more comfortable in a place where people look like oneself. I lived in Japan for a year in the early 2010s and, to be honest, I hated standing out among crowds. I'm an introvert and don't always know how to act when I receive unwanted attention. I'm sure that there are some people who are extraverted and don't mind the extra attention from standing out in a foreign culture — or who even thrive off it — but I'm not built like that.

I feel a lot more comfortable in Spain where as a European I fall within the natural range of phenotypic variation and where I'm viewed as simply another European foreigner among many in a fairly cosmopolitan city and with nothing strange about my presence. I'm hoping that I will have the same kind of experience should I choose to go to some city like Joinville or Curitiba in the Southeast of Brazil.

As for the UK, I don't even have a minority background and I already find a lot of people cold and unfriendly. I'm just not socially or behaviorally compatible with the culture here, a bit too quirky and not quite normal enough. But I don't think that normal White British people are that friendly even among themselves. The UK is just a cold and unfriendly culture where everything feels hostile. I started to realize this from about the age of 15 or 16 and soon intuited the need to move to Spain or some similar country.

Thankfully, I've never experienced the kind of unwanted attention you describe here. I am a white guy living in a predominantly white area so I don't have much issues. But the people here do seem pretty ignorant and a bit stupid. I could imagine that being black here might be difficult.

The UK is full of uneducated dumb dumbs. I think out of Europe the UK is the least cultured and definitely the most idiotic.

[Lucas88]

I think out of Europe the UK is the least cultured and definitely the most idiotic.

I've always said the same thing!

I myself like most European countries and admire their beauty and cultural sophistication but the UK has always struck me as a strange outlier characterized by a patent lack of aesthetic refinement and culture.

Elaborating on the first lacking quality, the UK's cities tend to have a certain grimey aesthetic with some of the ugliest and most inhuman architecture in Europe while the British have an atrocious sense of aesthetics in general. I attribute this to the country's pragmatic ethos which narrowly favored practicality and material advancement. On the other hand, whenever I explore cities in other European countries with the Google Maps street view function — whether it be Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, etc. — I always see far cleaner and more aesthetically refined places.

Elaborating on the second lacking quality, I definitely find British people noticeably less cultured and less intellectual than most other Western Europeans. Brits immediately seem coarser and more ill-mannered for a start, and then they appear to be less informed about the wider world and have less substantial topics of conversation than their Continental European counterparts, preferring simple and shallow topics. Even in Spain, which isn't exactly regarded for its intellectual culture, I find that people are generally more well-read and have greater knowledge of culture.

Even the German philosopher Nietzsche, who considered himself a Mediterranean soul and an heir to the Greco-Roman tradition, mocked the poor sense of aesthetics and lack of intellectual depth of the English, opening his diatribe against them in Beyond Good and Evil with "The English are no philosophical race".

So yes, I share the view that the people of the UK are a weird, barbaric and uncivilized branch of the European race that is appropriately quarantined from the rest of Europe by the English channel.

PD — I have no idea why the Matrix incarnated my soul into that bizarre and uncultured country. As an aristocratic soul, I should have been born in a more sophisticated country such as Switzerland.

PPD — I can't believe that @Winston unironically admires the UK and regards it as a "bastion of civilization". If only he knew! Lol!