Success!

After struggling mightily to find an affordable flight to Barcelona, this afternoon I somehow found a charter flight online and even managed to do it in German (although a German colleague had to look over my shoulder and make sure I entered the correct data once I found the flight). Of course, I got a bit of a shock when the airport tax added another 30% to the price--I'm increasingly convinced it's impossible to find anything here that isn't more expensive than it really needs to be. (Speaking of which, Gretchen may have already posted something about this, but when we were in Italy there was a story on CNN about how supermarket prices in Switzerland are expected to drop because a German discount store is moving in. They interviewed a guy from one of the big supermarket chains here, and he actually claimed with a straight face that he was surprised to learn that groceries sometimes cost twice as much in Switzerland as they do across the border. Which just goes to show that "spin"--is there a German word for that?--isn't a wholly American concept.)