I’m torn over this because clearly we have a lot of willfully ignorant people in this country but then they’re usually the ones too poor or insulated to travel.
Oh, I've encountered Brits who expect the entire world to speak English, cook English food & have road signs in English just for them... and complain that 'abroad' is FULL of foreigners.... [lol]
Definitely. Once, when we lived in Germany close to the Dutch border, friends would always take a walk with their children to the Netherlands. They loved it. And for two decades we lived in NL in the middle between Germany and Belgium, never more than half an hour to be abroad. We were really happy when the Euro was introduced.
I can imagine that the Euro made things easier in a lot of ways! I remember we stopped somewhere on our return from Amsterdam and the shop was like a money exchange as it accepted SO many different currencies with the shifting daily exchange rates. Sounded like a nightmare!!
When we lived in the UK, I would have five different purses on me when travelling back home because we crossed three other countries with other currencies. And when we started to live in the Netherlands, I often needed francs and marks in addition to the guilders. It really was a nightmare.
That really IS a nightmare! The only comparison I can think of was when we transferred from 'old' money' to 'new money' in the early 70's. The shops would accept either type (although the still had to work out the prices in each depending on what you had in your pocket) but they only gave 'new' decimal money back. I think this lasted for quite a while. A few months I think! Although you ran out of 'old' money pretty quickly... [lol]
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I’m torn over this because clearly we have a lot of willfully ignorant people in this country but then they’re usually the ones too poor or insulated to travel.
Oh, I've encountered Brits who expect the entire world to speak English, cook English food & have road signs in English just for them... and complain that 'abroad' is FULL of foreigners.... [lol]
Everyone is a foreigner. Almost everywhere.
True. Even a few miles away from where you live sometimes....
Definitely. Once, when we lived in Germany close to the Dutch border, friends would always take a walk with their children to the Netherlands. They loved it. And for two decades we lived in NL in the middle between Germany and Belgium, never more than half an hour to be abroad. We were really happy when the Euro was introduced.
I can imagine that the Euro made things easier in a lot of ways! I remember we stopped somewhere on our return from Amsterdam and the shop was like a money exchange as it accepted SO many different currencies with the shifting daily exchange rates. Sounded like a nightmare!!
When we lived in the UK, I would have five different purses on me when travelling back home because we crossed three other countries with other currencies. And when we started to live in the Netherlands, I often needed francs and marks in addition to the guilders. It really was a nightmare.
That really IS a nightmare! The only comparison I can think of was when we transferred from 'old' money' to 'new money' in the early 70's. The shops would accept either type (although the still had to work out the prices in each depending on what you had in your pocket) but they only gave 'new' decimal money back. I think this lasted for quite a while. A few months I think! Although you ran out of 'old' money pretty quickly... [lol]
I don't remember shops still accepting the old money. You could go to the bank and exchange it. But maybe there were a couple of days in between.
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