Moldova

Relocation, immigration, and all that stuff are never easy — it’s something that needs to be planned in advance.

Moldova?! Seriously? From Canada?!?! How is that even possible?! – that’s usually what my typical dialogue with random people in various immigrant chats looks like.

So what’s actually going on? Let’s try to figure it out…

Overall, it’s quite a practical story. It all started with the digital nomad visa in the Czech Republic.

It was created only for certain countries, including Canada. There were no issues with income or other requirements, but as it turned out, the Czechs will not accept a visa application if you hold a Russian passport, even if it’s not your primary one.

Good thing I decided to clarify this in advance 😅 by writing them an email and receiving this reply:

At present, the Czech government has restricted the acceptance of visa and residence permit applications from citizens of the Russian Federation (including persons with dual citizenship) at Czech embassies.

Well okay then, I didn’t want it that badly anyway)) Besides, the Czech Republic is quite an overpriced option overall.

The only thing I liked was that Prague has a fairly strong IT community, and people say you can also find a local job there if my remote one suddenly ends.

The search for a suitable place continued. At that time, the remaining candidates were:

• Albania – with a minimal income requirement of $300
• Bulgaria – with requirements of about $2500 per month
• Georgia – $2000

I’ve been to all of these countries. I lived in Georgia for a year, so for now I’m not considering it — I’d like to live somewhere else.

Albania:

• you can apply remotely
• low cost of living
• rich culture, delicious food
• no local job market to rely on — only remote work
• one of the lowest digital nomad thresholds in the world

Bulgaria:

• medium cost of living
• easier to learn the language
• some IT jobs available, but not a huge amount

I decided to consider Bulgaria.

But then, as always, “something went wrong” 😄 I already wrote about it in my micro blog: https://micro.lifeblog.pro/bolgariia

In short — almost all EU countries want you to submit documents from your home country. In my case, that’s not feasible, since the nearest consulate is 4000 km away.

Also, Bulgaria requires housing documents to be ready at the moment of application 😵

After that, I got upset I remembered that Moldova had also recently introduced a digital nomad visa.

I thought I could quickly arrange everything there on-site, start living there legally, and then apply to Bulgaria from there.

But… 🙄

And why go to Bulgaria at all if I can just stay in Moldova? In the end, I found a lot of advantages of living there:

• there is an IT sector in the country, in case I want to look for a local job
• still affordable living
• similar culture
• beautiful Romanian language and the ability to use Russian
• an option to buy an apartment
• simple and clear application process (unlike Bulgaria)

Of course, I can’t evaluate all the pros and cons in advance — that will only be possible after living in Moldova for a while.

That’s how the decision to move to Moldova was made — Europe’s least visited country. I hope Moldova lets me in and, just like in that video:

But I promise Moldovans, if you let me in, I'll say nicer things about you!

The requirements for Moldova are:

• income equal to 3 average salaries (around $2900)
• a rental agreement
• an employment contract from a foreign employer confirming remote work

And that’s basically it. Most importantly, you can submit everything on-site, for example in Chișinău.

I’ll share more about the application process and documents once I start going through these stages.