Foreign Perspectives

I really must stop looking at the Open University prospectus! It’s even more dangerous than looking at estate agents brochures: at least with them you know you can’t afford to do buy a new house all the time.

Anyway, now that I’m nearing the end of my modern languages degree I’ve started looking around for something to do afterwards. So far, that has only had one serious possibility in the frame ie the chemistry degree that I was always meaning to do but never got around to.

However, there’s now another possibility: an English degree. As with the modern languages it seems like a long way off but notionally I’ll have done the first course of it by this time next year so there would “only” be five more courses to do from that and I know from chatting with some other folk that at least two of those courses are very interesting indeed.

Still, way too early to be worrying about it now. I might just get some of the set books for one or two of the courses in the meantime. Just to see what the course might be like you understand. No intention of doing them at all. No siree bob!

One of the most surprising thing about the Internet is just how much people are prepared to pay for information from one site that is available free on another site.

This is probably best illustrated by the vast number of websites which sell you the information that you need to open an account in America when you don’t live there. I say “America” simply because that’s the most popular but there are many other sites offering to open accounts in Switzerland (the second most popular) and various countries around the world.

Now, I’ll grant you that it’s more difficult to come by the information for Switzerland unless you know where to look but I’d be wanting to do a whole lot of looking before I forked out the typical $250 to $1000 that some websites charge for this information. I’ll be covering this (free!) very shortly on the expat banking section of Whole Earth so, unless you need your Swiss account in the next couple of weeks, it’s probably best to hold on to your $250 ’til I get back from my research trip next week.

What about America though? Would you pay $100 or more for the information? Many people appear to yet it’s freely available on the expat banking section of Whole Earth already although, to be fair, many others seem to have been getting it there for free for quite a while if the site stats are anything to go by.

The thing that gets me is that, in most cases, the information isn’t difficult to find. What’s worse though, particularly for Switzerland, is that a number of the charging websites are providing information that simply won’t work as they typically recommend opening an account with SwissPost which stopped opening accounts for non-residents a few years ago.

I’m quite tempted to start selling the information on ebay myself!

The big problem with the Open University is that they have just too many courses available and therefore once you start one particular course you find yourself looking at the prospectus when it pops through your letterbox mid-way through that course and choosing another, and another, and another…..

For instance, I am (hopefully) on the home run to a degree in modern languages with “only” one course to go. However, I know that they’ll be sending me a prospectus shortly after Easter next year and in preparation for that I’ve had a look through the courses from the prospectus that arrived earlier this year.

That is, of course, fatal as I’ve already pretty much decided to go for their chemistry degree. I even bought the DVD of that on ebay last year (recommended: search for “S103” or “S104”; the DVD contains the complete course, less the mini science laboratory that they send you and which weights way too much to post).

However, I’d also quite like to have a go at the German courses and possibly some from the history faculty.

Although I’ve stuck to one course per year up to now I’m toying with the idea of combining some of the level 2 30 point science couses with perhaps the 30 point level 1 German courses which sounds like a doable amount of work.

Of the hundreds of people who have stayed with us over the course of this year, only two or three have paid using the Nationwide credit card which is crazy as they’re the only place that doesn’t charge to use your cards overseas.

Perhaps more crazy though is that of the dozen or so couples who live in Spain and have used us as a pitstop on their way to/from the UK, only one used a Nationwide card as they’re spending quite a considerable chunk of their income on bank charges. Quite how much is staggering. For example, a friend who lives in Brussels let drop once that he just used his Halifax card in the same way that he had done when living in the UK ie he would lift £20 or £30 each time he needed some money and likewise when he was paying for the groceries or whatever.

Most people read the bit in the credit/debit card charging information that says “currency exchange 2.75%” and figure that he wouldn’t have run up much of a bill. However, there is a transaction charge on all overseas use of the card of, at that time, £2 (and I gather it’s now £3) PLUS the 2.75% foreign exchange charge. So, that £20 cost him £2.55 ie 12.75% and, yes, he was paying around 12% of his entire income each month on bank charges!!

Clearly it’s quite different if you’re living abroad vs going on holiday but that minimum charge soon mounts up if you lift small amounts of cash. Whilst it’s much better to use the Nationwide card and pay nothing, if you are using a fee charging card you should lift a minimum of £100 or so each time and thereby reduce your costs to 4.25% to 4.75% depending on your bank and, whenever possible, use your credit card for purchases rather than making cash withdrawals.

See our guide at holiday money for more information.

For the most part, Americans tend to take what seem like peculiar holidays when they come to Europe.

Americans usually have the limitation that they only get two weeks vacation time per year which is something of a downer compared to the five or six week norm throughout Europe. However, in a two week holiday, Europeans almost always stay in a single resort be that in a European country or even in America and they don’t travel terribly far from that base during their vacation time.

Americans on the other hand come to Europe for two weeks and try to take in several different countries in that time. Typically they will spend a few days in London to “do” England, head over to France to spend a few days “doing” Paris before moving on perhaps to see the Normandy beaches before heading off for Rome or where-ever.

OK, to be fair the Europeans may well take several two week holidays per year and thereby they can get to see quite a bit of the world in the course of a year if they choose to do that (although many head to the same resort every year).

Americans tend to lose out a lot with their style of holiday-making in that they get a very cursory view of everywhere that they go and this is accentuated even more when they go on packaged holidays: the tour bus only stops for the minimum amount of time to see the highlights in each place so that, for example, in Versailles they’ll see the exquisite apartments but usually won’t see much of the magnificent gardens.

It would be much better if they tried a middle ground and concentrated on one country or even one area of one country. For example, Paris and Britanny/Normandy make a nice two week trip with a varied mix of city and scenic periods.