****ty exchange rate, any place in europe worth visiting?

In article ,
"Mimi" wrote:

Trader Joe's isn't a supermarket, too small. It's more of a specialty food
store. Wine-wise, it's famous for Two-buck Chuck, a bottle of Charles Shaw
wine for $2.
I don't buy wine there, but when I'm visiting my daughter we go
there at times and I buy food items I don't find locally.

My husband asked our local Trader Joe's, a very busy one, why they weren't
expanding into the newly available space next door. They said it would
wreck their sales per square foot average.

8-)

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument is
that reason doesn't count. --Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo*

In article ,
Bert Hyman wrote:

In

PeterL wrote:


Depends on which country that person is traveling to, no? If I were
going to France, it would be pointless for me to learn German.

How quickly do you learn a language well enough to navigate with it? How
far in advance do you plan your travel? How extensive are your travels?

Istudied German and French in school and picked up Spanish for Mexican
vacations, but at my age, I found learning Norwegian impossible.

My experience in Scandinavia was that almost everyone seems to speak
excellent English, whereas in France almost no one seems to.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument is
that reason doesn't count. --Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo*

In article ,
"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" wrote:

erilar wrote:
In article ,
"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" wrote:

Mike..... wrote:
Following up to Tim C.

Cheap German wine (in Germany) is much better than cheap French wine in
France, imo.
the German wine I see is all white and mostly fruity, which is a bit
limiting, although I agree about cheap french wine.
I've wondered about that. Goodness knows I have a very uneducated
palate, but most German wines are too sweet for my tastes, and I don't
recall ever seeing any German red wine offered.

Sweet? You must only have encountered the stuff Germans won't drink
themselves and export to the unknowing!

You're probably right! I've never been to Germany (only Austria -
Vienna), and since their beer is so far superior to the mass-produced
varieties here, I generally drink beer rather than wine with my meals in
Vienna (and Brussels, of course). I HAVE encountered a gewürtztraminer
(probably from Trader Joe's Market, here) that was dry enough for my
tastes, but other than that.....


I've had German wine dry enough for anyone, both red and white. I've
also had some too sweet for my taste. There's an enormous range.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument is
that reason doesn't count. --Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo*

In article ,
yeadeagisss
wrote:

In some places, there's not much to know. USA states like Alabama and
Mississippi, for instance, have seen very little of the American craft
brewing revival. Other parts of the country are quite well-off indeed.

Here in Wisconsin, on the other hand. . . in this very rural country,
for instance, there's one a few miles south of where I live. I don't
know how good their beer is, however, as I'm allergic to beer. And
there are vineyards even further north than here that produce some
interesting wines, believe it or not.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument is
that reason doesn't count. --Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo*

In erilar
wrote:

My experience in Scandinavia was that almost everyone seems to speak
excellent English, whereas in France almost no one seems to.

Not only did the Norwegians I met all speak excellent English, it was,
for the most part, colloquial "American" English. It was actually a
little unsettling.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN

Bert Hyman wrote:

In erilar
wrote:

My experience in Scandinavia was that almost everyone seems to speak
excellent English, whereas in France almost no one seems to.

Not only did the Norwegians I met all speak excellent English, it was,
for the most part, colloquial "American" English. It was actually a
little unsettling.

It's due to watching TV. I'm serious. I don't know if there has been
research done on this, but I wager there's a link between English
proficiency in Europe and whether or not they dub English-language TV
programmes. They don't in Nordic countries, generally, nor in NL AFAIK.

There are unintended consequences to this, of course. Such as when one
of my Norwegian cousins visited us in the UK when we were kids, and when
playing a board game with some (english speaking) friends at a party,
she admonished us- "don't you **** with me!"

I still remember the look on the faces of the various adults in the
room...

Pop music must be a factor too. I was impressed that my 7 year old
Norwegian niece sang along perfectly to a Spanish pop song her mum had
on the car CD player... without understanding what any of it meant.
"Bailando" if you're interested! (really _cheesy_ song!)

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate -www.davidhorne.net
(email address on website) "If people think God is interesting, the
onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about.
Otherwise they should just shut up about it." -Richard Dawkins

Andy Pandy wrote:

"Frank Hucklenbroich" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:59:21 +0200, Frank Hucklenbroich wrote:

Not in Italy, when you stay away from the tourist spots.

of course. But as the places I want to go are generally in a tourist area,
it can be a problem.

Well, often it's only a 10 minute walk into a different part of town that
makes the difference. Look were the locals go to have their lunch/dinner.
Where the people from the offices go to spend their lunch-break. That way
you can often discover nice little places to eat.

Indeed - we found a lovely little bar in the suburbs of Caen where we had a 4
course meal with half a litre of wine included for 9 EUR each! In Italy in the
centre of Naples we had lunch in a cafe - massive pizzas for about 2.5 EUR and
wine was ridculously cheap (IIRC about 1.5 EUR for a quarter litre).

I certainly agree that it's worth noticing where the locals go. I
noticed in Provence that they rarely ordered _menus_ and usually had one
dish, and frequently just tap water. i found I ate very well and fairly
cheaply, especially at lunch, when I just ordered one dish. Sometimes
menus were good value, and tasty (usually the more limited the options,
the better) but not always.

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate -www.davidhorne.net
(email address on website) "If people think God is interesting, the
onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about.
Otherwise they should just shut up about it." -Richard Dawkins

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:44:50 +0100, (David
Horne, _the_ chancellor (*)) wrote:

Bert Hyman wrote:

In erilar
wrote:

My experience in Scandinavia was that almost everyone seems to speak
excellent English, whereas in France almost no one seems to.

Not only did the Norwegians I met all speak excellent English, it was,
for the most part, colloquial "American" English. It was actually a
little unsettling.

It's due to watching TV. I'm serious. I don't know if there has been
research done on this, but I wager there's a link between English
proficiency in Europe and whether or not they dub English-language TV
programmes. They don't in Nordic countries, generally, nor in NL AFAIK.

If it's anything like Finland, it's because schoolchildren are
required to study English from an early age.


--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Hatunen wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:44:50 +0100, (David
Horne, _the_ chancellor (*)) wrote:

Bert Hyman wrote:

In erilar
wrote:

My experience in Scandinavia was that almost everyone seems to speak
excellent English, whereas in France almost no one seems to.

Not only did the Norwegians I met all speak excellent English, it was,
for the most part, colloquial "American" English. It was actually a
little unsettling.

It's due to watching TV. I'm serious. I don't know if there has been
research done on this, but I wager there's a link between English
proficiency in Europe and whether or not they dub English-language TV
programmes. They don't in Nordic countries, generally, nor in NL AFAIK.

If it's anything like Finland, it's because schoolchildren are
required to study English from an early age.

They certainly do start early in Norway, but they do in other countries
where English proficiency is less obvious. I don't think you can
underestimate the influence of media nowadays. British kids would surely
pick up a bit of French if all the computer games they played used it,
both written and spoken...

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate -www.davidhorne.net
(email address on website) "If people think God is interesting, the
onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about.
Otherwise they should just shut up about it." -Richard Dawkins

On 22 Jul 2008 18:22:28 GMT, Bert Hyman
wrote:

With its mediterranean coastal climate, don't forget Croatia! I
find it a tad cheaper than Poland or Hungary as well.
However, unless one is a genuine red-neck, Arizona is practically
bi-lingual. The OP might find it easier to get along in a
Spanish-speaking country - especially outside the tourist areas.

"It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak
English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over
to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup." - Barack Obama,
July 2008

He makes a valid point!

And what point is that, exactly?

For a European traveling to the US, the choice is rather simple, but
which of the world's languages should an American learn to speak in
preparation for travel?

French? German? Spanish? Lativan? Swedish? Norwegian?

Please instruct us.

I'll take that as an honest question; was it meant as one?

Depends where you travel to of course.

I'm not an American but I do speak English; well, an
antipodean version of it.

In my case, I am usually wandering through at least half a
dozen languages on each trip. I carry dictionaries for the
majors (French, German, Spanish, Italian in Europe),
phrasebooks where I could find them (Hungarian, Polish) and
a book called Polyglob which has basic words and phrases for
almost every known language. On the most recent trip I also
took a Hindi primer and did a lot of preliminary reading on
the appropriate courtesies in South-East Asia, China, India
and Arab countries (like not using my left hand to hold
food). I even learnt to respect truly strange and quaint
customs in some lands, such as restaurants and hotels
underpaying hospitality staff leading to a need for
customers to compensate by adding 15-18% to the bill...

It isn't difficult to at least learn "Please", "Thank you
(very much)", "Hello", "Goodbye" and similar basic
pleasantries in the language of the countries you intend to
visit. It also helped in Arab, Hindi and Chinese countries
to be able to read numbers for prices in shops. Where I
didn't have a book for that I got a local or my guide (if I
had one) to write a 0-9 conversion table for me.

As a linguist I am atrocious. I failed latin miserably in
High School and promptly forgot my High School French on
graduation 45 years ago. Communication sometimes involved
lots of sign language or charades or ingenious methods on
both sides. However, I nearly always managed to find a way
to communicate. Of course there were occasional disasters,
including some rather odd meals and lots of wasted time and
a missed bus or two.

Politeness, tolerance and accepting that it was up to me as
the guest to fit into their culture, not the other way
around, usually meant that things worked out OK.


Cheers, Alan, Australia
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan_s/
http://loraltravel.blogspot.com
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