You might get away in a restaurant in Berlin speaking only english, but it's no fun to live in a country where you can't understand anything written, whether it is to fill your taxes, or interact with your bank, or where every website will be localized to the local language.
If you and your whole team speak Dutch and Spanish and German, then of course you can hesitate between London, Amsterdam, Barcelona or Berlin.
And you want to make friends, right? Well, there are lots of other people who want to make friends too: other foreigners who moved there. Who also don't speak the local language.
So you end up finding that learning German or whatever ends up being not much easier than doing so in high school: your opportunities to practice are limited. I have learned it, but basically through just doing lessons. My best Swiss friend comes from the French speaking part, so that was no help.
> your opportunities to practice are limited
I spent 1 weekend in Zurich. I had a lot of opportunities to practice, falling back to English only when needed.
Then I went to Germany for a bit and again had endless opportunities to practice.
You still have to deal with eating, shopping, renting a place, going to a doctor, etc.
If the first thing that comes out of your mouth is "English, bitte?", yeah, you're not learning anything.
And the other foreigners there? Some have better German than English. They also want to learn.
Swiss people learn English in school. I have only met a few who cannot speak English well. It's a much more common issue that I want to speak German with them, but they don't actually like German (it's something of a foreign language too compared to dialect), and they prefer to practice their English with me. Linguistic tugs of war are always awkward.
I fully agree with you, I was at a beginner's level on that occasion. Yes, if you are conversational then it's not going to change much (from your original post it seemed you barely spoke German)
And yes, the way to progress from conversational to the upper levels is mainly through classes
> but they don't actually like German (it's something of a foreign language too compared to dialect)
Ah that's true. Nobody speaks Hochdeutsch on everyday life. And Schweizerdeutsch is weird
The Eurozone: Not in the next 2 years, but the structures are fundamentally unsound so something will have to give. Most likely outcome is further political and economic integration of the Eurozone members which would avoid a breakup at the cost of being unpopular. There's just too much trade that depends on the Euro.
Not if "non-mainstream" politicians win election. Not unlikely at all at this moment.
>Polls recently conducted in Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Hungary also showed that these countries could follow Britain if it succeeds in leaving the EU. Euroskeptic politicians in these countries have been adding fuel to the fire, stepping up their calls for EU-exits in light of the British referendum.
On Wednesday, French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen stressed that France should have its own ‘Frexit’ vote.
“What I'm asking for is a referendum in France. Every EU member should be able to have its say in a referendum,” the National Front leader told France's TF1 television. A March poll by the University of Edinburgh found that 53 percent of the French are in favor of a referendum on leaving the Union.
30% of Germans want to quit EU as support for Merkel’s govt. drops below 50% While a YouGov poll in May, commissioned by Handelsblatt newspaper, found that 29 percent of Germans would leave the EU if a referendum was to take place. Only 54 percent of those living in the country supported staying in the bloc.
The mood is reportedly the same in the Netherlands, with a February opinion poll finding that 53 percent of Dutch citizens want a 'Nexit' referendum. Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch right-wing, populist PVV party, currently topping opinion polls, openly expressed hopes a ‘Nexit’ could follow a ‘Brexit.’ https://www.rt.com/viral/348039-brexit-eu-referendum-domino/
In comparision, the Scotish referendum was more detailed and got a lot more debate. The blog article "Brexit was a con" explains that in the first part: https://medium.com/@kirstymhall/brexit-was-a-con-67532113a7c...
There was plenty of discussion of the consequences, heck, the remain campaign focused more or less ONLY on the consequences of the EU's economic retaliation.
Leaving the EU will absolutely allow immigration to be pushed down, though likely not to the "tens of thousands per year" figure that seems to have been arbitrarily chosen simply because that'd result in too many very useful and in-demand people being excluded. But the type of immigration that has caused so much malcontent in the regions can absolutely be close to eliminated, i.e. poor unskilled workers coming from eastern Europe and undercutting the wages of the locals.
How will leaving the EU push immigration down? As I pointed out, a good deal of immigration coming from outside the EU. And the EU part will probably not be affected by Brexit either, because free movement is tied to free trade. Or do you think that the UK will give up free trade with the EU?
The EU will either sign a free trade deal with the UK of some sort (possibly not as free as within the single market), or it will simply fuel its own collapse.
You don't have to be pro-EU to see this as a bad way to run a country (although it helps).
The exact details of a relationship post-Brexit are impossible to know because the EU refuses to even contemplate such a possibility, let alone discuss it. That's a problem of their own creation however, and that attitude is exactly what has stoked the fires of euroscepticism across the continent. You can sometimes put off reality by denying it, but not forever.
I'm confused. Do you agree or disagree with zb that the referendum pitted a well known against a complete unknown?
I think people only read the first sentence of most posts, and your first sentence is wrong -- everything about this referendum was dumb.
It was dumb to have the referendum in the first place. Cameron had it in order to try to resolve an internal Tory party dispute.
It was dumb to have a 50:50 threshold. A massive constitutional change should require a supermajority.
The arguments (on all sides) were largely lies.
And the outcome won't even be what anyone wants. The leavers won't get what they voted for. Almost everyone will be shafted.
I don't disagree with the rest of what you say, but I would add that a government that puts together a referendum that is not a foregone conclusion, that does not prepare for an adverse decision, is incompetent and negligent enough to be considered criminal.
But, as counter arguments I see that,
a) there is a big(?) risk for Europe itself to fall apart within the next couple of years,
b) those cities cannot possibly replace London in the next few years. I think they'll probably share the "tech" that London will lose, and the gap will shorten between them and London.
Also, by being a contractor in the UK, I now see that this nice tax efficient way of working, does not apply in other countries, Germany for example. So after all, London might still be more attractive for some. ( Ltd tax might fall even more for example )