Do Eastern Europeans Pay Uk Tv Licence When In Uk And They Are Using Their Own Satellite Dishes

Why is Eastern European Culture much richer than Western European?

It's not.I understand why it looks that way but that's because of your perspective.Western Europe is incredibly rich in culture from rich cuisine (French cuisine is divine and Im going to include Portuguese cuisine too) to traditional festivals still being held.The reason why it appears less ‘rich’ is because much of our culture has been exported to the wider world through colonialism and hence its no longer limited to Western Europe and so is taken as ‘normal culture’.Furthermore, the Iberian peninsula is so incredibly rich in culture that Portugal has several holidays throughout the year for food festivals, folklore festivals, etc where people go out in traditional dresses (rather similar to traditional Hungarian dresses) and dance in the streets! This also happens in France and the UK! The reason why people don't see this is because metropolitan cities dominate the West and so many tourists only encounter cities and don't go into the country and small towns where the culture is preserved. The reason why Eastern Europe seems to have more culture is because even their capitals aren't as developed as Western capitals because of poverty and the Soviet Union, hence traditional culture is still thriving. And of course in response to the Soviet Union’s attempt to erase their culture, they fought back by strengthening traditional things.Hence the East may *appear* richer in culture but it's mostly due to perceptions as well as where people actually visit. Europe is so diverse in culture and still so incredibly rich in culture that it's pretty rude and dismissive to think that France has no culture compared to Poland for example.

Why do residents of some Eastern European countries, like Romania, complain so much about gypsies, compared to countries that have a higher gypsy population?

Do Americans people living in big cities see everyday a 8 year old Romany beggars at the traffic light (that child being bought by a gang to do that job) ? Do Romanies gangs in America are famous for making home roberies? Do Romanies Gangs in America are invold in stealing metal from railways or other public places ? Are people in New york subway scared when they see a group of 8 Gypsies children entering the waggons because they know there are pick pockets? How many  thirdworld style gypsy camps in the american suburbs ? When the american gouvernement provide public housing to Romanies, do they sell the metal of the house, some windows and go to live in a caravan next the house ?European people don't complain about gypsies based on racial criteria but just because some gypsies are living on a way which is not apropriated in a civilized country. There are many gypsies living like normal citizen : sending their children to school, working, etc.. those gypsies are not even considered as gypsies because they live like anyone else (many other people in the southeast Balkan can have brown color skin due to Ottoman colonisation).Only the one who brake the rules and are annoying are rejected by the population, but still the governement are more tolerant then in USA for exemple. If gypsies in USA were sending their child to beg at the traffic light or to be pickpockets in the subway like in Paris,  the social services would take them away ? If they were building camps without authorisation and burning stolen electric cable to remove the plastic from the metal in order to sell that metal, the US authorities would kick them out ?

English (language): How do Europeans learn English?

In Portugal we start learning english at school. Then, like Wilfred said, in Portugal we haven't had dubbed movies and series, so eventualy with subtitles, we got used to relate sounds to words, being however quite recent that we speak english. Usually around Lisbon, for example, most people around 20's, 30's speak basic to fluent english. Some people around 40's speak english but as far as i know it was not often to have it as a subject as school before the 1980's in school.You will find not so often people above 50's speaking english, because it was not taught at school back then as far as i know. With that age and older, mostly portuguese people from upper-mid class and/or people with university education are the ones who speak fluent english: teachers, doctors, engineers, and so on. I started learning english around 10 years old, in the late 1980's decade, until somewhere in the 1990's. Then as pretty much as most of my generation, i kept on reading on english, speaking english here and there, surfing the web, etc. So most of people from my generation and younger we are not perfect at it, but we manage to understand, write and speak enough english to understand and speak and make ourselves understood. But nowadays portuguese children start learning english in primary-elementary school, they have access to internet and cartoon tv channels so they have much more contact with english language than generations before, and so they start learning english very soon.

Why are Western Europeans on average so obsessed with the US?

Thanks for asking. Well, I can only speak for myself and personally I’ve always been fascinated by the US, but I’m not sure I’m representative of the «average» western european, most people I know don’t care that much about America, although the US is definitelly all over the news constantly, specially since Trumpism took office, it’s like watching a huge train wreck, we can’t take our eyes out of it and our media reflect that. I would say that with Trump, the whole world became obsessed with the US…In my case, it’s mostly because I’m an history enthusiast and the American national experience is in fact fascinating, it was for Tocqueville in the XIX century, it still is for many of us who study political and cultural history. But I would say that the US draws so much attention because of two main factors: softpower and hardpower. Mainly the first, in which we can include arts, literature, movies, TV, music, science&technology, sports or news media - outstanding journalism, by the way, with outlets like the Washington Post, the NYT or CNN reaching all corners of the globe).American popular culture and it’s entertainment industry are mostly excellent (if not always in terms of the depth of the content, surelly in terms of production quality) in terms of giving the average public what it wants, and has a global reach whith which no other nation can compete. That leads to another important factor for the «obsession» towards the US, a mix of hard and softpower, called economics and trade, what happens in the US in terms of the economy affects the rest of the world, and Europe has very close ties to the US in terms of trade, industry, resources and the financial system, so we keep a close watch. We also keep a close watch due to the hardpower thing: American troops are literally everywhere. Even in Portugal, there’s a huge American Air Force base in the Azores, we’re traditional allies, we’re all NATO members and, like in economics, whenever Washington sneezes, Europe gets a cold. I mean, every American military move is bound to have direct (like our troops following the lead) or indirect consequences (like Middle Eastern refugees) in European nations.Apart from that, I guess we sort of consider Americans part of the big democratic family, kind of like exuberant cousins, so, we care.

Why do many Europeans think Americans are "dumb" even when the U.S. has the highest GDP in the world?

Here is a European perspective. First, it is obviously impossible to generalize and the smarter part of Europeans are aware of that. Every day I work together with Americans who are absolutely brilliant minds and I would say that the majority of Americans I met abroad were pretty bright people. But after having spent the senior year in a US-high school, I can say that there is also those people who fullfill the "dumb"-stereotype. These situations stuck to my mind:Many of my classmates couldn't locate the world's major countries (including Japan and China) on a world mapI was asked by a college student whether Germany now is unified or still divided Some people I talked to had no clue about American population numbers ("ten billion?")Years later, in China, a senior American business man was asking whether Italy has the Euro (at an event of the Italian embassy!) After living in China for several years, I much less encountered this shocking lack of basic geographic knowledge among Chinese. I tend to agree with those answers who blame education, because as far as I can tell (from one year) high school or college in the US doesn't teach much about what's going on outside America. Ignorance may play a role, but rest assured that America is not the only country producing ignorants! I would also assume that a trace of envy comes to play when Europeans call Americans "dumb". Now America is the dominant world power and Europe seemingly in decline. We still gotta feel superior about something, so why not make fun of those uneducated ignorant Americans!  I also think that this question has nothing to do with the fact that by average per capita GDP the US is in the top ten of the world's richest nations. Central and northern European countries make it to the top 20 and because of more evenly distributed wealth, I would say overall living standards are at least as high as in the US. "Dumb Americans" is obviously an insulting and unfair generalization (that is made only by the "dumber" minority of the European population anyhow), but on the other hand there is a trace of truth in this stereotype and a bit more curiosity about other countries, lifestyles, languages and mindsets sometimes wouldn't hurt.