Europe, Your Troubles Have Only Just Started

So, it would appear that I'm travelling to Europe next year.  My co-workers have staged an intervention and the upshot of it is that I have to take some holidays or they will put me into rehab.  It will be the first genuine holiday I've had in several years and I'm doing my best to look forward to it.  I shall be travelling to London, Berlin and possibly Prague or Vienna.  Now all I have to do is save money, find my passport, book things and renew my membership of the Inspector Rex fanclub.  I'm also hoping to persuade my sister in law to come with me.

Some people say that travel broadens the mind but then some people will say anything.  Travel certainly broadens your experience even if the experience largely consists of getting lost in a wide cross section of the world's airports.  At least travelling to other countries increases the probability that your taxi driver will understand English.  One thing travel doesn't broaden is your bank account.  I've done careful calculations and I think I can afford this trip if I sell a kidney and die no later than the age of fifty (probably not a difficult proposition with only one functioning kidney).

In return for poverty and a drastically reduced life expectancy I get to immerse myself in the culture of Europe.  Or at least I get to stand next to some of the more photogenic bits of the culture of Europe.  Or at the very least I will be temporarily in the same country as some of the more photogenic bits of the culture of Europe. 

Of course I'm taking a risk going to Europe at all.  The way things are going there at the moment I will be lucky if I don't get mugged by a desperate finance minister the moment I get off the plane.  It also occurs to me that by the time I get there the place may have been repossessed and put up for auction by various banking houses who for some reason thought lending money they didn't have to people who couldn't repay it was a sound business practice.  More likely though is that the place will be waist deep in euros as everybody attempts to refinance their existing unsustainable debt with new loan instruments and pay for the lot with a depreciated currency.  Which if you think about it is rather like putting your mortgage on your credit card and then trying to pay it off with bus tickets.

For souvenirs I'm just going to bring everybody back a couple of billion euros worth of Spanish government bonds.