The DipNotes

Post edited 7:46 pm – April 2, 2010 by Peter

Absolutely!  We use two places to to help us decide about a post before bidding, one is official, and the other is private.  Taken together, they offer a good glimpse into realities of living at a particular city.

The official site is located on our State Department's internal website, and is called Post Reports.  FS members write detailed reports about the post and cover a variety of topics.  The Post Reports section also has an official report that describes the post in great detail including Embassy details.  This report is not open to the Public.  There is a website that offers old Post Reports (> 4 years old) so you can check a few out to get a feel for what information we can get.  (see link)

My favorite site, however, is one called Real Post Reports.  This free site is really good.  It offers a good glimpse into living at any city in the world and is updated regularly.  The one thing to be careful for though, is that you often get writers who seem to be upper class snobs, or just whiners.  Some seem to have had a poor supervisor, so they allow their dissatisfaction with their work environment to spread over to their analysis of the whole city.  Others do not work in the Foreign Service so they write from the point-of-view of a civilian or worse, a tourist.  But taken together, you can filter out the reports that are probably not helpful and come away with a good idea of what the post has to offer.  I like it and recommend it.

Post edited 7:54 pm – April 2, 2010 by Peter

Staplesei said:

Nice yards and qaint neighborhoods sound great, the picture you posted from Pretoria looks peaceful and safe!

Looks are deceiving!  Pretoria is NOT safe.  The city's crime is getting out of control, second only to Johannesburg.  We had three Embassy families robbed at gunpoint in their homes.  My neighbor came home one day and two guys ran into his home behind him and locked him and his wife in the bathroom while they slowly searched the house and robbed it, and then got a way by stealing their car.  In Pretoria you sleep in a safe-haven.  I would not want to raise a family there.  (outside of the cities, the country is wonderful, and I personally would go back!)

I posted the photo to show that not all posts have you living in high-rise apartments in dirty crowded cities.  In fact, I have only lived in an apartment in Vienna and Singapore.  I lived in a house in Warsaw, Pretoria and Islamabad and my wife is in a nice home in Fiji.

Post edited 7:49 pm – April 2, 2010 by Peter

Embassies exist to conduct diplomacy, so they must be located where the diplomatic missions are – the Capitols.  However, not all capital cities are the biggest, and not all are dirty or polluted.

Canberra Australia has a reputation of being boring and quiet.

Pretoria (capitol of the South Africa) is a small city, with little air pollution, it does however have a high crime rate.  Most Embassy employees live in homes with nice yards, in quant neighborhoods.   Here's a photo of my street in front of my home in Pretoria:

Many Embassy staff in Warsaw Poland live outside of the city in more rural settings.  The city itself was not dirty, or crowded.

Then again – there are certainly cities that are uncomfortable, due to overcrowding and/or pollution, such as Nairobi, New Deli and Cairo.

U.S. Consulates are smaller, and are often located in smaller cities, such as Cape Town, South Africa and Krakow, Poland.  But if you want to live out in the country, far from a city, then you will not find it in the Foreign Service.