living in europe

Following up to chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and
prestwich tesco 24h offy

We are
surprised by those who speak Spanish.

Ah, you haven't been to the US then!

I haven't, but I have friends there who speak Spanish and its
common to see Spanish speaking Americans in Spain..

I don't know what the statistics
are, but when I meet an American who does speak another language, it's
often Spanish.
--
Mike Reid
Walk-eat-UK "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" -- you can email us@ this site
Walk-eat-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" -- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap
Photos of both "http://www.lawn-mower-man.co.uk"

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 21:50:25 +0100, DDT Filled Mormons wrote:

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:12:31 +0200, Tim Challenger
wrote:

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:37:59 GMT, Rita wrote:

I like clothing that can stand up without frequent laundering,

just like most of my clothes when I was a student ... ;-)

Mine too. Now I use the expression on my wife's face as a reference.

I know what you mean :-(
--
Tim C.

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 20:01:13 +0000 (UTC), Juliana L Holm
wrote:

It is true that we learn language differently than children do, but not at all
true that we don't learn as well.

I don't know if my mode of learning languages was different when I was
young, but I know it was much more difficult for me to learn Italian
in my 50s than it was to learn Spanish, French, and German in my late
teens and early 20s.

One example is gender. I never had problems remembering the gender of
nouns when I was young, but now I still make mistakes of gender when
speaking Italian, even with words that I use fairly often. I used to
be able to glance at a list of words and remember them forever (with
their genders or verb forms). No more, unfortunately.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 09:18:18 +0100, The Reids
wrote:

Following up to Mxsmanic

Also, I''m nowhere near fluent in any language but English, and
it's much harder to become so when one is elderly.

Age is not an impediment to the acquisition of additional languages.

its much harder to learn languages as you get older, or any other
memory dependant thing.

I used to have an almost photographic memory when I was younger. I
would say I still have a good memory, but nothing like it once was. It
has nothing to do with motivation; it is more or less involuntary.

I realized on my last trip to the US that I had left my little address
book at home. I sat down to see if I could remember the phone numbers
of the various friends and relatives I wanted to call, and realized
that I really had no need of the address book. There was exactly one
person whose phone number I hadn't already (inadvertently) memorized.
I'm always rather surprised when I see someone looking up a phone
number that it seems to me they should know, for instance someone
looking up his son's phone number.

However, when I was young, I used to remember phone numbers and
license plates that I had seen only once and had no desire to
memorize. When I lived in Philadelphia, I could have told you the
phone number of nearly every public office and a large number of
commercial establishments, just because I had had occasion to call
them at some time or other. Let's say that when I was young, I hardly
had need of the White Pages, now I'm reduced to hardly having need of
my personal address book.

--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 09:59:09 +0100,
(chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco 24h
offy) wrote:

.... I doubt that Americans are any more
conservative on food than anyone else. They have plenty of variety of
food in the US!

I don't know any Americans as conservative on food as the average
Italian.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:58:44 +0100, "Miss L. Toe"
wrote:


"The Reids" wrote in message
.. .
Following up to EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)

One of my favorites is the backpackers note not to wear jeans in europe
sinde
you will be identified as an American. On my last few trips to europe
it
seemed everyone was wearing jeans!

I've certainly seen "designer" jeans on plenty of young
people in Paris and Vienna and Brussels! (Jusging from the
variety of languages I overheard them speaking, they were
definitely NOT Americans.)

Jeans have been popular for at least 30 years, how do these myths
carry on so long? I didn't even realise they were supposed to be
American when I was young.

Where do you think the word denim came from ? :-)

And, for that matter the word "jeans".?

--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:18:23 -0700, "Mimi"
wrote:


"Chris Jones" wrote in message
...
I've done this a few times. See a discussion of issues you will face in
my chapter "Living in Europe: Travel to the Max as an Expatriate" at
http://www.enjoy-europe.com/hte/chap22/living.htm

Interesting read, to see how European things are viewed from "the other
side". However, I'm wondering how long ago this was written? Some things,
such as "Because credit cards are expensive, few Europeans use them" are
simply no longer true.

According to Barbara Vaughn, it is true in Italy.

I don't think it's because they're expensive, though. More likely
because Italians are loathe to borrow money for any reason whatsover.
Also, credit cards don't offer all the safeguards and guarantees that
American credit cards do. You would find it very difficult to cancel a
charge because the goods or services were not satisfactory, for
example.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

Martin,

Thank you very much. I will do some editing. Your comments are appreciated.

John

Martin Rich wrote:
On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 23:48:22 +0100, "Chris Jones"
wrote:


Interesting read, to see how European things are viewed from "the other
side". However, I'm wondering how long ago this was written? Some things,
such as "Because credit cards are expensive, few Europeans use them" are
simply no longer true.


It's also an indication of how difficult it is to generalise. I don't
know how old the author is, but he refers to having been in France as
a student; certainly if he'd spent time in France within the last 25
years he'd have found credit cards widely used. He's spent time more
recently in Germany, which is a little less geared up to credit cards,
though that's more a cultural thing than a case of retailers not being
able to afford the charges.

I'm puzzled by the reference to an hour of soak time in a washing
machine: the programme that we most frequently use on our Bosch
washing machine runs for just 62 minutes - though there are many
longer progammes with soaks and pre-washes that you can select if you
need them. As far as I know most washing machines these days do
accept both hot and cold fills, though they tend only to use hot fills
for the hotttest programmes.

The reference to renting unfurnished apartments which don't even have
a kitchen sink is true of Germany; it's not true of everywhere in
Europe. It's as alien to me (from Britain) as it is to the author
(from America). Similarly, don't expect to find the elaborate triage
arrangements for domestic rubbish (separating paper, different
coloured glass, etc) described here to be replicated in every country,
though in my bit of London we are now being asked to separate food and
garden waste as well as paper, plastic and glass.

And, like somebdoy else in a thread, I don't recognise the bit about
always keeping internal doors closed: of course if you have a room
that you really don't occupy, such as a spare bedroom used as a box
room, you wouldn't heat it and it would be prudent to keep the door
closed in winter, but that's the only instance that I can think of.

Actually the bit about electrical sockets in British Isles not being
standardised (in the electrical chapter on another page) rather dates
it - apart from shaver sockets, and assuming you aren't going to be
connecting up theatre lighting or heavy-duty power tools, a visitor to
Britain would only come across the standard 13-amp sockets these days.

Finally, in pedantic mode note that the phone code for London hasn't
been +44 1 for many years - it is now +44 20 .

Hope this is taken in a constructive vein...

Martin


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"B Vaughan" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:58:44 +0100, "Miss L. Toe"
wrote:

Where do you think the word denim came from ? :-)

And, for that matter the word "jeans".?

denim most likely "de nimes" (a center of French cloth manufacture in
the old days)

Jeans might be Genes (Genoa)

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 10:14:12 -0400, "Robert J Carpenter"
wrote:


"B Vaughan" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:58:44 +0100, "Miss L. Toe"
wrote:

Where do you think the word denim came from ? :-)

And, for that matter the word "jeans".?

denim most likely "de nimes" (a center of French cloth manufacture in
the old days)

Jeans might be Genes (Genoa)

Right on both. C'mon, you looked it up, didn't you?



--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup