Quote Originally Posted by nulle View Post
And Hanna - would you like to move to Belarus? People in Latvia do not - if they emigrate - they go to west.
No, I wouldn't particularly want to live there... it depends completely on the circumstances.. It's not a bad place though. If someone was to offer me a well paid job there, I might consider it, for a short period. But that's not likely to happen.

But I think that if a person is on a very low salary, then they might be better off in Belarus than in Latvia. I am not certain though, but things are so cheap in Belarus. In Latvia, the prices are more like in the rest of the EU. Rents etc are very low in Belarus too. So if you had.... say 800 USD per month.... You'd get a much better standard of living for that in Belarus, than in Latvia.

In Belarus I met quite a lot of people who said that they knew somebody or had a relative who was living in Sweden. I was really surprised to hear that. I have never met a Belarussian in Sweden (I have been living abroad though). It seems Sweden is one of the top places that Belarussians would like to emigrate to. One Belarussian woman who worked at the Swedish embassy was running a Swedish course (such a small language, surprising anyone wants to learn it!). She had almost 50 people in her course! Sadly (for Belarus) it's the smartest and most hard working people who leave. I suspect it might be the same in Latvia.

My main point about Belarus is that the situation there is completely misrepresented in Western European media. Although it has some problems, it's not half as bad as you'd think after reading an average European paper.