CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

During the trip we used both Swiss Francs (CHF) and Euro (€). The CHF stayed fairly constant hovering around a one-to-one exchange with the dollar, with the best being at $1=.9622 CHF near the beginning of the trip, and gradually climbed until we left Switzerland to $1=.9823 CHF. Because the CHF and the dollar are so close to value, it would be easy to think that it is fairly easy to visit Switzerland; however, everything in Switzerland costs significantly more than it does in the US. Therefore, it wasn't necessarily an advantage. The Euro is definitely a different story from an exchange rate perspective. The Euro has been stronger than the dollar for a couple years now, and over the trip it hovered around $1.5=€1. I entered Italy, the first eurozone country I visited, on Wednesday, October 14, and exchanged at the lowest rate of our time in eurozone countries at $1.4881=€1 (other than the day we flew out). The Euro hit a high for our trip on October 23, with $1.502=€1, and has since gone closer to $1.47=€1 rate of exchange. It was difficult to remember that even though the prices didn't seem to bad when they were presented in Euro it in reality was 1.5 times that to get to a price in USD that we would really be spending. Thus, I found Europe to be extremely expensive to travel and live in, but in the little bit people shared about salary information it seemed that in general European workers are payed more to be able to compensate for cost of living.

Going to grocery stores in Europe were quite different. There weren't any superstores or giant stores; rather, the stores were much smaller in comparison. My favorite part was the bread and section of the Coop stores where there was always fresh bread and croissants. Presentation was important as well as even the cheaper options (comparatively) looked to be well packaged and higher end. The grocery stores also had the customers buy any bags they used, in addition to having a trough that your groceries slid down so you could bag them all yourself.