Moving to Budapest in March - help, please?

Hi Lolepana,

Welcome to Expat.com

Please feel free to browse through the various topics available on the forum, you might find some answers to your questions.

Have a nice day,

Priscilla

Lolepana wrote:

- if I work as a freelance teacher - giving private lessons, proof reading etc - would I need an invoice too? Or can this happen without one

To be legal, and not in the black market, you have to given an Invoice or provide a receipt for everything in Hungary. If you are an EU Citizen, and you have a registered business in your home country, you can maybe invoice to that company. Else, you need to register with the Hungarian tax authority (NAV) as a freelance worker, get your receipt booklet, and give NAV about 35% of your income each month. Plus VAT. And, yes, that is true even if you only teach over something like Skype. If you do it here, you are suppose to pay taxes here (or in your home country if your stay is short). But some tax agency, somewhere, will want something of what you make. 

Lolepana wrote:

-- (and most importantly) is getting an invoice difficult?

Just go to a local tax office and ask for a Hungarian tax number and say you want to be a freelance worker. Frankly, registering as a KATA business may cost you less unless you make less than 500 Euro a month.

As an aside the teaching English and proofreading market for English is saturated here. Just about everyone tries to do that who speaks any level of English. Rates can be as low as 800 HUF (2.50 Euro) an hour. Hard to compete at that rate. Best option is to try to contact and get a job at some company or school. The freelance gig may be difficult.

Thank you so much for the info. One last thing, then - if we find a job with a company, will I still need the invoice or it's only for freelance work?

Lolepana wrote:

if we find a job with a company, will I still need the invoice or it's only for freelance work?

If you are an employee, the local employer deals with the tax authority 100%. Employees are not even required to submit a yearly tax return if employment income is their only income source.

Thank you so much! It's sounding a bit difficult to stick to our plan right now - hopefully we'll manage!

Lolepana wrote:

Thank you so much! It's sounding a bit difficult to stick to our plan right now - hopefully we'll manage!

You have several months. Plenty of time to look into employment opportunities in Hungary.  So don't give up!

WOW! Lots of questions! I moved to Budapest to teach English in 1999 and it was the best move I ever made. But things have changed since then. There are still language schools around, although not as many. So many more students take English in their regular schools. The English teaching business has dropped off quite a bit, but there are still jobs and opportunities available, although the money may not satisfy your needs. For advice on moving here, get in touch with Inter Relocation (Interrelo), Managing Director Stuart McAlister, on the internet, They have all the basic info you'll need, plus a free online moving guide. Re: invoices, if you plan to be official and give official invoices to students and businesses where you will teach, you need to set up your own Hungarian company - limited partnership - easy with a local lawyer, cost around $150 US or so, with an accompanying bank account (for transfers).
You can also check my book on amazon.com, To Ur With Love, for my experiences in moving, and also see Getting Out on amazon.com, re: moving to another country. Where to live is up to you; I prefer the 5th District (downtown, in the middle of everything), but 6th, 7th are nice also. Still lots of flats available, again Interrelo can steer you to some good agents. I'm off traveling until Dec 13, but if you have more questions please let me know. Best of luck and hope I can help again. When you get here, get in touch and we'll have a Welcome Drink!

Puszi,

Gary Lukatch

Teachrman wrote:

you need to set up your own Hungarian company - limited partnership - easy with a local lawyer, cost around $150 US or so

The rules changed in the past few years.

You have to post a 3 Million Forint bond today to start a KFT (limited liability company), or show income to this effect within three years.

In a limited partnership company in Hungary (known as a BT) you do not need the bond, but a BT needs at least two entities (people or companies) and at least one entity must be fully liable to all debts. I would not recommend this type of company. If anything goes wrong the unlimited partner is liable for every debt, and could be pushed into bankruptcy.

Since I stopped teaching some years ago, I was not aware the rules had become so stringent. However, re: liability for the BT, I had my company for 7 years and never had a problem, so I wouldn't worry too much about any major (or minor) liabilities. But best to check with a local lawyer just to be sure. If you'd like to know anything else about teaching English here, please send me a private email and I can give you more information. My regular address is ***

Gary

Thank you so much for the info! I'll look into this more closely. I've already sent some CVS and received replies asking for an invoice number so I'm guessing that's going to be our biggest challenge. Again, thanks again ....might bother you again with more questions in the future, if you don't mind!

Lolepana wrote:

I've already sent some CVS and received replies asking for an invoice number

Maybe this is a language issue, but an invoice number is just a number on a bill (i.e. a bill a company (seller) sends to a client (buyer) for services provided or products delivered). And an invoice number will change on each bill and is a number that only means something to the company issuing the bill.

If they ask for an invoice, then to me they are treating you like a contractor, not an employee prospect.

Do they maybe rather want a tax ID number? Or a VAT number?

Just checking. For clarification.

I checked again, they're asking for an invoice not an invoice number (I think I confused it with the system we have here, where the employer requires some sort of tax number, sorry!).

Yes, that's basically it, we wouldn't be employees as we'd work on freelance basis. (If we find a school that is able to employ us full-time, we'd take that and move to budapest. But if we don't, we're planning on working on freelance basis with different schools, get some extra money, and travel around hungary/eastern Europe.)

Lolepana wrote:

I checked again, they're asking for an invoice not an invoice number (I think I confused it with the system we have here, where the employer requires some sort of tax number, sorry!).

Yes, that's basically it, we wouldn't be employees as we'd work on freelance basis. (If we find a school that is able to employ us full-time, we'd take that and move to budapest. But if we don't, we're planning on working on freelance basis with different schools, get some extra money, and travel around hungary/eastern Europe.)

Well, then it should be simple. If you have a tax number in your home country ask them about how to proceed. For example, you may be okay to just invoice the client and report the taxes back home on your personal tax number. The "worst" case is you simply would need to register in your home country as a freelance worker (or start a Sole Proprietor business). Then create an invoice to the client you will work for (search for "how to create an invoice" to get ideas how this is done, there are even online invoice generators). You do not need to worry about Hungarian tax authorities, just the one where you register yourself as taxed (i.e. in your home country).

Side note: if you do not plan to make a lot, then ask about being "VAT Exempt". This means you do not need to collect VAT. There are different limits in each country where you ask for this status, but if you can get it, it is worth it since you will  be providing services only and thus will rarely ask for "VAT back" on business purchases.

If your home country has an income tax treaty with Hungary -- and many countries do -- then it may also come into play in determining your income tax liabilities.

https://en.nav.gov.hu/taxation/double_taxation_treaties

zif wrote:

If your home country has an income tax treaty with Hungary -- and many countries do -- then it may also come into play in determining your income tax liabilities.

https://en.nav.gov.hu/taxation/double_taxation_treaties

Yes, one should always check such treaties, but it is unlikely to be relevant here since most treaties deal with people or businesses which declare personal or have business residency in Hungary. And a short term contractor almost never does this. And between EU countries, this is standardized as such.

But, then if a treaty does come into effect, it is probably a good thing as it normally eliminates tax to a short term contractor, but it will matter how long the contractor stays in Hungary or if they have a "fixed place of business". For example, in the USA-Hungary treaty, a teaching contractor, with a fixed USA place of business may work tax free  (Hungarian tax, not USA tax)  in Hungary for 183 days (ARTICLE 13, Independent Personal Services).

A fixed place of business is rather easy to secure. One can simply have a "home business". And "home" can be any brick and mortar building offered from parents, friends, relative, to register where one works, even when one is abroad. Some try to use a P.O. Box, but this is normally not legal or legit in my countries, so I do not recommend it.

"Yes, one should always check such treaties, but it is unlikely to be relevant here since most treaties deal with people or businesses which declare personal or have business residency in Hungary."

A tax treaty may be very relevant in the OP's situation, by providing a clear exemption from Hungarian income tax.

For example, under Article XIII of the U.S.-Hungary Tax Treaty, an American's income from performing personal services independently (that is, not as an employee) is exempt from Hungarian income tax so long as he does not spend more than 182 days in Hungary and does not have a "fixed base" in Hungary for performing the services. That is, the treaty provides a safe harbor from Hungarian income tax, if you can meet the requirements.

Of course, the safe harbor applies only to income tax, and not to VAT, for example.

Similar provisions exist in most other tax treaties, though the details may vary a bit.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/hungary.pdf

(Some duplication with your post; I must have missed it on first reading: sorry!)

Again, I cannot thank you enough for all the help you're giving us! I'm looking into this treaty business right now but from what you're saying, it looks like I was worrying for nothing - it's doable!

....I am going to be a bit greedy and ask something else; Would it be possible to get paid in cash rather than with a bank transaction since it will probably not be  worth opening a bank account for just a couple of months?

Hi again. We should discuss the invoice and tax numbers the schools want in a private email. You can Google me or look me up on Facebook and contact me either way. Just too much info to write on this site. Anything I can do to help, just let me know.

Gary Lukatch

Hello,
regarding invoices I would suggest you not to create a company but ideally get salary / employment contract
(to create a kft is easy and quick however if you leave the country after 3-4 months only it may be a bureaucratic nightmare to delete the company),
regarding accommodation : I suggest pest side/ V or VI district, Airbnb is expensive, you will find more than 30 Erasmus Budapest groups with many flats for rent or club immo,
Any other questions do not hesitate to contact me
Rgds
Sebastien

Lolepana wrote:

Would it be possible to get paid in cash rather than with a bank transaction since it will probably not be  worth opening a bank account for just a couple of months?

That in entirely up you and those that hire you.

Most employee positions require bank transfer.

if you want to be paid in cash, and you are a contractor, simply inform your client, and if they are okay with that, they should be able to make out a receipt to you and pay you in cash.

But... if you are reasonably paid, walking around with significant amounts of cash may not be safe.

Personally, I would recommend you just have your employer/client wire the payment to your bank account in your home country, then just carry an ATM debit card for that account here and withdraw cash from any ATM as needed.

BUT - be advised that, last time I checked, each international bank transfer will cost you around 30 euro!

Teachrman wrote:

BUT - be advised that, last time I checked, each international bank transfer will cost you around 30 euro!

If you have a bank account in another European country, you can try to get payments through Transferwise, it is the cheapest system available, because you make a local deposit on their website, and they make another local transaction for you in the target country. Really worth it!

All the other replies here are good and honest. I will just add my two forints worth. The salaries here are very low compared to UK,  but living here is much cheaper.  Students love to learn English and TEFL is very much in demand, you would get any school (gymnasium, false friend) to take you on, it will be very easy to find work.

You first need to get an address, then you get an address card.. then you can open a bank account for them to pay your salary/remuneration into.

https://helpers.hu/services/immigration is a good site.

Then you get a resident's card, and you get your tax card and health card. If you are EU citizens you are entitled to use the Hungarian hospitals for free (this is a reciprocal agreement) and you can use your English NI cards but it is easier if you get a Hungarian health card, I forget who issues those.

You will find yourself going from office to office as it is all done in a certain kinda Sir Humphrey Appleby manner that you cannot do it all in one place.

As it happens the woman who announces in English on the metro and buses is called Rachel Appleby - I wonder if she is related

You will love it here, it gets very cold in winter but by March we should have some nice weather. We have had a nice Autumn/Fall but now it is starting to get cold, and can get very cold overnight, maybe -20C sometimes.

Get yourselves a Hungarian keyboard so you can do the öüóőúá, these are very distinct letters in Hungarian, and you can't really mix them up. On mobile phones often they don't have them, and Hungarians will assume what you mean, but it is best to get them right.

Where my family lives, Szőlősnyaraló, is impossible for me to pronounce so I get the train to Sűlysáp one stop further down and walk the rest, as I just cannot pronounce it and the ticket clerk has no idea where I want to go.

By a fluke my house also is named in Swedish so now I am competing with three languages on a daily basis. It is Rädda Barnen which is the Swedish name for the charity "Save The Children", and "ä' doesn't exist in Hungarian, so I have this constant battle with trying to get any post delivered

I hope you will try also to learn some Hungarian, it is not Latinate or Slavic, it is Finno-Ugric so it is a bit strange to learn but not too tricky when you get the hang of it. Ten million Hungarians seem to manage.

You will also find in many shops, things will be labelled in German or English, so you tend to pick up languages fairly quickly here. My German is terrible, but my neighbour speaks German, Roma, and Hungarian - no English, so we are constantly kinda "switching" between languages, you will find that happens a lot.

But please try to learn some Hungarian as a courtesy, just please and thankyou and things like that.

Interesting answers.
I recently met up with an American lady who has a BA degree and took a 6 month online course to teach English.
She had to volunteer 20 hours teaching before she was hired by an agency here in Hungary.
She paid for the job from my understanding, the cost included all her legal papers to work in HU, their help with immigration and placing her with a job.
She chose to work in the countryside, lots more demand for English teaching out in the country then in Budapest.
She never taught before but had worked in a public school in the US, not clear what she did there but I believe she worked in the school office.
Met her in Budapest in late August.
She paid her own airfare to HU.
The agency placed her in a room for 4 days in the city to get a crash course in how they wanted their new recruits to teach.
About 100 people were hired , each had to sign a one year work contract with option to work longer.
They drove her out to her new town and set her up in a small apt.
They pay for her rent but she pays all other bills, cable etc.
She also has national health insurance coverage with the program.
Her take home pay is what they told her is "middle class" in Hungary.
About $600. a month.
I am not exactly sure how much she paid for the job and all it entailed but the number $1,200 seems like what I heard.
I really should write her and see how she is getting along.
Not as easy as it seemed , they set her up to work in a nice new public school but after she arrived in HU they added a few more places where she must teach a few other days a week.
One village is about a 45 min ride on the bus each way, not something she had considered as part of her contract when she signed the dotted line.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Interesting answers.
I recently met up with an American lady who has a BA degree and took a 6 month online course to teach English.
She had to volunteer 20 hours teaching before she was hired by an agency here in Hungary..

Marilyn, i quite believe you. As an EU citizen you have the right to live and work in any country in the European Union, so i don't have to get visas etc like that. Your advice is good, but I believe the questioner was British, so will not have to get visas in the way an American would have to. We as European Citizens have automatic right to work anywhere in the EU.

It depends if they are European citizens or not.... I had assumed they are British...

Yes if these ladies are from another EU country they wouldn't need all the immigration stuff but overall, I just wanted to inform them that the pay wasn't exactly a dream wage.
My US lady is expected to work full time and run around to 3 different locations to teach for something like $30 a day.
Guess if it's just for a new adventure then that would work but to expect to save anything is impossible.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Yes if these ladies are from another EU country they wouldn't need all the immigration stuff but overall, I just wanted to inform them that the pay wasn't exactly a dream wage.
My US lady is expected to work full time and run around to 3 different locations to teach for something like $30 a day.
Guess if it's just for a new adventure then that would work but to expect to save anything is impossible.

Marilyn you are so old-fashioned in your language, "ladies", I think we are supposed to call them "women" nowadays See, that is one of the hard things with teaching language... apart from the "ladies" being the WC / Mosdo / toaletta whatever, and the "gents" being the one for men (in British English) you now have to make the distinction between a lady and a woman, and how do you do that?

I mean, now, lady is a bit posh and many women actually don't like to be called a lady, as it sounds very patronising... no doubt to you Marilyn it doesn't as you are of a different  background and always polite and it is the natural word for you, I imagine, in my dialect it would sound very patronising... and teaching these subtleties is the hard bit.

Teaching the words is easy. But teaching all the kinda nuances and subtleties is the hard part, the words that are unsaid.

Plus you have all kinds of problems with British English as there are a huge range of dialects and accents and even I have trouble sometimes understanding someone from Wales going at full kilter, and I have lived there... that in the West Midlands for some reason they call a traffic circle/roundabout an "island" which is bizarre because the Highway Code already has something called a traffic island which is where pedestrians can stop in the middle of the street. Are you going to teach them "median" or what?

Theoretically Hungarians are taught British English, but in practice they pick up American English off the telly. I am not saying that's wrong, we are divided by a common language as Wilde put it (and he was Irish) but that you have to kinda know which variant you want to teach. Otherwise are you going to call it a nappy or a diaper, etc etc? Are you going to knock them on the head with a copy of Webster's or throw the Oxford Concise at them when they get it wrong?

I must have about fifty dictionaries in my house, one way or another. When we play scrabble, our "bible" is the Collins Concise I bought about thirty years ago, if a word is in there, it's allowed, if not, not. I also have OSW, Official Scrabble Words, which is what the "professionals" use, but we just don't play those stupid words tiny words that happen to be in OSW. I know a lot of them but I would never play "qi" or "em" or "en" in a game with my missus, what would be the fun in that? We are only playing for fun, so where is the fun in that? You want to, I would say "develop" the game and spread it out a bit so you can lay "quixotic" if you have your chances (and, yes, I have read Don Quixote by Cervantes, I am not that stupid -- I have also read it in Spanish, and various works of Voltaire in French, I am not as green as I am cabbage looking).

So for teaching you have to kinda settle on a standard and stick with it. Hungarians seem to "wobble" if I can put it that way that they THINK they are speaking in British English but actually are using American words.

That bit of ground you have out the back of your house, with grass on it, what is it? In Hungarian, it is a kert. Now, is it going to be a garden (British English) or a yard (American English) although we also say backyard, but not just yard on its own.

Hmm and again I am probably wrong there as there was a comic song, I forget who performed it, called "Don't jump off the roof, Dad, you'll make a hole in the yard". But then I think that was just for comic purposes to rhyme the next line, "Mother's just planted petunias, we didn't think it was hard".

So I always have these constant battles, if you like, with language, that I know too many and then I don't think I could teach at all. I would constantly be making allusions or similes or so on to things in my culture that nobody has any idea about. If you say "It's like Piccadilly Circus" it means it is very busy, how are you going to explain that to a Hungarian who has never been to Piccadilly Circus? How can you possibly make the allusion, translate it, it's like Deak Ferenc tér doesn't seem right...

i just am not cut out for teaching, I haven't the patience. I expect people to understand the first time. I don't think I would have the patience for it.

Having had the privilege of living and working in the US I picked up some US dialect, and of course off the telly, but it would be very confusing to teach both, I think.

Believe me, when I use the term,"Ladies" I am giving everyone the benefit of the doubt!
I use allot more course/coarse words when needed.Coarse,course, English is confusing at times, too many words with different meanings and spellings which sound the same to the ear.
When I'm bs-ing with close friends, I can get down and dirty with language, not exactly lady like though.
Just keepin' it real.
Yard, well my parents were east coasters so in New England we used to say," backyard" instead of just plain old yard.
When we first moved to Ca. in 1959 my mother was having a hard time with words.
She would say, handbag and everyone said purse.
Couch and they'd say sofa.
Soda and they would say pop.
Even in the same  country the language has twists and turns.
I still sometimes say qaauder instead of quarter or waadar for water, paark for park.
That on top of getting mixed up with HU sayings etc. and no wonder people ask where I am from.
Teaching isn't for me either, it like having a child , saying the same thing over and over again and hoping they finally get it.

SimonTrew wrote:

It depends if they are European citizens or not....

The OP is a EU citizen based on her expat path, which says she is Maltese..

SimonTrew wrote:

I had assumed they are British...

There is no need to assume. Simply check a person's expat path.

klsallee wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

It depends if they are European citizens or not....

The OP is a EU citizen based on her expat path, which says she is Maltese..

SimonTrew wrote:

I had assumed they are British...

There is no need to assume. Simply check a person's expat path.

That is OK if someone has updated their expat path, but many don't.

Malta is part of EU so that should not be a problem then. We owned it... and I know a few Maltese people, and worked with them. Maltese is itself a somewhat ununsual language so if they can speak Maltese and English they should probably have their brains "unwired" to be able to speak Hungarian fairly easily.

I worked with Maltese, in UK, for many years, so I really do not need to be told about languages.  I pick up languages very quickly. Others do not. The Maltese have been one of the biggest supporters of the UK Armed Forces forever, although I have never had a tour there, I should go there one day.  I am sure it is beautiful.

What the topic is about is teaching English in Hungary. I offer my advice, being British English as someone who has a degree in computational linguistics. I have worked for companies that DO that professionally, so I am used to juggling languages all the time. I do not always expect my advice to be taken, it is simply offered as my own opinion. People can then make their own judgments.

My point was simply that if you move to Hungary you have to get used to juggling languages on a daily basis, that I speak Hungarian, German, English, Roma, every single day, let alone then slip into French or Spanish for the odd expression now and again, and was doing Italian earlier.

And I am not a professional translator and would not claim to be, but I can get by, I get by for five years with my Hungarian, and I am no expert.

The idea one can live in Hungary with no Hungarian is absurd so I don't think it is right to give that impression.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Believe me, when I use the term,"Ladies" I am giving everyone the benefit of the doubt!
When we first moved to Ca. in 1959 my mother was having a hard time with words.
She would say, handbag and everyone said purse.

My ex was from Ontaria, Canada (not Ontario, CA) and she said purse to mean her handbag. She would ask me to fetch her purse and of course I would get the thing you put the billfolds in, a wallet, we wouldn't call them billfolds but folding money, or paper money although in fact it is made of linen.

So I would get her purse, or rather what I thought was her purse, ie where you keep money, and she would want her handbag.

If you take "The Importance of Being Ernest" by Oscar Wilde, the protagonist was born in a handbag. It is one of the most famous lines, but he was not born in a purse.... so you have this constant struggle even with English. Of course we are mutually unintelligible, divided by a common language as Wilde himself said

It is a matter of dialect and accent. I lived in Texas, and I forget, but that there are probably loads of dialect words there that would be entirely unintelligible to a New Yorker or a Californian. I learned Spanish there, so my Spanish is very much Mexican Spanish and then I have had to re-learn Spanish Spanish.

I forget my English a lot and a lot of words have just gone out of my head, that I just cannot find the word. I have survived five years here, and I do cryptic crosswords and all kinds of word games, but the word just disappears sometimes, the Hungarian "blocks" the English, and I can't think of the Englsh word.

Like, for example, one of my favourite pubs in town is called the Derby Bufé, and I think that Derby there is named for, I presume, the Kentucky Derby or the british Derby (which is not run in Derby but at Aintree usually) and because of the hippodrome/racecourse that is now the Arena Plaza. But a derby in American is what in British we call a bowler hat, so how am I to know? There is this constant juggling act with languages, when you live abroad.

It is part of the fun of it. There are so many things that I know what they ARE but don't know what they are CALLED. My missus went to IKEA today and got four new wall lamps called HEKTAR and you think is that named like as Hector (which I imagine as iKEA usually lets the designer name it after a child or favourite friend), she said, no it is hectare, a unit of area. I think she is wrong on that one, but I have no way of knowing that.

now the missus started lecturing me about hectares which I have a kinda vague concept of, a hundred metres square, but that to me everything is in acres etc, I was born just before we went metric so I grew up doing both.

And yet she didn't know what a furlong was, or a chain or something, some Imperial measurement I had to explain to her. i always call a half litre of beer a pint, even though I know full well a (British) pint is 568ml, but it is just what I call it.

If you want someone in Britain to lend you a cigarette, you bum a fag. But that is probably not a good question to ask in New York

So I think teaching English is not as easy as it seems.

Or that is another good example, that in American "gas" (gasoline) is what you stick in the back of your car, in "Brit" it is petrol, or in Hungarian it is benzin, now benzene is a fairly simple gas that has not much to do with petrol, except you get benzene rings in most of these things. So you have these "false friends" all the time,  that words you think mean the same thing mean totally different things.

viz is the hungarian for water, but in England  it is or was a comic magazinem, in latin it means "look" and in Engish we use it formally as an abbreviation, viz The Telegraph, or whatever.

So you have to get used to what I call juggling, that you are doing three or four languages every day of your life. You get used to it and it becomes natural, but I think would be hard to teach that kinda mind pattern. If you have a talent for languages, as perhaps I do (I also speak Catalan and French and some Japanese) then maybe you can teach it, but I don't think I would be able to.

Dang it all!! Just noticed this original post is from Dec. 2016!!
Wonder how it all worked out for these 2 ,"Gypsy Souls"!
Ok, guess they have moved on already!

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Dang it all!! Just noticed this original post is from Dec. 2016!!
Wonder how it all worked out for these 2 ,"Gypsy Souls"!
Ok, guess they have moved on already!

I suppose so, Marilyn, and often people post and you never hear from them again. But the information we gave acts as a kinda store of knowledge, so is not entirely useless, someone else will look it up and read it....

True, still I often think why bother, most people never let you know if things worked out or not.
I'ts a waste to but too much energy into our answers.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

True, still I often think why bother, most people never let you know if things worked out or not.
I'ts a waste to but too much energy into our answers.

Well, you and I tend to spiel a bit. I am very good with a blue pencil, editing and cutting, and for many years edited my parish newsletter - it is just here, or on other chatsites if I can call them that, there is a much more conversational style.

I find it very difficult to find the balance of formal or informal language, as it is written, but in a conversational style. I find it hard to get the tone right or know how brief or verbose to be. When I write for technical journals etc I write in a very clipped style, it is "just the facts, ma'am". But here, you want to add a bit of colour (or color!)

You tend to tell a shaggy dog story and I enjoy reading it. Else why come here? If you want a brief definition or answer, look in a dictionary or atlas or whatever, we are expats with experience, not a reference library.