My trip to Oxford

[scooterscot]

£115 hotel room near Oxford should be damn nicer than £115 tulip hole near Heathrow airport.

Paid a similar amount for this hotel in Bedfordshire, thought I'd be living it up while on the job.

Turned out I got a room with hedious 70's decor and would be chewing the duck from dinner until breakfast before I able to swallow it.

Utterly awful.

[shaunbhoy]

Paid a similar amount for this hotel in Bedfordshire, thought I'd be living it up while on the job.

Turned out I got a room with hedious 70's decor and would be chewing the duck from dinner until breakfast before I able to swallow it.

Utterly awful.

Stay in Germany then. All their hotels have been built in the last 70 years because we flattened all the earlier ones.

HTH

[AtW]

Paid a similar amount for this hotel in Bedfordshire, thought I'd be living it up while on the job.

Why would not you book a 5 star hotel for extra £50 and put it on your clients expenses?

I'd assume you earn at least £1000 a day to fly from Germany to another country for a short term contract, in this case it would be reasonable to ask for decent hotel + airplane expenses - something does not add up here: either you are the cheapest person on Earth or you are the biggest bulltuliper - possibly both.

[scooterscot]

Why would not you book a 5 star hotel for extra £50 and put it on your clients expenses?

I'd assume you earn at least £1000 a day to fly from Germany to another country for a short term contract, in this case it would be reasonable to ask for decent hotel + airplane expenses - something does not add up here: either you are the cheapest person on Earth or you are the biggest bulltuliper - possibly both.

I stay in Radisson whenever I can, fully booked at heathow unfortunately, but with 48 hours notice you take what you can get.

[sasguru]

What is interesting psychologically is all these expats showing how happy they are by coming on here to whinge.
Can they not do that with their new German mates (or whatever) on a German forum?

Oh wait no they can't - they have no mates and are just second class Auslander

[doodab]

What is interesting psychologically is all these expats showing how happy they are by coming on here to whinge.
Can they not do that with their new German mates (or whatever) on a German forum?

Oh wait no they can't - they have no mates and are just second class Auslander

If you whinge about going to England on a German forum they will simply ask you why you expected anything different. It doesn't have the cathartic effect of watching little Englanders get all het up and defensive.

[sasguru]

If you whinge about going to England on a German forum they will simply ask you why you expected anything different. It doesn't have the cathartic effect of watching little Englanders get all het up and defensive.

Less little Englanders than successful Englanders who can do well at home, I suspect.
Still I suppose it does show some get up and go to go and live as a friendless exile in a foreign country.
It's quite admirable even.

[doodab]

Still I suppose it does show some get up and go to go and live as a friendless exile in a foreign country.

I've found it much harder to come back, TBH. More than half of my friends have left the UK, with the exception of one small niche that employs a few tens of thousand people rates are dire, and the cost of living is ridiculous. It's a lot easier to make friends in Germany than make money in the UK.

[sasguru]

I've found it much harder to come back, TBH. More than half of my friends have left the UK, with the exception of one small niche that employs a few tens of thousand people rates are dire, and the cost of living is ridiculous. It's a lot easier to make friends in Germany than make money in the UK.

I think extrapolating your experience to everyone does not show much imagination.
There are plenty of areas where rates and salaries are high. I certainly can't complain and neither can my staff.
Since I used the housing boom to pay off my mortgage (and I can't be the only one) I find the cost of living ridiculously cheap.
Ironically I have a couple of very good German mates but they were Anglophiles I met at university 20 years ago and who I visit regularly.
The English people I know who live in Germany seem to find it hard to integrate, probably both sides to blame a little: Germans and Brits can be very insular.

[doodab]

I think extrapolating your experience to everyone does not show much imagination.

Why do you keep doing it then? Do you lack imagination?