Big cities in Europe are expensive, maybe there is an exception somewhere. Folks go to France and generally see only Paris, which is understandable, and think it's expensive, and it is. Part of this is the VAT of course, part is whatever exchange rates are. The first time I went to Paris it was $1.65 to the Euro, that was steep. Now it's $1.05. We've stayed in hotels around France that were roughly $100 a night that were clean and decent, the rooms can be very small. One can find food that isn't tres cher.
We're meeting a good friend who is Swedish in Copenhagen, we were going to visit her and spend some time there but travel plans didn't work out. It's fascinating to me how many languages they often speak, especially the Dutch and Danish. But I've found out in the sticks, you won't find much English speaking at all, and the farmer types speak a French I can't make out. They turned me loose in a market once to get veggies and I was pretty lost. I could point, but they'd say something that I finally figured out meant "You have to buy at least 6 of those."
The farmer's markets they have are often awesome. We have one here on Saturday's across the street but it's pretty lame really, especially in early spring.
