Sorry for the side diversion, but from your travels do you have any opinions on fuel costs vs quality / cost of living in those countries. I'm particularly interested in the effect on transportation costs for food / the production costs for farmers etc , and if any countries seemed to get the balance right between personal transportation vs , I guess, infrastructure benefits of cheap / subsidised fuel.
Well, I spent about two months in 2012 road-tripping through France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Switzerland. Most of the trip was in a small Korean SUV with three people and the last twenty days were in a mini Cooper with two people and a lot less stuff. We mostly visited smallish towns and skipped the big cities. We stayed in campgrounds, cheap hotels, B&Bs, and a few home and apartment rentals. All of those countries have fairly steep ($6-$8/gallon) fuel prices.
I've traveled a little bit in Norway and Sweden and would like to do much more, and have spent a few months in Northern Italy as well. Those places also have fairly high fuel prices.
Generally I would say that groceries and the like were more expensive, but not grossly so. More precisely, the premium you'd pay in a big, dense American city like New York or San Francisco would be substantially larger than the premium you'd pay at the Intermarche in Cahors over a Safeway in Des Moines. From what I saw of the people and places I stayed the quality of life was very high and while some towns were run down and a little dumpy nothing I saw was grossly impoverished.
If you bought a burger and fries from a roadside stand or a McDonalds you'd pay within about two bucks what you'd pay in the states, and not necessarily two bucks more.
If anything I suspect that the higher prices have more to do with higher labor costs and rents than fuel prices.
Having said all that, what I found much more intriguing was the cultural differences implied by what was and was not available. Produce, meat, cheese, and bread were all somewhat more expensive but the quality (in particular the produce) was very high. Convenience foods were much more expensive and generally not as commonly available. Gourmet coffee was impossible to find (most of Western Europe seems to top out at the Sanka/Folgers level). And finding decent tortillas, hot sauce, or jasmine rice was also a project.
On the other hand, in 2010 I spent three weeks roaming around Egypt, which at the time had fuel prices subsidized to about $0.50/gallon. In
Sallum there was a line for the petrol station that was literally miles long, with every imaginable (and some unimaginable) vehicles waiting for a shipment of fuel. I was hoping to get to
Siwa Oasis but the buses weren't running due to lack of fuel and any driver I could find wanted an outrageous price for the trip. While dates and bananas and bread were all inexpensive if you wanted a decent cup of coffee you'd probably pay ten bucks for it.
