A British man is driving 1,250 miles to Slovenia – with a sheep in the back of his car.

The British man, David, is taking the 28 hour road trip with his four-year-old daughter because he is gifting the sheep to the people of Zrece. The sister-town of his hometown of Sedbergh.

Zrece, Slovenia is a place he has visited several times before to work with the singers of a local choir. The singers commented that they would love a reminder of his village, and so David decided to bring them a real treat, err a sheep. And to top it off the breed of sheep he’s bringing can only be found within a ten mile radius of Sedbergh; really, the perfect gift. Unable the fly the sheep, the only option is to hit the open road and make the journey by land.

Image: The U.S. National Archives’/Flickr

If you think driving a sheep is a little weird, it’s definitely not the most outlandish way to transport a sheep these days. The digital world has gotten into the sheep transportation business as well. In Zynga’s new Lady Gaga themed Farmville, sheep can ride motorcycles around the virtual farm while listening to Lady Gaga’s newest single “Born this Way.” The game was released May 23rd and is a Farmville knock off called, wait for it, GagaVille, according to MTV News.

Maybe you’ve never driven with a sheep, and perhaps Lady Gaga is on your car’s “do not play” list, but who hasn’t taken a road trip with their pet before? Ever had an amazing or terrible experience? We’d love to hear about it.

So what about for the reverse? When people from countries that don’t tip as much as a standard practice visit countries that do? Do they make themselves aware? According to The Telegraph, Britons are the worst among Europeans at educating themselves on foreign tipping practices.

Image: respres/Flickr

The travel site, TripAdvisor, surveyed 6,000 people from five European countries — Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and the UK — and found that 60% of Britons, compared to the European average of 45%, are clueless when it comes to tipping in foreign lands. The article is pretty vague though about the specifics of the survey, whether they asked about tipping in specific countries or just tipping in general.

Tipping practices vary from country to country, so to be knowledgeable offhand about any particular country would be a pretty high expectation. Nonetheless, the survey also found that 22% of British citizens are turned off to vacation in the US because of the importance they place on tipping. 16% of Britons admitted to being confronted about tipping while abroad, compared to the European average of 11%.

It surely isn’t a difficult thing to find about a country, with tipping customs written about in pretty much any guidebook and also readily available on the Internet. As always we suggest doing your research before traveling abroad to make sure you don’t offend anyone.

As this particular flight took off on Monday, May 3^rd, passengers had no idea that the twelve hour voyage from Heathrow to the Cayman Islands would require expert bladder control, something even the fine print on their boarding passes didn’t warn about.

Airplane toilets have a certain limit to how much they can hold, and when the jet landed in Heathrow, the contents from the previous flight were apparently not removed, leaving passengers with 6 of the 8 bathrooms out of operation. The already less than desirable situation was only aggravated  when the two remaining lavatories clogged up from the heavy use.

With almost three hours still left of transit, the captain came online to alert passengers of the situation, advising them to “stop drinking” until the plane landed in Nassau, an arrival undoubtedly accompanied with mad dashes through customs in an attempt to reach an airport bathroom.

With little else they could do, British Airways has gone on to apologize to their customers and has assured them nothing like this would ever happen again.

Since April 14^th, travel in Europe has been limited like never before, stranding travelers from across the globe in whichever location they chose to spend their vacations. Airlines across the globe have felt the blow from this unprecedented eruption, but European airlines have undoubtedly shown the greatest loss of profits.

Likening it to the September 11^th terrorist attacks, Mr. Willie Walsh, head of British Airways, called for government aid following the tremendous lack of profits that resulted from the eruption, going so far to say that the “current situation is more considerable [than the attacks].”

Whether or not the government agrees with this statement, it’s without a doubt that this is not the first time an eruption from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has created problems in the area. However, with modern complications taken into account, this 2010 eruption has resulted in the greatest air traffic disruption since World War II. With airlines only recently recovering from a decade-long period of financial losses as a result of the notorious September eleventh terrorist attacks, this eruption could not have come at a less opportune time.

It is said that European airlines have lost an estimated 200 million dollars daily since the eruption of the volcano, which resulted in the cancellation of up to 80,000 trans-Atlantic flights. The fear of engine failure as a result of a plume of ash generated by the eruption has frozen air travel in 23 European countries, and a concrete solution to the problem is far from being in effect.

Air travel set aside, European countries are suffering from the economic setbacks brought on by the immobilization of many different industries. As a continent recently recovering from a devastating recession, this lack of travel opportunity has come at one of the worst possible times, further crippling several areas of business.

As frequent travelers, there is little we can do but cross our fingers and hope the situation is resolved quickly and efficiently. Whether or not the government will provide aid to their airline industries is not yet confirmed, but it is without a doubt that the consequences from this event have had, and will continue to have catastrophic results, with only time being able to tell how everything will come to a close.

Image: Tribune de Geneve