To enter Europe, You must have a valid passport with a photograph of yourself in which you look like you are being booked on charges Of soliciting sheep. To obtain your passport, you must wait in a federal waiting room with yellow walls for a minimum of two hours, then produce proof of U.S. citizenship in the form of a personal letter from Publishers Clearing House notifying you that you have probably won a million dollars.

Medical care in Europe is excellent, and you may rest assured that if God forbid anything were to happen to you, the hospital personnel will use only the highest-quality stainless-steel drill to bore a hole in your skull to let out the Evil Spirits.

Ha ha! We are just joshing, of course. There is really nothing at all primitive about European medical care except that in some countries they practice it in foreign languages, meaning you run the risk of entering the hospital complaining of an inflamed appendix and coming out as a member of a completely different gender. This is why many smart travelers take the precaution of having the international symbol for “No Sex-Change Operation, Thank You” tattooed on or near their private parts (A circle with a line through it superimposed over a pair of pruning shears). It’s also a good idea to take along any prescription medication that you might need, as well as a spare pair of eyeglasses, some clean bandages, sutures, a scalpel, a wheelchair, and a CAT-scan machine. Feel free to drink the water in Europe, but don’t touch the food.

Before they let you into Europe, you have to pass through Customs, so that beady-eyed individuals can root freely through your underwear looking for certain items that are strictly prohibited in Europe, such as cold drinks and functional toilet paper. European toilet paper is made from the same material that Americans use for roofing, which is why Europeans tend to remain standing throughout soccer matches.

Narcotics: You are not allowed to bring narcotics into Europe, and you are definitely not allowed to sell them to children. It’s a good idea to assure the customs personnel that you are aware of these rules. Try to bring the subject up in a casual manner. “So!” you could say. “Nice weather we’re having here in Europe! By the way, I’m not bringing in any narcotics, and I certainly don’t intend to sell them to children!”

Insects: The Europeans do not want you bringing in insects that will reproduce like crazy and eat all their agriculture. Any insects you bring in must be spayed, and you should be prepared to prove it to the customs officials. “Go ahead!” you should tell them in a challenging manner. “Just try to arouse this insect!”

Tipping: Remember that the customs personnel are working men and women just like everybody else, and they definitely appreciate receiving “a little something” in return for a job well done. Your best approach is to hand them a shiny quarter right up front, then, with a wink and a friendly smile, tell them, “Do a good job with these bags, and there’ll be another one of these for each of you.”

Europe operates under the metric, or communist, system of measurement. The main units are the kilometer, the hectare, the thermometer, the pfennig, the megawatt, the libra, and the epigram. These are all very easy to remember because all you have to do is divide them by a specific number, possibly 100. Or you can use the following handy conversion table:

Metric System Real System One Kilometer equals about five miles Five Kilometers equals about five miles Ten Kilometers equals about five miles Eight Pentagrams equals about five miles 1830 Hours equals about eight days

Europeans, like some Americans, drive on the right side of the road, except in England, where they drive on both sides of the road; Italy, where they drive on the sidewalk; and France, where if necessary they will follow you right into the hotel lobby. If you have a valid U.S. driver’s license, you may drive in most European countries, but it’s more efficient to simply leap off a cliff.

Aside from not comprehending menus, changing money is the most popular activity for Americans in Europe. There are money-changing booths everywhere, occupied by little men crouching inside next to incomprehensible signs covered with numbers and letters like this:

UAR 23.402490029

UAW 3049.5858, 2 FOR 43-0394-02342

USA 349239%92182

UCLA 37 USC 14 3rd quarter

These numbers change constantly to reflect the fact that the dollar is getting weaker. The first rule of travel finance is that no matter what is going on elsewhere in the world, the dollar is always getting weaker where you are. By the time you’ve spent a couple of days in a foreign country, the natives will be blowing their noses on the dollar. To change your money, simply give the little man enough dollars to buy a decent used car. He will perform various calculations involving the exchange rate and the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the relative humidity, then thrust out an amount of foreign currency so small that if you threw it into a fountain for good luck, you would immediately be struck by lightning. You should repeat this process after every meal.

One of the things you’ll need to get used to in Europe is the bidet, which is a bathroom appliance, usually located next to the toilet, that looks like a urinal lying on its back. If you want the Europeans to think that you’re a suave and sophisticated person, as opposed to the nose-picking yahoo that you actually are, you need to learn proper bidet procedure. The number one rule is:

1. Never pee in the bidet.

This is extremely important. This is how the Europeans separate the sheep from the goats, sophisticationwise. In fact, it’s a good idea, when you emerge from a European bathroom, to state in a loud yet casual voice, “Well, I sure didn’t pee in the bidet, ha ha!”

So the question is, what are you supposed to do with a bidet? The answer is: wash your private parts. Really. Now I know what you’re thinking, as an American. You’re thinking: Wait a minute! Don’t they wash their private parts in the shower? The shocking answer is: no. Studies show that Europeans hardly ever even take showers. Highly sophisticated European cultures such as the French also wear the same underwear several days in a row, to the point where individual jockey shorts, when they are finally removed for laundering, have to be subdued with hammers. Thus you can easily see the need for some kind of major hygiene unit in the European bathroom, although you yourself, as an unsophisticated shower-taking American, don’t need to bother with it. But to avoid offending your European hosts, you should at least pretend that you used it when you emerge from the bathroom. “Boy!” you should say. “My private parts are clean as a whistle!” (“Garron! Mes partes de privatude sont net comme un sifflet!”)