Re: IR35 idiocy
"Yes, but you have to actually live in the country as well. For somewhere like Berlin you can get away with only knowing English for most things, unless of course you ever need to interact with the German tax authorities. But that is a lot less likely in Essen."
Not nearly as much of a problem as people in the UK believe, if the actual company you are working for has an English speaking office (and many UK and US companies do), you have 2 issues left which is the authorities and accommodation.
As far as tax and permits go most companies can help you with that, or just taking a fluent workmate along is fine, the average letting agency will have an English speaker in my experience, in the case of the Dutch they have expat centers with English speaking staff who will arrange everything required legally for you in one visit. (this is leaving aside the fact something like 92% of Dutch citizens speak English as a second language anyway, I believe they have the highest rate of English fluency in Europe)
It's not 1910 anymore, people move around widely and particularly in large cities there will be plenty of English speakers, in many countries outside Europe many people only know English in addition to their native language and many people in Europe working with the public encounter English speaking tourists who are not English, also add the fact at least for Germany many now learn English at school, if someone is under 30 there's a good chance they will understand you, typically if you ask someone if they speak English they will reply "a bit" , and you will then find yourself conversing for the next half hour on quite involved subjects!
After that comes food, learning local names for food is first, Google Translate or a good language dictionary will help you with that, in any supermarket there will be only 2-3 questions you need to know the responses to, in Germany it's usually "have you got a loyalty card?" and "kassenbon" which means receipt (as in "do you want it?").
Ideally and as a courtesy you should learn the local language and it does make things easier and smoother but it's not the huge barrier people in the UK imagine to working in another country, I've been out of the UK for ten years now and the above is my experience.
Overall in Northern Europe I find the the standard of living is better, and it's definitely cheaper to live in Germany and the Netherlands than the UK in my experience.
Also to add quite a lot of TV shows are American and British, and depending on the country these are often just subtitled (Germany does dub a lot more stuff as the audience is larger and makes this worthwhile) therefore you can buy a tv package and be able to understand a lot of the content.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
