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Berlin is the new Hackney for Brits

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Comments

  • missyrichards
    missyrichards Posts: 1,148 Forumite
    Berlin is a really great city. Has a very green, spacious feel. Totally understand why people would want to live there and it's true the housing quality and pricing is far far better. Helps if you speak German though!

    When I went to Germany (years ago now, about 1991) I was surprised by how many people had such a good command of English. Even people working in department store shops seemed to speak and understand English.
  • Missyhenry
    Missyhenry Posts: 87 Forumite
    buglawton wrote: »
    Seems that the real people that were going to be the economic dynamos of the UK's future are now leaving London in droves.
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/01/creative-young-brits-quit-london-affordable-berlin

    Because the cost/stress of housing and living in London squeezes the life-blood, energy and creativity out of anyone who tries to live there.

    Sounds like London is only a choice for royalty, skilled financial speculators, foreign oligarchs and their relatives or young people gaining a bit of life & work experience before moving on to their real life elsewhere.

    Now I'm all for free markets setting the real price of everything, but this bodes badly for the future of the UK's creative economy.
    And for London, if it becomes a city split between well-off inheritors and poor itinerants, with no real professional/working class living there any more.


    Is London going to become a victim of it's own success?

    And yet London is, numerically, France's 6th largest city.
  • princeofpounds
    princeofpounds Posts: 10,396 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    When I went to Germany (years ago now, about 1991) I was surprised by how many people had such a good command of English. Even people working in department store shops seemed to speak and understand English.


    I didn't explain myself fully - you are right, it's not hard to get by, but to actually live there and experience it fully German would help a lot. And personally, I don't speak German, otherwise I might already be living there.
  • antrobus
    antrobus Posts: 17,386 Forumite
    buglawton wrote: »
    Seems that the real people that were going to be the economic dynamos of the UK's future are now leaving London in droves.
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/01/creative-young-brits-quit-london-affordable-berlin

    ....

    I'm not entirely convinced that the word "creative" is a synonym for 'economic dynamo'. Besides, there is a long history of Brits leaving the UK and going to live somewhere else cheaper and setting up businesses to pay the rent and then telling everyone how wonderful it is. Spain used to be very popular for that sort of thing.
  • Missyhenry wrote: »
    And yet London is, numerically, France's 6th largest city.


    No it isn't.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26823489
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