I am asked occasionally by people from the UK (usually the strange people who think that George Osborne is an economic genius) why I chose to live in Frankfurt.
The answer is simple enough - because the work (or at least the work offer) was there.
It was the same thing that took me to Toulouse in 1990, Brussels in 1991, Munich / München in 1994, Cologne / Köln in 2003.
I always wanted to keep working and live in a place that I could afford (which immediately rules out London). The reasons for some other locations on my itinerary (Paris in 1993 and Amsterdam in 1996) had also other sources of motivation, but work was always a significant option.
That we stayed in Frankfurt does not say so much about the place even when the work ran out. You cannot keep moving forever. I would rather have not left Amsterdam in the first place, nor Köln in the second. And I would have loved the chance to live in Hamburg.
But you have to keep working - or so I always believed. Which is why forced unemployment is something that I have always hated, but has become seemingly a necessary part of modern capitalist culture. Sadly. Particularly if you are past a certain age, and you want to earn more than the standard wage in China.
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