By Dave Barry

What lies ahead for the European Union? This question is very much on the minds of concerned journalists looking for a way to take a tax-deductible vacation abroad. For this reason, I recently spent several weeks assessing the mood in a broad cross-section of Europe, ranging all the way from Paris, France, to several other parts of France.

I would say, based on this trip, that the biggest problem facing Europe today is that everything over there is hard to pronounce. Even the word 'France' is pronounced as a different word entirely ('Fwonce'). But basically the mood of Europe is good, except when you order your food incorrectly, in which case Europe can get snippy. My family and I experienced this personally at a cafe in Paris called Le Mistral (French for 'The Snotty Attitude'), where we offended the waiter by committing the unforgivable blunder of existing. To make matters worse, when the waiter, after ignoring us for 15 minutes, reluctantly came to our table, I made the horrific faux pas (literally, `hors d'oeuvre') of attempting to order my food before I ordered my drink, if you can possibly imagine anything so gauche (French for `American')."