{"id":42658,"date":"2026-01-09T12:51:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T12:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-from-the-us-to-the-worlds-most-livable-city-after-nearly-2-years-of-disappointment-i-couldnt-wait-to-leave\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T12:51:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T12:51:21","slug":"i-moved-from-the-us-to-the-worlds-most-livable-city-after-nearly-2-years-of-disappointment-i-couldnt-wait-to-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-from-the-us-to-the-worlds-most-livable-city-after-nearly-2-years-of-disappointment-i-couldnt-wait-to-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"I moved from the US to the world&#8217;s most livable city. After nearly 2 years of disappointment, I couldn&#8217;t wait to leave."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/691e2ecbe1a9cbb014de8d97?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A row of houses and boats in Nyhavn, Copenhagen.\"\/><figcaption>I moved from the US to the world&#039;s most livable city, Copenhagen, and didn&#039;t like it.<\/p>\n<p>Paige Madison<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Five years ago, I moved from Vermont to Copenhagen for a job opportunity.<\/li>\n<li>The city is known for its high ranks in livability and happiness, and I had high expectations.<\/li>\n<li>The language, weather, and social scene were hard for me to adjust to, and I left two years later.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When I moved to Copenhagen in January 2021 for my &quot;dream job,&quot; my expectations were high.<\/p>\n<p>I was going to help design a new national museum \u2014 full of dinosaur skeletons and other natural wonders \u2014 in a place that routinely ranks as one of the happiest and most liveable cities in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Just last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Copenhagen as the No. 1 most livable city \u2014 above places like Vienna, Zurich, and Osaka \u2014 while the World Happiness Report named Denmark the second-happiest country in the world, behind only Finland.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of my move, I envisioned the city as a cobblestone paradise of candy-colored houses, vast bike lanes, and delicious cinnamon rolls \u2014 a romanticized fantasy reinforced by a stellar reputation.<\/p>\n<p>Little did I know, I&#039;d come to find myself running at sunrise because it was the only time the city felt like the place I&#039;d been promised.<\/p>\n<h2>Reality hit \u2014 fast<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69174e6789026fbb4d0daa72?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A frozen canal in Copenhagen.\"\/><figcaption>I thought I was prepared for Copenhagen&#039;s winters, but they were much harsher than I&#039;d anticipated.<\/p>\n<p>Paige Madison<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I grew up in Vermont and lived there while I finished grad school, so I was used to facing long, cold winters. <\/p>\n<p>But immediately, Copenhagen felt different, with the January sun rising after 8:30 a.m. and disappearing around 3:30 p.m. \u2014 leaving me with about two hours less sunlight than I was used to at home.<\/p>\n<p>The short days often felt gloomy, with frequent rain bringing a layer of gray clouds unlike anything I&#039;d ever seen \u2014 it was like an oppressive, immovable blanket across the entire sky. During the winter months, those clouds could rob the city of sunshine for many consecutive days.<\/p>\n<p>I also quickly discovered why the salary I&#039;d been offered seemed high. Prices in Copenhagen were higher than what I was used to in Vermont, making a simple coffee and pastry feel like luxuries I couldn&#039;t afford. But maybe I shouldn&#039;t have been so surprised, given the city has regularly found itself on &quot;most expensive city&quot; lists over the past few years.<\/p>\n<p>Running at sunrise became my refuge. Weaving through empty streets flanked by beautiful old houses and canals, I felt like I could see the city&#039;s magic.<\/p>\n<p>But beyond those runs, I was struggling.<\/p>\n<h2>Despite my best efforts, I had a hard time adapting to Danish society<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69174eb589026fbb4d0daa86?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A glass of Carlsberg beer.\"\/><figcaption>Despite my best efforts, I had a hard time adapting to Danish society.<\/p>\n<p>Paige Madison<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I spent my first year in Copenhagen taking language classes, exploring street art, and embracing football culture while sipping Carlsberg beers with the Dane I was dating.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, it seemed like there were barriers everywhere. Although I speak three languages, I found it difficult to master Danish, leaving me unable to keep up when happy-hour banter inevitably slipped away from English.<\/p>\n<p>This, of course, didn&#039;t make socializing any easier. My colleagues were pleasant, but they already had calcified social circles. I tried to meet new people by attending live music events, but the local smoking culture made it tricky to find bars that weren&#039;t filled with cigarette smoke, which I didn&#039;t enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, summer brought its own challenges. Short winter days were replaced by shockingly long summer ones \u2014 think over 17 hours of sunlight. This near-constant light wreaked havoc on my sleep, and sunrise runs were only possible before 5 a.m.<\/p>\n<p>In this land of extremes, it felt impossible for me to attain a good balance.<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, so many of the perks that helped Copenhagen earn high marks for livability and happiness seemed designed for someone else.<\/p>\n<p>For example, I didn&#039;t have kids, nor was I expecting any, so Denmark&#039;s generous maternity leave and excellent childcare were of no use to me.<\/p>\n<p>And although employees here are entitled to a whopping five weeks of vacation time, I felt like I couldn&#039;t even take advantage of it because my museum project was behind schedule. I just felt pressured to work more.<\/p>\n<h2>I had to accept that Copenhagen wasn&#039;t right for me<\/h2>\n<p>A year in, my dream job had become a nightmare. It was my second winter, and the combination of work pressure and isolation in an expensive, dark city was taking its toll. I biked to work in the dark each morning and left in the dark each afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>For months, I continued lacing up my shoes for runs, hoping to recapture that sense of possibility. But instead, I felt like I was chasing something that would never come.<\/p>\n<p>The empty cobblestone streets that once seemed quaint were now a metaphor for my lonely existence.<\/p>\n<p>It suddenly hit me during a morning run in early summer \u2014 I was done trying to make it work. After securing a job stateside, I left my notice, and just before autumn threatened to transform into another winter, I packed my life into two suitcases. I hadn&#039;t even lasted two years.<\/p>\n<p>On my one-block walk to the metro, my suitcases got soaked in the rain \u2014 a fitting goodbye.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back, my time in Copenhagen taught me that independence has its limits. Community, balance, and a sense of belonging matter more to me than I realized, and if I were to live abroad again, I&#039;d need to know I&#039;d have them.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I moved from the US to the world&#039;s most livable city, Copenhagen, and didn&#039;t like it. Paige Madison Five years ago, I moved from Vermont to Copenhagen for a job opportunity. The city is known for its high ranks in livability and happiness, and I had high expectations. The language, weather, and social scene were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}