time please wrote: ↑Thu Sep 30, 2021 8:02 pm
Lets do a deal!
I have food, petrol, easy travel, can send and buy goods anywhere in Europe ( not meaning England here ) without problem.
I want tea and Marmite.
Any Brexiters wishing to deal?
From previous posts I suspect that you live in France. I lived there for 18 years so I have some knowledge.
The two countries are very very different. The people think in different ways, customs are different.
Tea; UK brands available in supermarkets, cafes and restaurants. OK so the water is different so the taste is different. Marmite - Yeuch but I think I saw it in SuperU (which is their equivalent of Tesco)
de Gaulle complained about 2500 different cheeses - yes we often found some which we liked but after a month they were never available again.
Restaurants are open for short and fixed hours - if you are half way through a meal when they shut you do not get the next course.
Language - every commune has its own patois. We lived 100 metres from the next commune and the two have different patois. It took me 2 years to fully understand my next door neighbour and official notices were in occitan - yet another language.
Law; the mayor is king/queen; you stay on their right side or they can make life interesting. OTOH they can ease the way - planning permission can take months until her secretary put me in touch with their planning department - a quick meeting, re-draw the plans and it took 5 days. (The planner wanted a room name change to overcome a potential delay later!)
Poverty; there was plenty around but the underground helped those who needed it. Don't believe statistics; for example unemployment does not include anyone who worked for even a week in the year and the Aude was a tourist area for July and August. !!% unemployment ?- my guess is 40%
Rail transport; any one journey within Languedoc Roussilon in the holiday season.was one euro! Using my car I could be in the Med in 65 minutes or skiing in a tax-free country in 90 minutes.
The French medical arena is excellent - I am deemed chronically ill but no doctors appointments needed - simply a wait of up to 40 minutes., 5 days delay to see a consultant with all scans, tests etc done when I arrived so he had the fresh details on his desk. My wife had an accident - 40 minutes in A & E to sort out cuts (they avoided stitches to her face "because ladies are concerned about their appearance" and an xray fro a minor fracture. Cheap but refunded by Newcastle the French are insured automatically.
Law - different but not generally intrusive. My hamlet had 4 occupied houses and one day the Gendamerie raided in force - about 6 of them, armed of course. Very polite and friendly but they were searching for an Englishman named Nick Quinton. I was not quick or cheeky enough to tell them that some of his anti-smoking patches were in my medical drawer
Education is "different". In our area a lot of young kids were forced to go to boarding school; a contributor here was teachers' assistant at a local school and suggests the girls .....CH legal cases come to mind as a comparison. A friend had the choice of a school in Paris or Toulouse for her speciality whilst she was a young teen and her school tried to require her to go to a specific employer as a cheap apprentice. In medicine it is claimed that the state decides how many passes shall be given and after that everyone fails the exams.
I loved France and was almost sorry to return to UK. It is very very different and I have seen too many Brits in foreign countries who are simply incapable of accepting local mores. My immediate boss in London was one such - he simply could not go to to Head Office even after 2 years of language lessons. I was fortunate in having lived and worked in four other countries with three foreign languages before retiring so it was easy for me to assimilate.