Reactions

How could they have done it? Those people that I know...how could they have done it? I think most people expected the vote the other way round with a small majority to remain.

I found it hard to face local people. We had seen no other British cars in either the Netherlands or north Germany. What would they think of us? I was now  embarrassed as well as gutted.

We were in Worpswede a few days later and the great statue by Bernhard Hoetger summed up my reaction at last. it is called Wut  (RAGE)!

When we did speak to Germans there was sympathy and great interest. One guy said it was the best thing : get rid of UK and Denmark out of the EU (implying we were trouble) and as for those Greeks........ I could see where he was coming from. The German papers were full of it. Headline news and pages of it. "Schwarzer Tag fur Europa" it said (blacker day for Europe). Perhaps some Germans were thinking like one  I had met in St Albans doing my Abbey guiding : he had said "at least you have a vote. We have no say, and he had no time for Angela Merkel. Clearly our decision mattered a great deal to them too. Plenty of pictures of ex-Burger Meister BREXIT-Mann Boris in the papers too.Here is what Germans said on Deutsche Welle

Our Prime Minister even seemed to crop up on a menu in Zwolle (Netherlands) : it was offering "Cameron Freit" (a new type of fry up? I didn't try it).