Every travel agent’s nightmare.  That request. A precis of the call: Get that on the itinerary please.  What rhinestones and pickled fish.  Yes.  My wife likes glitter and glam and country music and I like to eat obscure ancient European food.  Are you sure you don’t want a lovely fortnight in the Maldives.  There will be fish. And you can wear rhinestones.  Or your wife can.  And it is reassuringly expensive.  Local colour supplied by the sea.  We need something with slightly more atmosphere/edginess/variety.  You don’t go to the Maldives for those?

Couple trips – or couple’s trips.  The need to satisfy both.  When it stops being enough that you supplied the satisfaction by your very presence and very few clothes.  Rhinestones are Dolly and the deep south, Graceland, Jolene, possibly some of the flashier resorts in Spain, Italy and one or two in Greece.  All a bit southern.  Not skiing, unless there is a rhinestone themed fancy dress night.  Pickled fish is very Copenhagen, Iceland.  Anywhere that fished before fridges were invented and needed to preserve them.  You would have thought frozen would have covered all the preservation they needed in Iceland.  They need to preserve fish in the Mediterranean but I haven’t heard of pickling it there. Maybe they invented the fridge there.

Perhaps wine, women and song are all you need.  Fossils will rock a travel agent called that.  A tip (or actually a line from a song) – You know when the truth is told that you can get what you want or you can just get old. (Hum a bit). Vienna waits for you. It is a song. You don’t in fact need to go to Vienna.  Or use a travel agents. Or wear rhinestones. And for me the pickled fish is off. Go to a bar, wear what you like, eat what you like.  And sing.