Preturi la Londra

Many Moldovan salaries wouldn't last a day in London.

Consider the costs of a day of the English leg of my vacation.

1. I wake up in rented apartment. There are four beds for five people, meaning that I share a double bed with my friend Kyle. This costs $24 US per person in an apartment roughly half the size of the Chisinau apartment for six that I often rent. The Chisinau apartment costs about $6 per person.

2. I eat breakfast. Some cereal, milk, bread and Nutella. Although I never did the apartment's grocery shopping during our trip, I would estimate the cost of breakfast at $2 US.

3. I hand-wash my laundry in the sink. I am wary of spending money on a laundry machine that took nearly two hours to wash Kyle's laundry the day before. But if I were to use the washer and dryer in the apartment building, it would cost me $5.40.

4. I use public transportation for the first of several times during the day. One trip on the Underground costs ?3, or $5.40. Buying a day pass runs about $9.

5. I go to a pub to watch a World Cup match. I buy a pint of beer to start the game and another at the half. Lunchtime rolls around, so I buy a burger and fries. $16.

6. In the evening, I head with my friends to a pub before dinner. I don't have money to spend, so I make a deal with my friend Ryan that if he buys me drinks for the rest of the night, I'll officially give him ownership of the bass guitar that he borrowed from me five years ago and never returned. He buys me two pints, and because the bass is hard to factor, we'll just say that the drinks totaled $9.

7. We go to a nice-looking pizzeria. My friends glance at the menu and walk in. I stay outside gawking.
"Hey guys," I say. "Have you looked at these prices?"
"What's wrong?" says an American ex-pat acquaintance of ours. "Is he complaining about the prices?"
"Hell yeah I'm complaining at the prices," I grumble. "I make 250 bucks a month."
I'm dragged in anyway, and choose the least expensive item on the menu, a margarita pizza. Ryan covers it for me, in an unspoken corollary to our bass-for-beer agreement. The pizza costs $9.90.

8. We return to the apartment and I use the internet on my friend Mike's laptop. We each paid ?3 for the week so that our apartment would have high-speed internet access. That means 50 p per day, and 90 cents.

Let's add it up:
apartment $24.00
breakfast $2.00
laundry $5.40
public transit $9.00
lunch $16.00
pre-dinner drinks $9.00
dinner $9.90
internet $0.90
grand total: $76.20

Seventy-six dollars and twenty cents. One day. The average Moldovan salary is $100 per month.

Oh brave new world that would be so damn expensive!