Come to think of it, I haven\’t lived that long. I am certainly not young anymore, but according to statistics, I am still far from death. So I remember relatively much. And I remember at least more currency than I have or ever had in my hands.
As a child, the first foreign money I spent was Polish zloty. At the time, it was only worth 50 pennies in my childhood, and I remember my parents declaring that this was a thief\’s rate. My parents also said that Poles would offer me a better rate on the black market. Later, when the Polish Communist Party came to power and the currency was devalued significantly, the reality was that they did.
Then logically, I arrived at the mark. Of course, it\’s from East Germany. During my childhood, when I was in the GDR with my family, and later as a high school student in the GDR, the Mark was 3 crowns, and unlike in our country, in the GDR, it was used to buy wonderful sausages preserved in jars and incredibly expensive pineapple, which is in short supply here! could be used to buy canned goods. Slides and posters of female nudes could also be brought back illegally, where such an assortment was taboo.
And that came to 100 US dollars and 10,000 Italian lire. I was an adult by then, and at the end of the socialist era I was extorting foreigners who were staying at a nearby hotel. Now, I admit, that would be the statute of limitations.
And there was a time when foreign money, including convertible bills, was legally exchangeable. So when I was able to buy 600 Austrian shillings for 2,000 crowns for the first time after the velvet revolution, I initially gloated with delight. A few Swiss francs for excursions to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, a few French francs for trips to France, US dollars for trips to the US, Canadian dollars for final unauthorized trips to countries between the US and US, the newly introduced euro and South African rand.
It is very common money these days. And if I want something special. I can see a 100 ruble Soviet ruble with Lenin on it at home. I learned how to do that in the communist era, when it didn\’t cost 1,000 kronor.
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