Getting Phallic after 14 hours.
Journeying around the world is tough business. I can't sleep on airplanes so it's doubly difficult on me. After a grueling fourteen hour journey, I've finally landed in Copenhagen and decided to grab a quick bite at the airport. Hot dogs are evidently quite popular here and they come in fancy clothing.
For the typical American (and I guess most inhabitants of Planet Earth), a hot dog is typically adorned with a plain, old hot dog bun: basically a long piece of bread sliced lengthwise and you place the meat between the bun halves. In Denmark, they've got a unique bun that's also long but it's got a hole on one end that you first squirt a bit of mayonnaise and ketchup before shoving your meat into the hole.
And if you think that sounds phallic, consider the erect hot dog in the picture above...
From there, you hold the whole thing in your hand and start eating the hot dog. Danish Dogs, they're quite tasty actually and they also come in a variety of combinations and flavors. The only problem is that this hot dog and soda combo costs ten dollars.
Not the most economical way to start your visit to Copenhagen.
Rather than doing the mental arithmetic -- converting US$ to Euros or vice versa -- may I suggest you do what most seasoned travellers do to make the "pain" of a low-value US$ less damaging to the soul: compare the "buying power" of the respective currencies based on the notional basket of goods each country's central bank uses to determine the rate of inflation, to determine, if the item(s) are in fact more expensive than "home".
ReplyDeleteMy experience has been that when taking into account the buying power of an average citizen of a country I am visiting, most food-stuffs cost about the same no matter where you are in the northern hemisphere.
So, while US$10 may appear a lot to you a local, buying in Euros would have found the price of the hot dog and soda to be reasonable.
We have the Treasury Department, the White House, and large multinational corporations to thank for lousy US$ buying power - not the host country's prices.