Foreign Perspectives

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.

We didn’t make it to Geneva this weekend for all sorts of reasons so we’re aiming for next week now.

That means that we’ll have a whole lot more time to play with as the kids are on holiday so we’re thinking of something like a five or six day trip. Same starting point, so all being well we’ll be in Geneva next Friday evening and that’ll be our starting point for the tour.

As for this weekend, the plan is to see Geneva on Saturday and probably end up in Lausanne that evening. Then it changes as we could head on up to Bern, possibly on up to Zurich (haven’t looked at the guidebooks so I don’t know if that’s worth the trip) or possibly in the other direction towards Zermatt and perhaps swinging down via Austria to Venice before heading for home.

The distances above are reasonable but I will have to have a good look at the guidebook to see what’s worth seeing along the way.

They say the grass is always greener but, of course, it never really is because sometimes there’s a whole lot of moss in amongst it.

Take for instance the off and on popularity of Brits moving to France….

The majority do it because they are trying to get away from the bad things in British life these days. They don’t like the rising crime and the bad schools and the too fast pace of life. So, they look towards France and it seems like the UK was maybe 30 years ago.

It is, but would you really have wanted to go back to the UK of 30 years ago?

Yes, there’s not that much crime in the areas in which Brits habitually move but then there’s not much crime in the UK countryside either. The schools are certainly more book based, but is that any better. Perhaps the best example for a Brit considering such a move is that the English teachers in France can barely speak English because of their own schooling ie it’s largely bookwork rather than the conversational skills which are mainly required.

The pace of life is certainly slower. However, the question to ask yourself is: can I stand waiting in a supermarket queue for 45 minutes every day when I’d not put up with that in Tesco?

It does suit some people for sure but many give up through frustration at the dreadfully slow pace of things like that supermarket queue (and 45 minutes is probably the minimum time if you do your shopping at 4pm as many families do).

So, yes, it is greener but don’t forget about the moss that you find amongst all that grass!

Don’t you think that some people lead incredibly interesting lives?

Oh, sure, the film stars and whatnot may do but so do a lot of “ordinary” people and now and again you get the chance to hear some of their stories.

For instance, this morning we had someone call by who had been born in the Bahamas which, for a start, is a place that many of us would like to go to someday and in our wildest dreams would perhaps consider retiring there if it weren’t so expensive. Yet, instead he has “retired” to France instead which seems a pretty humdrum place.

Since his father was a pilot, we had a snippet of some of his stories too and now know that it’s definitely best to drive through Jamaican markets with the windows up as they have a tendency to lop off your arm with a machette just to get your watch if you don’t!