European Jump Offs

NORWAY
Why you’ll go: Possibly Europe’s most beautiful country. Clean, civilized, friendly.
What you’ll find: The worst of both worlds. Norwegian women are genetically perfect, hot-beyond-belief Arctic foxes. Men, on the other hand are either mummy’s boy Eurotrash, or enormous knuckleheads in Berghaus jackets, purple-faced on vodka and unhinged by the long dark winters. You’ll spend the entire trip avoiding men who look like fists on legs, while feeling about as attractive as Ugly Betty on her period every time a woman walks past you.

SWEDEN
Why you’ll go: To recover from Norway.
What you’ll find: Aside from their moneyed set who are like a less evolved version of Britain’s royal family, Swedish men are a good bet. They have an embarrassing tendency to ‘party like it’s 2002’, dancing around with their arms around each other while wearing trucker hats and listening to Phoenix, but that’s not so bad. Bear in mind that they tend to have a lot of money—great when you’re scrounging free drinks, not so great when your sexualgymnastics have them using their limitless resources to pursue you across Europe.

WALES
Why you’ll go: It’s kind of like a picturesque natural park stuck on the side of England. 
What you’ll find: Wales suffered a Detroit-like industrial collapse in the mid-eighties, and the pervading sense of manic depression is palpable. Wales has the highest rates of steroid abuse in the UK, so the men tend to be enormous. And on a pretty short fuse. And not fond of taking ‘no’ for an answer. If you sleep with anyone, all their friends will stand ’round the bed videoing it on their phones and making honking noises.

SPAIN
Why you’ll go: Laid-back, Mediterranean culture, nice weather, good music festivals. 
What you’ll find: Outside of Barcelona, Spain largely consists of desolate scrubland, half-finished hotel complexes, rabid dogs, and meals that involve a lot of blood. If you wander into any of these towns, you’re the locals’ one shot at marrying outside of their gene pool and will be pestered continuously. At some point, you’ll be walking through the woods when a 13-year-old boy will run towards you, masturbating.This is perfectly normal behavior and usually harmless.

ENGLAND
Why you’ll go: Because you imagine that we all hang out with Bloc Party before backflipping down Carnaby Street into a Union Jack-colored E-Type Jaguar, pausing only to high-five Kate Moss. 
What you’ll find: Slight tendency to consider themselves far more attractive/intelligent than they really are and blessed with skin/teeth that Americans last saw in 1942. Six months ago everyone was dressing like Pete Doherty, but have now switched to nu-rave and look fucking ridiculous. Social life revolves around binge drinking and casual, unprotected sex—just go along with it. Despite the moronic ‘fuck Bush’ rhetoric, all English people secretly want to live in America, so beware of swapping addresses.

RUSSIA
Why you’ll go: So you can get the exciting frisson that comes from being a Valley Girl who’s rubbing shoulders with gangsters while wearing a fox-fur hat. 
What you’ll find: Rampant alcoholism has reduced Russia’s life expectancy to 58 and 42,000 of them die every year after being poisoned from bootleg booze. The post-Communist meltdown has turned about 1 percent of Russians into billionaires and the other 99 percent into wide-eyed desperate lunatics. It’s like Spring Break with Suicidal Tendencies.

GERMANY
Why you’ll go: Berlin has overtaken East London as Europe’s trendiest spot right now, but is much cheaper. <
What you’ll find: Achingly fashionable young men and gnarly, squat-hardened old punks. As an agent of bourgeois capitalism, you’ll be expected to pay for everything by both groups, and it might piss you off not meeting a single person with a ‘proper’ job (as opposed to pie-in-the-sky ‘creative plans’). Still a surprising number of German men of all ages wearing those red and white PLO scarves. Which you think they’d be wary of, given Germany’s history with idiotic anti-Semitic movements.

ITALY
Why you’ll go: Because you liked the look of The Interminable Mr. Ripley. 
What you’ll find: Italian pests rove around on shitty scooters in large packs, trying to look debonair while they’re basically sitting on sewing machines. They will expect you to take it in the ass, due to strange Catholic notions of sex before marriage and ‘preserving virginity’. This anal rampage will take place in a field, as they live with their mum and 28 other excitable relatives until they’re 30.

CROATIA
Why you’ll go: Ultra-lux, Dubrovnik is a world heritage site and has been the redoubt of Europe’s hyper-rich for almost seventy years.
What you’ll find: Croatia went into meltdown 15 years ago during Balkan War III; a lot of potential suitors might be hindered by missing limbs, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Or maybe they just killed someone’s entire family? Probably best not to get them pissed and start pestering them for stories about “guns and stuff.” A pretty hardcore bunch in general, partly due to geography—they didn’t just miss out on post-war democracy; even the Enlightenment took a swerve ’round the region. Unreconstructed ideas about gender roles.

ALBANIA
Why you’ll go: It’s cheap, used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, and full of pyramids built by former nutjob president Enver Hoxha, plus on your return, all your friends will say “You went to Albania? Get the f*ck out of here. What are you? Vasco da Gama?” 
What you’ll find: A propaganda film from the Soviet bloc. The whole society is run on the settling of “gjakmarrja” (blood feuds) so you may find that a quick fumble in one of Tirana’s bars finds you embroiled in some psychotic death match between two clans.