How To End My Suffering?

[Liszi]

I am 21. I live in Hungary. It is a pretty corrupt, poor and rotten country. I live in one of the worst towns, in a pretty bad quality apartment. I am on the second floor, and on the first (ground) floor, there is a butcher shop. The noises that it makes every day from 4 AM to 4 PM are so nervracking that are make the aparment literally unliveable. Combined with the Soviet Union times wall quality, you hear everything like it happens right next to you. I am struggling. It makes my everyday as I am in the centre of hell. There is no legal way to get them out and there is no money to move to a rented apartment inside the country. I am a university student (universities are free here), I hope I will graduate approximately on the next year's summer. But the problem is that I cheated every second of it, so I have no real knowledge of my "profession". Without a university degree, you can only earn 380 pounds per month (that is the country avarage salary). With university degree, it can go up to 550-600, but those are rare cases and requires good knowledge (like IT experts). A rent (with food and bills) starts from 450 pound per month (450 is the cheapest way to live). Because of this inbalance of prices, there is no way to just move on my own. I would love to leave this country to the west, but everywhere in West-Europe is similarly expensive to live, like in the UK. I would have to work years without spending anything, just to save money for a move to west. What would you advice me to do?

[emmie]

Germany would be better i would have thought. But if you have no money how are you going to get there..

[naomi24]

Making the effort to get a job would at least leave your family with some money spare at the end of each month - or enable you to save until you leave university and are able to reassess your situation. The problem is most people want what they can’t have and until you have the means to change your life I’m afraid you appear to be one of them.

[Liszi]

Thanks Carolina, that is very kind of you :) Yes I love English, always learned it in my life.
You are absolutely right, I am a bit inpatient and spoilt. I think I will try to play life rough this time. It maybe worth it to leave university now (even in the finish line) and start to work.

[Paigntonian]

You don't need lots of money to try to get a job in another EU country. You need persistence. Pick a sector, construction/nannying/painting whatever, and bombard potential employers in your chosen country. Use social media. Use your friends for contacts outside Hungary. Get a coach and look around your chosen country for a weekend. Make sure your CV, even if limited, is striking and well-designed. Set yourself goals - contact three potential employers a day. Use Facebook.

[Paigntonian]

And you must know someone who knows someone who has moved and in work. Get their details.

[Liszi]

These tips sounds good. Thanks for them, I will definietly try these!

[Khandro]

There is an old saying: "The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill".

I only know Budapest, but I really loved that city, could you not move there?

I guess you are you in lockdown & being in a substandard apartment must only make matters worse, but students everywhere else in Europe (& the world!) are having a bad time of it, some I hear are suffering emotional problems by being so isolated from their peers.

If you really can't move, try to see your life at the moment as a temporary set-back, nothing is forever, it will pass & you will move on. Good luck.

[Paigntonian]

Couldn't you look into transferring to a university elsewhere? You might have some credits and, once there, you could look into working part-time. Student digs will be relatively cheap and you could share.

[AuntPollyGrey]

Liszi you sound like a lovely person, I wish you the best of luck -just do it!

[Mozz71]

Well, if you don't want to find a part time job, spend your time at uni to really knuckle down and learn your subject. The fact you cheated seems to have come back to haunt you, that's a lesson worth remembering, but one, at your age, that can be reversed. Karolina made a good point, your English is very good? Is that common in Hungary or not? Is the fact that you're bilingual something you can use to your advantage?

[Liszi]

I could look at Erasmus. I think it is pretty expensive but might worth a shot. Maybe I can have some financial help from the government or my university.

[Mozz71]

Apologies, I wrote that after only seeing page one of this thread. Looks like my questions were already answered.

[Jackdaw33]

What is Erasmus here?

[Mozz71]

Erasmus is a good idea. It's funded (I believe) by the EU, so maybe the perfect way of getting experience in the workplace.

[Mozz71]

JD, it's an EU exchange student programme.

[Liszi]

Thanks Polly :)
Yes, my cheating haunted back. I tried to get a part time programming job but I failed on the apply test, the program I had to write was hard and I stuck on it.
English is commonly spoken between the young but not among the middle-aged or elderly. If I remember correctly, 30% of those ages don't speak any foreign language at all. I have a B2 complex language exam and that is a good thing, but I would say it is a basic paper you need for every job here. Definietly an advantage but not a super big thing.

[Jackdaw33]

The young will eventually become the middle-aged and elderly so the use of English will spread.

[Well-Stuck]

This was so sad to read , as others have said looking forward no matter how far off that is , is important focus on that and I would say cheating isn’t a good idea in life I understand how bad the noise can be but I would hope that maybe you could get a radio or music player and some headphones take yourself away from it , & maybe if you could try to actually focus on the subject that you are studying if it’s an important goal for you learn as much as you can yourself best way is learn yourself obviously not sure of what you are studying but (wherever you are in the world no one hands you a life you and you alone have it to live , if you are what others consider lucky enough to have a life handed to you mentally you are not living your life, and please don’t take this the wrong way but although I live here in uk I would hate to suggest coming here as unless you are 100% certain of a good job here , we see some terrible stories sad to say there are poor living conditions as bad and some worse than where you are now I assure you then there is the chance of of getting taken advantage of by crooks just because of your situation (also at the moment because of COVID-19, I have seen many from all over the world are returning back to their home countries due to the lockdown meaning it’s harder than ever to earn a basic living wage ) and those that are staying on are working 2,3 or 4 jobs it’s not a life at all lots in shared accommodation renting not a room but a bed and some in shifts one get out of a bed then next person gets in , obviously not everyone is living like this but it happens, and what you consider hell in your own country could just be switched for hell in an unfamiliar country which may only be worse.
But honestly you need to concentrate on your studying don’t cheat as I know from others if you put the extra effort you have into cheating into actually learning your subject it would be easier same same with working life I seen many working harder to skive off or get out of work than to just get on and do the job , I realise that it’s hard but everyone has a skill or a talent that can be used to make money, I am sure if you do just try to think of things you can actually do easily there will be something but other than that it would be like others have to do two jobs and focus on the future while you do as you will be doing it for a future, as for considering ending it all , life is an amazing precious thing and everyone is important in this world, I have lived for many years now and I would say although you may not think so nothing is forever other than death , and stressing and worrying about things is the one thing in life that achieves nothing, if you are worried about something that you can change you change it, if it’s something that you can’t change then worrying or stressing about it won’t change it so don’t , I have been there and done that and now realise that more often things weren’t as bad as I was worrying about and those that were happened I dealt with them quicker than the time I spent worrying about them , and others never happened at all,
But you have done the most important thing that you can that’s speak about it and that’s a massive step into taking control of your destiny, but really unless you are certain of what you are headed for in another country try and find the best you can in your own, I know that might not be the greatest but might just be better.
I wish you all the best I really do please please please take care and remember you are in charge of you and what you can do !!!

[KARL]

I completely co-incidentally met and got to know someone from outside Europe who was in an abusive marriage but had been living in Europe for about two years at the time. She desperately wanted to escape her position so (and this struck me as amazing) she googled "the safest country on Earth" and resolved to go there with her two year old son, effectively as a refugee. She/they now has/have international humanitarian protection status there and intends to stay and become a citizen.

Your situation is different but your longing may be similar. The above country is expensive to live in but people there enjoy a very high standard of wellbeing and "abject poverty" there would be considered luxury in a lot of places and the hardships and poverty existing in the UK is probably unknown there except by addicts, etc.

The advice given on here to you is worth considering: Decide what you have and what you want to change. Going to another country is never going to be a dive into a pool full of milk and honey. Life everywhere, including in Europe, is always going to include some very testing times. There is no such thing as Paradise where life is always easy and you are guaranteed overwhelming success in everything. There are people who assume they will be deliriously happy and comfortable in the USA and they go to absurd lengths to get there - I can't reconcile that with the knowledge of the huge amount of poverty with absolutely minimal backup there. Similarly, the UK is a goal for others and Germany for yet others, etc. All of these countries have proved hugely disappointing destinations for people with unrealistic hopes.

As already suggested, try to identify what your best abilities are and what you can realistically survive on doing. As far as possible (it is often near impossible) try to find employment and accommodation before leaving your present home (or at least really good information about it).

Another person I once met just long enough for a conversation lasting maybe 15 minutes was a Polish student. She had gone with a friend, two sleeping bags and a tent to another country within Europe (where I was travelling, she worked at the hotel). She said she and her friend had previously worked for a summer in the Netherlands where they generally got on fine using English. Now she was in her second summer in this other country and said it was much better. One of the reasons she offered was that while in the Netherlands the tax forms were all in Dutch and no help or translation offered, in this other place she was sent a small leaflet in Polish to guide her through the process.

Decide what would matter to you. Don't make blanket assumptions that such-and-such country must be a good place for you. Some countries enjoy a "popular" reputation in various ways that is most certainly not deserved - it may have been better than others before, maybe 50-100 years ago, but no longer is. I would suggest you look for evidence of what things are really like rather than follow the "flavour".

[EdmundD]

Liszi, one thing you could try to do is to contact Hungarian communities in other countries and get some advice,

For example here in London there are two:
Hungarian Reformed Church - Angliai Magyar Református Egyház
Hungarian Cultural Centre

Both are on Facebook.

Here in London we occasionally come across Hungarians usually in the hospitality business - not so great for them at the moment because of the lockdown.

I understand a little of what you are saying because before the pandemic my wife and I would travel to Hungary 2 or 3 times a year to visit her family and friends we have there and we know people there who are finding life to be difficult.

Sok szerencsét!!