Doubts about Free Flow of People and Goods in Europe: Where is the “U” in EU?
The international traveler is often keen on comparing the prices of basic commodities among different countries, often as a simple-minded effort to gauge the local standard of living. Here in Europe, the same basic travel necessities a traveler comes across in different countries, such as a bottle of Coke, a kebab, or a bar of soap with the same brand name, happens to fluctuate enormously from country to country, even if the towns of different countries use the same currency and are literally less than an hour away from each other. Massive differences in prices between short physical distances are especially the case across the old “Iron Curtain” between the long capitalist Western Europe and the “transition economies” of the East. In one instance, the traveler snacks on a hot dog and a bottle of diet Coke first in Slovenia, costing him a total of 1.40 Euros. Then the traveler heads to Austria, a couple of hours to the north, and orders the same thing. He is shocked to find that th