Travel dairy, Episode 4: Cheap as Chips

So, this exists:

It's a single, large pickled cucumber in a can. It was in the minibar in my hotel in Berlin.

Well, it claims it's a large pickled cucumber in a can. I wasn't going to open it to find out, because then I'd have to figure out what to do with a large pickled cucumber I didn't feel like eating (plus, I'd have to buy it).

It was actually quite reasonably priced for a large pickled cucumber in a hotel minibar. Mind you, I've never seen a canned pickled cucumber on offer in a minibar before, so I can't really compare prices on that one. The rest of the stuff seemed reasonably priced, though, and the cucumber did not seem outrageously expensive...

I was expecting the contents of the minibar to be pretty expensive, as minibars usually are, but the various snacks (mostly nuts and chocolate, no other pickled things) seemed cheap to me. Then I saw what the prices were like in the shops, and I realised the minibar was still a rip-off, just not compared to the price of food in Australia.

My word, the food here is cheap. Most meals I buy cost less than half of what I'd pay back home. The other day I bought a sandwich, a cake and a drink - and I got change from a five Euro note. I think it all cost about the equivalent of $4.50 Australian. I found a bakery (well, more of a patisserie) in Tartu today that sells coffee for 40c a cup. Sure, it's just filtered coffee that you pour into a paper cup, but it's actually better than any of the other sources of coffee I've found in this town. For about the equivalent of $1.50 Australian I bought a danish and a coffee, and both were good.

I hear the wages here are pretty terrible and the cost of things like shoes is ridiculous, but I eating here is incredibly affordable. It's not just the stuff that people make in bakeries and cafes, either - I bought a packet of eight Snickers bars for less than a Euro in a shop in Binz. They were only snack-sized Snickers, but that's usually all I can eat in a chocolate bar, anyway, and it still cost less than one full-sized chocolate bar would cost back home.

I've figured out that if I could manage to get paid my normal wage in my country and live here it would be pretty sweet.

Literally, I expect. The cakes are good, cheap and convenient, and I'm definitely not sticking to my "low gluten" diet.

I'm also not eating red meat, for some reason. I go into a restaurant thinking "a nice juicy steak would be nice" and end up ordering fish, or something. I don't know why. I haven't noticed any discernible difference as a result, but something tells me I probably won't notice any difference in what I am and am not eating as long as a major component of my diet is cake...