I think our move to Slovenia is unique because we emigrated here without ever having visited the country. At a certain moment my husband and I realized that our values do not coincide with the Russian values and are unlikely to coincide in the near future, and we did not want to live hiding our thoughts, feelings and opinions, especially since we work in the field of video production, and also write articles and analytics, and doing it in the censorship and fear is not a good idea. We knew that there were Russian programmers and IT-specialists waiting all over the world, but we had no idea where to go.

Then it was like fate. Reading articles about emigration and life abroad, we stumbled upon the information that we could move to Slovenia with 30 thousand euros. At first, we couldn't believe it - it was more expensive to go to Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, but this beautiful country in the center of Europe, next door to Italy, was so cheap!

We contacted an immigration agency, because we did not have a full understanding of how to move, what visa to apply for, and what it would take, and we did not want to drag this issue out. The consultant told us that it is possible to move to Slovenia with a small amount to open a business - Slovenia is developing its economy and is interested in attracting people who are ready to work, earn money and create new jobs.

We began to collect documents and prepare to move. We sold our apartment in Kaluga, invested in the opening of a company in Slovenia (for that purpose we flew to Slovenia for the first time with a tourist visa, and we fell in love with the country at first sight). Quite quickly - 4 months - together with the experts on emigration gathered all the documents, applied for a visa, received permission and flew to a new life.

Before that first visit to Slovenia to open a company, we have never been to this country, but many times have traveled to other European countries, especially I liked Italy, and I hoped that the neighboring Slovenia will be at least a little bit like it. And so it turned out - it was very clean, beautiful, comfortable and civilized in a European way, although Slovenia is like Italy only in its southern part. 

By the way, along with us our good friends decided to move to Slovenia, but they did not want to pay emigration consultants in the country and they chose a girl in Russia, who agreed to help for not much money.

In the end they were stuck with the move for two years, because she advised them wrong about the rental agreement, which caused the consulate to deny the visa twice. We advised them to contact the agency we were working with, and things got going. Today the guys are already living in Slovenia.

Today, three years after moving, we can say that we are glad we made the right choice and decided to move. The situation in Russia during this time has only gotten worse, and here we feel calm and secure and are slowly developing our small family business.

Video production was supplemented by guide services and excursions, we shoot video clips, edit video courses - for locals and not only. Life here is inexpensive, the food is delicious, the climate is definitely not worse than in Russia, although there are a lot of fogs in winter. Our children are studying at a local school - my daughter is in junior high school, and my son will soon graduate and go to university, most likely in Italy - he likes history and archaeology, and Italy is an ideal country for development in this direction. We live here on a residence permit, but in the future we are thinking about getting a permanent residence permit, and then citizenship.