A VISIT TO EUROPE

Europe has many interesting places for tourists and, generally speaking, the people are friendly.

Long distance trains are of high quality, while local services in the major capital cities, although often very crowded, at least run at very frequent intervals.

However, to a visitor from Australia the common European practice of charging for the use of public toilets seems positively antediluvian - and quite unreasonable in the case of the toilets in certain institutions, such as museums, that charge relatively high admission fees.

It was also astonishing during a recent trip to find that the central Paris branches of a major French bank proved quite incapable of cashing travellers' cheques even when denominated in euros.