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Colombia: Tax Responsibilities as Retiree in Columbia?:
LIM's advice is clearly wise: contact a tax expert in Colombia. There are so many conflicting pieces of advice on taxes in this forum. In the end, of you're serious about fully investigating the Colombia possibility, you will contact a tax expert in Colombia anyway, just to be sure. Might as well just skip to the chase and do it now, or soon, and pass on the confusing back and forth you'll see in here. It's like watching a tennis game from heII.
That said, most of the people in this forum who offer you advice are pleasant, and are trying to help you out of the kindness of their hearts. Everyone in here, so far, definitely fits that description. However, there is an old bloviating British bulldog that roams these sacred grounds. Yes, it actually talks. When it appears, it will likely let forth with a long, soul-destroying discurso that will leave you feeling as though your cat just died. That's just how the Old Bloviating British Bulldog of the Expat Forum says hello. Don't show fear. Just agree with it after it's done talking.
Or else.
It mostly comes in the morning. Mostly.
You shall know when it has arrived.
Colombia: What's it like being an Expat in Medellin?:
What's it like being an expat in Medellin? Well, you wake up. Look out your window and see verdant mountaintops in the distance and the pastel flash of a tropical bird flitting in the trees. Then you stroll out to the street and get a cup of delifious tinto from a friendly vendor on the corner. Your day has begun.
Then you walk back in your house and fire up your computer. You log into Expat Forum and prepare to do battle. That other expat insulted you overnight, and today you are really going to let him have it. It is going to be a long day of composing insults and parrying his return shots, but victory will be yours. You order pizza delivery so you don't even have to leave your computer for the next 12 hours...
Oh god. What have we become
Colombia: Med Airport at midnight?:
Life: You only find out about the affordable helicopter shuttle service after it's gone.
Colombia: LIVING THE DREAM:
If you really do end up moving to Colombia in search of love, I third the motion: online dating site, Latin American Cupid, is perhaps your best shot. Also, start learning Spanish asap. Latin American Cupid has the bonus effect of helping you learn Spanish, as you'll be reading dating profiles in Spanish for hours, running private messages through Google Translate and whipping up responses, getting a feel for local colloquialisms and linguistic quirks ("que mas?" "No dar papaya") and hopefully--finally-- talking to the women on webcam, trying your best to understand and speak Spanish in a live run. Doing this while, say, reading a couple Spanish 101 books and maybe running DuoLingo on your smartphone or computer would kill at least two very large birds with one stone. In addition to all that, an online dating site like Latin American Cupid would allow you to search for women in Colombia who speak English, using a filter. That's how I found my girlfriend. And thank god her English is strong. Although I've had Mexican and Rican girlfriends in Chicago and Florida who spoke virtually no English, and back then I spoke nearly zero Spanish, and it was still possible to make it work.
Now as to whether you should actually move to Colombia. He11 if I know. Good luck.
Colombia: US restrictions begin on Colombian visas:
I worked for the department of homeland security for 8 years, a lowly post, under (way under) Bush and then Obama, up until 2013. But I spent 8 hours per day for all those years being paid, in part, to explain to members of the public why the threat of terrorism was so great that panic, fear and the surrendering of all sorts of liberties was in their best interest. Actually doing this for that long and thinking long and hard about it on a daily basis pretty quickly brought me to the conclusion that many have reached: human beings are bad at assessing risks, at running cost/benefit analyses off the top of the head. People get stuck on "Low probability-highly visible consequence" scenarios, like most terrorist threats, and from that preoccupation flow all sorts of bad ideas. I came across this article in The Atlantic yesterday. Pretty interesting:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/why-fake-news-targeted-trump-supporters/515433/
Colombia: Prostitution and police shakedowns:
When it comes to "fellow gringos who seem like trouble," yes, I've run into a few. The worst so far was a Florida millionaire-- real estate guy-- and his buddy, both in their mid-50s or so. They were hardcore, shameless sex tourists, started going on sex tour jaunts in Cuba about 10 years ago and fell in love with it. After sex-touring most of Latin America and a lot of Asia, they settled on Medellin as their favorite city. But the richer of the two was a questionable person well outside the sex tourist thing: erratic as he11, gave the vibe of being off his rocker. I met him through my Colombian apartment-finder friend, who was helping the rich gringos find a condo to buy. We all ended up drinking a beer at a bar on la 70 one day. Long story short, I I pretty much watched the rich a$$hole buy a penthouse condo for a little over 100,000 dollars right down the street from me in Laureles. His homes are in Florida, but he wanted to buy a Medellin condo for a base of sex operations in Laureles, since he had sold his Poblado condo recently after becoming dismayed that his neighbors were too chismoso (nosy). The rich guy then ended up stiffing my Colombian friend on the finder's fee that was promised. As a result, my Colombian friend ended up contacting various authorities in Colombia and tipping them off about "the rich gringo in Medellin who is
sexing underage girls and who has a fake cedula." My Colombian friend has also declared a desire to smash the rich gringo in the mouth if he ever sees him again. So basically, that situation with that shady gringo is escalating and escalating and could very well get dangerous. I only talked to him twice and will never even say hello to him again if I see him. So yeah, just one example of a bad news-type person you want to stay well away from.
The other day I was in an internet cafe in Laureles when two 20 or 30-something guys walked in speaking English, New York-ish accents. Very rare in that cafe, to hear gringos. As i was kind of surprised to have fellow gringos with me there in that place, I was about to do my usual "Wassup fellow gringo? Where you from?"-type deal. But then I looked them up and down quickly, and heard more of their conversation and style, and all in all I got the thug-wannabe vibe I know quite well from the streets of Chicago. One of them had been smoking a blunt outside the cafe too. A couple of my best friends in Chicago growing up were gangbangers-- good guys, but through them I met a lot of street motherf@@kers who were not so good, and I had WAY too much of a bad feeling with those two gringos in the internet cafe.Since I can pass for being Colombian, I proceeded to keep my mouth shut and pretended to be a local. I believe there are definitely times when you have to resist the urge to say hello to a fellow countryman. Some would advocate never saying hello, haha.
Colombia: New to Medellin:
Whoever said "Laureles and Poblado are both good neighborhoods" for gringos to move to, probably summed it up best, after all the perfunctory Laureles vs Poblado nitpicky dust settles. Poblado tends to be more expensive-- on that I think we can all agree. But all in all they're both fine barrios.
I personally wouldn't even bother associating Laureles-Estadio with the word "dicey." On the whole, there's just not enough dicey-ness (diciness?) about it to trigger the word, for me. Sure, there are a couple areas here that I would rather not stroll around at 3 AM. For instance, along the river between the Suramericana and Estadio metro stations. It tends to be really deserted, and it has that creepy, abandoned-industrial-zone-next-to-a-dirty-river-and-lonely-jogger's-park-vibe, which is all the more eerie late at night. But that's more an issue of Isolated Creepy Place than all out danger zone. I mean, Wicker Park, Chicago is an upscale neighborhood, but it can be creepy at night in certain spots-- spots that are probably better places for muggers to ply their trade, if they happen to be around. But Wicker Park, Chicago is not nearly the same as 79th and Racine, where bullets actually fly far too often, making the nightly Trump tweet. Same thing with Laureles vs portions of Centro.
I agree with Paradise in that I think a lot of the reflexive "Poblado is Gringolandia EW!" sentiment is overblown. I mean yes, there are more gringos in Poblado than any other area of Medellin , I'm pretty sure (although I admit I don't have hard census data to back that up, just observations and the consensus of everyone I talk to in Medellin). But in all my time hanging in Poblado, the only time I thought to myself "good God these gringos are everywhere, and they're a tad annoying" was while hanging in Patrick's Sports Pub during t a football game. And that was mostly because the Bears were losing and I was already in a bad mood, and the drunken Packers fans were making it worse. But sometimes it can be good to go check into Patrick's, I'm not disparaging it. Patrick's almost feels like an unofficial US Embassy or something: you're on US soil in there
Colombia: Comparison of crime rates:
Going by the statistics and current media hype, my home city, Chicago, is an all-out warzone and near-federal disaster area. I can imagine Europeans or Asians who are thinking of moving to the US being told "Stay away from Chicago. It's a violent cesspool and you will get killed." Haha. Not quite. As long as you don't go was wandering around a few select neighborhoods on the West and South Side after midnight, you're fine. I just got back from a week in eje cafetero. Armenia was cool, never felt anything close to danger there. The horseback riding near Salento was the most violent aspect of the trip. I had a crazy horse and a rider behind me got kicked in the leg. Rider behind me was also kind of irresponsible and maybe drunk
Colombia: Bylinguel person for help finding an Apartment:
My good paisa friend is born and raised in Medellin, thoroughly bilingual, English and Spanish. She lives across the street from me here on la 70 in Estadio. She's finishing her last little bit of school work at UPB while working a lot of part time jobs at hotels and hostels. She ultimately wants to get into the tourism/translation business, and is just now starting to try her hand at private tours. She'd be happy to facilitate as a translator if you really need it. She's basically a hardworking Buddhist-type girl, most trustworthy person I've ever met, more or less. This would be great further practice for her in terms of doing freelance jobs and escaping the wage-slavery of Colombia. It would certainly be a bargain for you, and would provide her with experience. PM me if you want. I'll vouch for her with everything, real name and all.
Colombia: Medellín neighborhoods:
Kind of an obvious suggestion here, and biased, since I live there, but Laureles-Estadio sounds like it might work. It's approximately in the center of the metro area, Estrato 4-5, easy access to the metro, safe, for the most part. I live 4 blocks from the Estadio metro station. Have never seen a violent crime in a total of 8 months in this neighborhood, never suffered more than an annoying panhandler or two or five. I've walked to and back from Centro a few times, with friends. That's not something I would do alone unless necessary, but just gives you an idea of how centrally located it is-- it seems that almost everyone ends up having to go to Centro for something or another at various points, so that trip is obviously fast from here. The Immigration Office is one barrio over from here, too, in Belen, another place you'll end up having to deal with. Also close. It seems as though there arent that many options as far as neighborhoods for the average gringo moving here for the first time. Usually it boils down to Poblado vs Laureles-Estadio.
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