€uros

One of the easiest things to figure out in the New Europe is the money.

With the introduction of the Euro it became possible to travel from Berlin to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon without having to do currency exchange. There are a few annoying holdouts from the €uro, the biggest annoyance being the United Kingdom.

Additionally, one of the greatest things about the €uro is that it is easy to use. Each piece of paper currency is a different size and different color: the 50€ is a nice tan; the 20€ is blue; the 10€ is red; and the 5 is a grey-blue. (And the 100€ is green.) The paper also clearly indicates its own value in big bold numbers.

The same can be said about most of the coins: they all have written clearly on them their individual values: “2 Euro” or “50 Euro Cent.”

Compare that to US currency: the paper money is all the same size and the number can be hard to read (especially true of older versions), and then the coins are completely and totally useless. Where on the quarter does it say that it is worth “25 cents?” It doesn’t, it only says “Quarter Dollar.” The nickel and penny never say “5 cents” or “1 cent,” they say “five cents” and “one cent.”

I suppose, that at least the quarter, nickel and penny give some clues about their value, if you can read English, but what about the dime? It says “one dime.” Nowhere on it does it say that it’s worth ten cents. I grant that if one is familiar with French and Latin roots, you might be able to determine that it is worth a tenth of a whole unit, but the word is rather far from its roots on the coin.

So essentially US money is unfriendly to the blind (paper currency is all the same size) and to non-English speaking individuals (Quarter / Dime, no numeric value indicated on coins), unlike €uros which are explicitly clear about value. €uros are really easy to understand.

However, this morning I headed over to the grocery store to pick up some essentials. I was in line behind multiple difficult customers: one had a coupon that the store did not recognize and the manager had to come explain that they were not going to take the coupon (3 minutes), and an older woman whose total came to 58,40€.

I wasn’t that surprised when I saw the older woman hand her wallet to the clerk. The clerk opened the wallet and fished out a 50€ bill, and then looked through the rest of the wallet to find additional money—which wasn’t there. The older woman had to chase down her husband to get additional money (3 minutes).

Upon returning with the money, the woman handed it to the clerk, who then found 40 Euro cent in the wallet, hit the button, and returned a 2€ coin to the wallet, shut it, and zipped it up before returning it to the woman.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen older people in Germany have problems with their money. I suppose for people in my part of Germany, this is the third currency that they’ve used in their life-time: first the Ostmark, then the Deutsch Mark, and lastly the €uro.

However, the €uro has been used on the street for four years now, and one would think that some understanding would have been achieved by now.