Four months continuous in Germany, only reason I came back was mum’s Alzheimer’s getting to the point of needing more care than my family and inlaws could provide themselves. When she gets too bad for me to be of any use, I’m off again.
I’ll miss chips and the NHS. I’ll miss my friends. I won’t miss the country — especially not in the current toxic political situation.
And that’s why I never bought a place in Merthyr Tydfil despite being famously affordable, and also why I moved out of Aberystwyth when I graduated despite it looking pretty and being a good place for really long quiet countryside walks.
High unemployment in an area sucks even when you personally have a job. Given nothing will stop Brexit, I wish I could say I thought Westminster cared enough to provide replacements for EU support of the poorest regions of the UK… but, and this is mere opinion, I don’t think it can see past Kensington nine days out of ten.
I know you were. I’m saying that conditions in the UK are about to get a lot worse because the impoverished areas are about to lose support that Westminster doesn’t appear to understand that it needs to replace post-Brexit — support which would still be necessary even if Brexit had literally zero economic effects, which, given their track record of overconfidence since Austerity began, would be a surprisingly good outcome.
Come on though, this supposed austerity is nothing of the sort, with lavish benefits still in place and an unsustainable level of public spending, never mind the gargantuan debt - and we don't even have a proper low tax alternative political party anymore now that the Tories have decided to keep the spending taps turned on full. And no one really knows what's going to happen post Brexit. We could become the successful low-tax Singapore style trading hub that so terrifies Europe. I can speculate also.
Noise levels can be pretty bad in big UK cities too. Especially London. Too many extra-loud modified motorbikes, too many overflying Heathrow planes. But yes, British people are for the most part polite!
Oh yes. My trips to countries such as Thailand, Italy, Holland, Japan, Denmark, the US (Pittsburgh, LA, NY) and Spain can never end quickly enough.
The thought occurs to me that you've only visited France and whatever they're calling Czechoslovakia this year.
Whereas as someone who spends quite a lot of time each year in Spain and Italy, and dearly love both; have family in one and a partner from the other - we are both quite glad to return to Britain after a few weeks away.
She, particularly, sees the downsides of her home country quite quickly. I have a bit more tolerance, but there're elements of a certain flavour of society missed. For us, anyway.
Oh, and I visited Czechia (whatever) for the first time last year and was smitten... but I was only there for a couple of weeks. Not really enough time to form any useful - or, indeed, completely useless - comparisons.
I’ll miss chips and the NHS. I’ll miss my friends. I won’t miss the country — especially not in the current toxic political situation.