Lunch at St. Mark’s Square in Venice can cost 1,100 euros. Anyone who thinks that is a lot should go to Budapest.
One of the globetrotter wisdoms so far has been that Venice is not only a “strange, tricky city” (Ernest Hemingway), but also one of the most expensive places on the planet. In November 2017, for example, a certain Luke Tang had to pay 526 euros for a lunch in a restaurant. Media reports According to the UK-based professor of Chinese descent and his parents were given 20 oysters and three servings of fish, plus lobster.
At the time, the mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, responded to a protest letter from the professor by saying that it was the tourists’ own fault if they did not understand Italian. In addition, things can happen quite differently at St. Mark’s Square: Just six months later, four Japanese students studying in Bologna were billed 1,100 euros for four chops, four fish platters and a little water. No oysters and no lobster – but nothing compared to Budapest.
A pub operator is said to have recently asked a German guest for 210,000 forints for a cup of coffee. Apart from the fact that the landlord had once again made the bill without the tourist and who refused to pay the equivalent of almost 600 euros, it also shows: Even in euro times, something as strange and tricky as mastering the language is even more important than the national language Exchange rates.