It's becoming even more expensive to own a car in London. A new survey shows that the city is the most expensive for parking in the entire world, with an average of $68.07 per day, or $1,166.87 a month. Actually, two London spots were top on the list -- the top rate for the financial district and a slightly lower rate of $1,135.76 monthly for the West End. When you add the rising cost of gas, which in London is around $9 a gallon, and all sorts of commuting taxes and surcharges that the city keeps trying to add, it may become hard for Londoners to maintain their vehicles.

A kind of distant third on the list was Sydney, Australia at $774.76 monthly, followed by Hong Kong and Perth. Elsewhere in the survey by Colliers International of 64 downtown areas in North America and 74 cities in Europe, parking was high in Stockholm, which was second in Europe and Santiago, Chile was tops in South America. Tel Aviv and Dubai were the highest in the Middle East and Africa. And the lowest rates were in Jakarta, where monthly parking is just $26.07, and Delhi, where the daily rate is just $1.75 for the day.

It's interesting to think about how cities compete for tourists. Apart from spending billions of dollars on advertising, fighting to host World's Fairs and the Olympics, and desperately organizing major events, almost every aspect of a city's infrastructure could be seen as part of a bid for the tourist buck. Police? Handy for keeping the tourists safe. Public transportation? Offers a cheap way for the tourists to get around. Sports teams? Keeps the tourists happy while they're here and gives them handy souvenirs to take home!

I thought about this recently when I read about the town of Zheleznovodsk, Russia. Home to the Mashuk-Akva Term spa, the town seems to have long been casting about for a sense of identity. On the one hand, it is noted for the healing powers of its mineral springs; then again, so are many other towns in the Caucasus Mountains region, where it is located. Not long ago, it hit on the idea of using the iconic enema, the delivery system for many of its healing mineral treatments, as a sign of its civic pride. The first step was posters that stated "Let's beat constipation and sloppiness with enemas!" The signs hung in the local spa and garnered a fair bit of attention.

Buoyed by the success of their enema poster campaign, the spa commissioned a sculpture. Costing $42,000, Mashuk-Akva's enema statue shows an 800-pound bronze bulb-style enema being carried by three Botticelli-esque angels. While the sculptor admits to a certain irony in her finished work, the director of the spa considers it to be an utterly non-ironic symbol of the region. It remains to be seen if Zheleznovodsk's new sculpture will become a cultural icon or will end up being a washout. Regardless, the next time I take a trip, I'm going to give a long, hard look at Russia, the land of the golden enema!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. The more he thinks about it, the more he's impressed with Zheleznovodsk. Come to think of it, maybe New York needs an enema!