Yesterday, for some reason I was charged with acquiring fresh coffee beans for our department machine. In the local style, instead of saying 'could you pick up some coffee on the way in tomorrow, here's a fiver', I was given the address and phone number of a single espresso beans boutique, and instructed to buy 2 kilos of 'paradiso' blend and nothing else. For this I had to shell out €48, which I thought was a bit steep. However, I was won over when the secretary gave me a bottle of Swedish liqueur for my troubles. Of course they pay the money too, though they do everything by electronic transfer here, which I don't quite trust for some reason.

In Germany they still have this thing we used to have in the UK where you can only get your cash out for free from certain banks. It's very irritating. The charge for getting money from another bank is something truly ridiculous like €4.