Vienna has again been named as the ‘best’ city in the world, with the Austrian capital’s perennial Swiss rival, Zurich, in second place. Auckland, Munich and Düsseldorf complete the top five. Overall, German-speaking cities occupy six places in the top ten in this year’s Quality of Living Survey by Mercer Consulting.


http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html

How on earth Dublin is 26 is beyond me. Love the place but its traffic and lack of transport is embarrassing.

I have come to the same conclusion, I want to learn German unfortunately I gave up after about an hour!

Any hints as the easiest way to learn?

No easy way . . . try, try, and try again. Living with a German family helps.

fall in love with a German - it's a strong motivation! Viel Glueck!

get socialized and hang arround with germans plus http://www.goethe.de/

i like Paris most. munich is not the first choice for germans.

Well, am German and I don't think you would know what my first choice would be

Says who?????? I defo would choose Munich over Paris, although I'd probably prefer the Frankfurt area. Nice wine lol

Curiously the most liveable cities in the world are mainly English speaking, and four are in Australia, only two European cities are mentioned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_most_livable_cities

Nevertheless I would live in Germany if I could afford the high cost of health insurance.

As someone who has recently moved to Germany, I have to say that the language is much harder to learn than I first thought it would be. Not only is the language itself hard to fathom (der, die, das.....huh?) but because everybody here seems to speak English perfectly, and are only too quick to help struggling expats such as myself, you find yourself speaking English most of the time anyway! This is not good for my personal development!

That is a problem that a lot of native English speakers have! An Irish friend of mine got so annoyed that he started calling Germans that insisted on speaking English with him "language vampires"

"Language Vampires"? hahaha, you can always trust the Irish to provide the perfect name. I have tried to adopt the tactic of just replying to their English in German, which has brought mixed results so far. If nothing else, it is always amusing to see them try not to laugh at my awkward attempts!

Hi,

yes, to learn German could be very useful. Also thinking about job possibilities as now Germany is one of the few country that can survive the crisis.

But I completely agree with charles.larry, German is really difficult. I have a German boyfriend and is very hard to understand only a word!
Luckily we speak English!

When we moved to Germany, I couldnt speak a word of the language. What helped a lot was watching German TV. One gets used to the sound of the language that way. I used a book, Teach yourself German, after a while I found I could read German and read magazines and finally books.
Try to make German friends and request that they speak German to you.