Leaving the country - what will I miss/not miss?

[arunadasi 7,074]

I miss the sunshine. Ireland is as they say: mostly rainy and grey. And to think I always said I'd retire to a tropical country!

However I can put up with it I've decided. It's cold I dislike rather than rain. And the people are maybe the best in Europe, certainly easier to get on with than Germans.

 

I don't miss the lack of personal engagement between people. Here, everyone wants a chat with you, from the bus driver to the doctor; it's never just business as usual.

The greeting  is How are you? And the established answer is Not too bad, as if "bad" is the default! 

[RedMidge 6,499]

8 hours ago, nina_glyndwr said:

 

In my aunt's village in Wales, they only have one food shop now and it's really expensive. Only for emergencies. The four posts offices they used to have have all closed down. Now... it's either 8 miles in one direction or 12 miles in the other for the nearest post office and weekly food shopping. And it's a relatively large village of 4,000 people.

 

Friends in Somerset and Devon tell me the local bus routes have been reduced to every 2 hours. Hard for those who do not drive, are elderly . 

[HEM 10,731]

15 minutes ago, RedMidge said:

 

Friends in Somerset and Devon tell me the local bus routes have been reduced to every 2 hours. Hard for those who do not drive, are elderly . 

 

To be honest similar happens here - in darkest Niedersachsen (where my club has held its Sommerlager in past years) every two hours would be a good frequency!

Nice peaceful area - as long as you are able to drive as the next Supermarket is a 20 minute drive away.  Once you are past driving live gets difficult.

[jeremytwo 2,751]

4 hours ago, arunadasi said:

And the people are maybe the best in Europe, certainly easier to get on with than Germans.

 

Now Aruna you chose well. This is the land which makes awesome pipe music like this:

 

 

Always loved this band, along with Clannad and all that folk stuff.

[LukeSkywalker 7,278]

5 hours ago, arunadasi said:

And to think I always said I'd retire to a tropical country!

Be glad you are not in Sri Lanka with all the bomb attacks of recent times. Tourists numbers will decline for years to come.

[Tap 8,349]

2 hours ago, jeremytwo said:

 

Now Aruna you chose well. This is the land which makes awesome pipe music like this:

 

 

Always loved this band, along with Clannad and all that folk stuff.

I always loved Moving Hearts and I'm a huge fan of Christy Moore. So much good music to choose from, this topic is making me homesick! 

[jeremytwo 2,751]

30 minutes ago, Tap said:

I always loved Moving Hearts and I'm a huge fan of Christy Moore. So much good music to choose from, this topic is making me homesick! 

One of my fave songs by him is "Irish Ways and Irish Laws" of which I believe Sinead O'Connor did a cover. Complex, mad yet fascinating lady. 

[Keefy 3,573]

4 hours ago, jeremytwo said:

 

Now Aruna you chose well. This is the land which makes awesome pipe music like this:

 

 

Always loved this band, along with Clannad and all that folk stuff.

This video reminds me in a way (at least the beginning) of the Grateful Dead's "China Cat Sunflower"...showing my age here, I guess :-(

[dj_jay_smith 3,445]

On 8/16/2019, 11:15:50, LukeSkywalker said:

 

 

@john g: tell your hairdresser about the expensive health care insurance and she will stay in Greece :).

 

 

I think you forget that he is an insurance broker.

So he has not only encouraged her to go but sold her all the insurance that she will ever need for the whole family!

[jeremytwo 2,751]

18 minutes ago, Keefy said:

This video reminds me in a way (at least the beginning) of the Grateful Dead's "China Cat Sunflower"...showing my age here, I guess :-(

I don't know that song but  I relate to people 15 years my senior having raided their record collections. On continuous play recently on my car stereo was Frampton Comes Alive! :)

[Guest]

47 minutes ago, jeremytwo said:

I don't know that song but  I relate to people 15 years my senior having raided their record collections. On continuous play recently on my car stereo was Frampton Comes Alive! :)

 

Grateful Dead is great for long runs.    Live is almost always better than studio.   

 

 

[jeremytwo 2,751]

19 minutes ago, balticus said:

 

Grateful Dead is great for long runs.    Live is almost always better than studio.   

 

 

 

What I like is they allowed free recording of their live sets. The very earliest and best of open source till Big Tech wrecked it.

[jeremytwo 2,751]

3 hours ago, jeremytwo said:

One of my fave songs by him is "Irish Ways and Irish Laws" of which I believe Sinead O'Connor did a cover. Complex, mad yet fascinating lady. 

 

Odd that I mention Sinead eh?

 

 

[MikeMelga 6,969]

On 8/26/2019, 9:11:34, Kommentarlos said:

I am sure MikeMelga has his own opinion on the subject but I would hazard to say that it is a little more complex than Riverdance. 

Look at the video below.

On 8/26/2019, 9:17:05, john g. said:

Ha! Mike is a bit rough around the edges and will probably tell me to f... off!

Moi and I , on the other hand, am a sensitive Cancerian male!!!

 

Of course not! Personally I am not an admirer of Fado, but there are very interesting things about it, especially the guitar part.

And Fado comes with different flavors. Sad and melancolic. Or happy.

Fado from Coimbra is much more interesting than the best known Fado from Lisbon. It has medieval roots and, along Porto, have a very strong link to academic traditions.

 

This is a great example of Portuguese guitar player, who also played Fado:

 

[optimista 5,533]

I am a big fan of Fado. Heard the best. Live. Raw. Emotive.

 

This thread has morphed by the way...

[arunadasi 7,074]

On 8/28/2019, 2:20:20, LukeSkywalker said:

Be glad you are not in Sri Lanka with all the bomb attacks of recent times. Tourists numbers will decline for years to come.

 

Well, living as I do on the Irish border and crossing it (or family members crossing it) sometimes several times a day, you never know after Brexit.

My daughter lives in the north, I (and my son) in the south. We all go back and forth. Son and I are her main babysitters.

[yourkeau 7,672]

On 8/28/2019, 10:23:20, arunadasi said:

I miss the sunshine.

Sunshine? In Germany?

 

Climate wise I miss cool nights. Over here in the Mediterranean I cannot sleep without A/C on.

I do not miss rain in summer especially while hiking in the nature.

 

I miss snow, but I do not miss winter tires and snow chains. Driving the whole year on summer tires is fine with me.

 

I miss Bratwurst, good Bavarian cheese (specifically: Allgäuer Bergkäse and Austrian Hartkäse) and waiters calculating the bill for each person in the group.

 

I miss the autobahn, but not the roadworks every 50 km, and of course not Stau.

 

I miss people having a clue about what they do, but I do not miss people lecturing me (if I did not ask to).

 

I miss the Alps and ability to cross multiple borders without stopping.

 

I miss environmental consciousness (like refusal to use plastic), but not Luddism and a hate for credit cards.

 

In 2019 I am here as a tourist. At my last day I stopped at the gas station. Of course, no automatic payment possible, so they put a cash desk guy under bullet proof glass as if this is Lebannon and not a remote Bavarian village. You put money in a metallic box and then push this box to the other side of the bullet proof glass. They cash desk guy started yelling and waving hands at me as if I committed some grave crime. Since he was separated by a bullet proof glass, I did not hear a word, but his sign language I understood that I put the money in a wrong place, so he has difficulty in taking it. He angrily throw the rest to the box and pushed it yet.

 

I was a bit shocked because after 1 year of Mediterranean warm I lost my skills of doing everything correctly or risk being yelled at. Did I really shared a country with this idiot for the whole 7 years? Did I?

 

Bye, Bavaria, servus.

[Sannerl 2,466]

Where from have you got your time machine?

[yourkeau 7,672]

You mean the gas station? It's on the way to Memmingen airport, basically the last station before it, I stopped to tank a car before returning it at the airport. Actually, I have never seen anything like this anywhere in Germany, but people yelling for no reason, that happened from time to time in various other situations, between 2011 and 2018 when I lived in Bavaria.

[Sannerl 2,466]

24 minutes ago, yourkeau said:

You mean the gas station? It's on the way to Memmingen airport, basically the last station before it, I stopped to tank a car before returning it at the airport. Actually, I have never seen anything like this anywhere in Germany, but people yelling for no reason, that happened from time to time in various other situations, between 2011 and 2018 when I lived in Bavaria.

 

I don't get a lot of yelling, but lots of sunshine and hardly any snow...