I have the pleasure to be your host (again). I just came back from a round trip through Morocco where I had to pay in Dirhams which gave me the idea to ask you to show your wallet and a picture of the banknotes and coins you use in your countries.
Mr. Arthur has the (sleeping) honor to present you my rather boring black wallet. I had a nice red one but a pickpocket had liked it too and stole it from my purse while I was in a packed up train.
Here it is open (Arthur doesn't care). On the top right a pictures of my different darlings and below the pink thing is the Belgian driver licence, which is still very old fashioned. I wonder when we will get it in form of a credit card !
I only had 55 € cash, which was already a lot, because usually I pay everything with my bank card. That's why I had to google for Euro banknote and coins pictures.
The Euro is very new to the poor citizens of Europe, they had to forget their local money since 1 January 2002 when new coins and banknotes entered circulation. Belgian Francs, Deutsche Mark, French Francs, Italian Lira etc, disappeared from one day to the other. Lots of mostly elderly people still calculate in their local currency. It's not so easy to give up what you have known all your life.
For tourists of course visiting Europe is very easy now, because they don't have to change into X different currencies ! Only the UK keeps on his pounds and a few Scandinavian countries to their local currency, don't ask me why, because it's far easier if we all have the same money. And anyway everything is expensive, if you pay now in $, or whatever currency.
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Who wants to host Fun Monday next week ?
That Arthur providing that "human" interest for your photos! I always try to save some coins and paper currency from the countries I visit. As you say though, it's not so interesting now in Europe since everyone uses euros.
ReplyDeleteArthur obviously has no interest in material possessions. I think having one currency is much more sensible...as you say, makes it easy on the tourists. I had my wallet pinched a few years ago. I was so angry and the inconvenience of it all, too. I had to report it stolen, then replace everything. I had to borrow $5 off a friend to get to the bank to order a new card because I had no other money at home...it was all in the bank!
ReplyDeleteMoney: OK I'm going to try posting something up for you now. I will make it bilingual, as I have to get in my daily German practice.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, when I was in India, our old friend Rosie, who has probably spent 2 years in Goa, if you add all the time together, was STILL using a calculator for everything after more than a month there. Within 1 week I was thinking in rupees. I even started calling them "rupes" ~ sign of a true professional traveller, ha-har!
BTW talking of German, I have no excuse at all for getting the declensions wrong ever again, bc I wrote down the complete nominative-accusative-dative-genative tables for der-die-das-die and kein-keine-kein-keine and the strong, mixed and weak adjective endings and got every single one right(!!!) Which I don't think I could ever do at school except at exam time. (Only to forget them again.)
OK IT'S UP!! AND MY LINK IS;
ReplyDeletehttp://gledwood2.blogspot.com
forgot to do the German; too early in the day for that
ReplyDelete(tut mir leid)
I just switched back to my USA wallet. I have one for the EU which I carry my euro's in. But I needed my credit cards and grocery store cards, so now I am home it's back to my boring USA one.
ReplyDeleteOh! I was confused... for some reason I thought this was LAST Monday's FM! Lol! Well, I must say... Cat Arthur adds interest to any display! And I totally agree that ONE currency is easier for ALL - but I do feel bad that each country has lost that unique individual currency.
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting this week's Fun Monday. You selected a unique topic. Since I have not traveled to Europe, the currency is new to me.
ReplyDeleteFamiliar currency. It takes a while to get used to the switch but it is great not to have to exchange money every time we travel to Europe.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to get around to posting until tomorrow (Tuesday). Life kind of interfered with me getting stuff done...
ReplyDeleteBut I put up my link since it looks like it has a deadline!
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ReplyDeleteLiebe Gattina!
ReplyDeleteEndlich habe ich meinen Artikel über den Vogelein in meiner Straße geschrieben! Er heißt: Gledwoods Vogelein, und Du findest ihn hier:
http://gledwood2.blogspot.com/2010/06/gledwoods-vogelein.html
Komm und erfreuen Dich auf meinem hochqualitäten Deutsch!!
ha. and he seems so happy to be presenting it...lol.
ReplyDeleteI am always paranoid about this happening. I put nothing where it can be stolen and put only what I would not miss if it was stolen.
ReplyDeleteThe rest is sewed onto my body lol
It is so hard to replace things otherwise.
But no matter how careful you are it still happens. One story with our friend happened in the Philipines.
The man just disappeared and they found him a John Doe in the hospital.He asked directions at McDonalds and the man said he'd show him where it was but he wanted to buy his child an orange juice. So he bought three and gave him one which he drank and thats all he remembered.After he woke up he didn't know who he was or where or his name or his family. The drugs were powerful in the orange juice and it took awhile to get back to normal.They found him in a ditch unconscious after a few days of being missing.
Thats a night mare.