Mind your "p's" and "quids".
Subtitled: Daley does economics and exchange rates.
So I recently arrived in the UK from central Europe (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Praha, Ceske' Krumlov, and Salzburg) and experienced quite the culture shock to my bank account.
Well first of all I could not get over the novelty of everyone speaking English and being able to eavesdrop on other people's conversations and having the automated voice on the metro talk to me in English. It was very odd, as I have not been in an English speaking country since the end of October.
That said, London is damn expensive. The pound sterling as of right now is worth a little under double the US Dollar. One would think that because of this crazy exchange rate the prices in the UK would adequately reflect this and things would be half as expensive (note, not that I was expecting this at all, but you would think thats how things should work). Nope. Things in London cost roughly the same as they do in say, NYC or Washington DC, except a sandwich that costs $5 in NY and costs £5 in London, really costs you $10. Whereas, say, Budapest, it is really cheap and the Hungarian florent is about 200 florents to the dollar or something like that. And everything is way cheaper.
(I'm rich, I'm rich...11,200 HUF... oh wait, this is only about $30 USD)
Moral of the story, after spending 3 days in London, I spent triple what I spent in 10 days in Central Europe.
WTF. plus the weather here sucks. I'm going back to Portugal!
ps. for those of you that have no idea, like I did until recently, "p" is british slang for Pence, and "quid" is british slang for the Pound.
Cheers!
So I recently arrived in the UK from central Europe (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Praha, Ceske' Krumlov, and Salzburg) and experienced quite the culture shock to my bank account.
Well first of all I could not get over the novelty of everyone speaking English and being able to eavesdrop on other people's conversations and having the automated voice on the metro talk to me in English. It was very odd, as I have not been in an English speaking country since the end of October.
That said, London is damn expensive. The pound sterling as of right now is worth a little under double the US Dollar. One would think that because of this crazy exchange rate the prices in the UK would adequately reflect this and things would be half as expensive (note, not that I was expecting this at all, but you would think thats how things should work). Nope. Things in London cost roughly the same as they do in say, NYC or Washington DC, except a sandwich that costs $5 in NY and costs £5 in London, really costs you $10. Whereas, say, Budapest, it is really cheap and the Hungarian florent is about 200 florents to the dollar or something like that. And everything is way cheaper.
(I'm rich, I'm rich...11,200 HUF... oh wait, this is only about $30 USD)Moral of the story, after spending 3 days in London, I spent triple what I spent in 10 days in Central Europe.
WTF. plus the weather here sucks. I'm going back to Portugal!
ps. for those of you that have no idea, like I did until recently, "p" is british slang for Pence, and "quid" is british slang for the Pound.
Cheers!
posted by laur @ 12:14 PM
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