European views of politics and the like

Everyone I spoke with on the trains in Europe loved President Obama…and by everyone I mean people of all ages…high school…college students…older people.  They thought he was doing good things for America, and in some cases seemed to imply that he was helping bring America up to European standards.  One of the specific "good" things they said he was doing was providing health care to all US citizens.  It seem that they (everyone I spoke with except the high school student) seemed to know more about the health care debate in America than I did.  When I asked about unemployment insurance they were less familiar with the current situation of it in America, but they were for it.  It seemed common sense to them.  Almost as if they were saying "duh!" to me.  Same thing about Social Security benefits and mandating limits on carbon emissions.  The only topic they didn't have much opinion on was whether or not the government ought to provide day care.  Only one of the people I talked to had children, so that could have been the reason why, and that one person was for providing day care.

I asked several Swiss people whether they felt Switzerland ought to join the E.U. and they all eventually said "no", but some thought about it for a long time.  One older woman felt that Switzerland may join the EU, but only after a lot of pressure is applied.  The biggest reason she gave for joining the EU was to make it possible for the country to join the Eurozone.

Most people did not want to tackle the topic of Turkish accession, but when I forced them to say yes or no I had four people say yes and one say no…all of these people were Swiss nationals.