But how would this affect the exchange rate of gold to USD?
Would unemployed Europeans find themselves selling gold to pay for living expenses, driving the price of gold down? Would a short-term stronger USD also drive the price of gold even lower?
If you wanted gold, would you wait or buy now?
A flight from EUR would see some gold buying by those with lots of Euros and selling by those who have gold but lose their income. It's tough to say what prices will do without more information on what supply and demand would be. And we're not likely to get that information unless it happens, and then we can make some decent guesses at what it was based on price.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging is probably your best bet. If I really wanted to time it, I'd personally wait, but that could easily turn out to be the wrong move. Nobody can predict the future, so it's best to just develop a basket of things you want (stocks, bonds, gold, cash, bitcoin, food, guns, whatever) and assign a percentage to each. If one goes up, you sell a little and buy whats down to get your percentages back on track.