UK or Europe?

Since living in the UK I was wondering whether the UK are part of Europe or not. Or better whether the British consider themselves being part of Europe or not. Who else would be better to answer this question than people who have been living on the island for their entire lives: the British.

So I started asking questions like 'Do you live in the UK, in Europe or in both?' and 'Do you feel more British or more European?', 'Do you think Britain is part of Europe?' and 'Would you prefer keeping Pounds as currency or would you like to switch to Euros?'. I got an awful lot of various answers on these questions, other than anticipated (I have to admit that I personally expected the vast majority of people to feel perfectly British rather than European). Some of the people do feel like Europeans, some of them would consider themselves not to be Europeans at all. A couple of answers suggested that the interviewees felt a bit like both, European and British and a few of the respondents just answered: 'Neither! I'm Indian/Pakistani/Lebanese/Chinese/...Englishman!' So this questionnaire didn't lead to a unique answer on my main question. But that's propably what I would have had to expect as people round here are same as people everywhere else in the world: different! And various.

But then, early this morning I was listening to the radio. They were talking about what they have been doing on the weekend and found out that they did the same: collecting coins. The girl brought her coins to the bank and the guy his into the office where he handed them over to the girl as a gift. She was some kind of annoyed as it's obviously been Euro coins rather than Pounds and she didn't know that to do with them. With his answer I got the answer on my question as he in his job is like a spokesman of the nation. So he just said: 'You can take them with you to Europe the next time you're there.'