I hate banks

I've won an item on Ebay, but fool that I am I forgot to check the payment methods the person accepts, they only accept bank transfer.
This isn't normally much of a problem, except that they live in Germany and the bank will charge me 25 quid to transfer 16.90 euros, or approximately 8 quid to them.
Bloody hell.
Any advice anyone? Apart from checking payment method next time...