Cultural Notes 2: Money

As a note, I'm going to try and update every 3-4 days at the most. Whether I succeed in that may depend somewhat on how you count days, as I am in a substantially different Time Zone than most of my readership.


So, one of the major things to adjust to in any foreign locale is the different currency. It is way, way too easy to imagine the local coin of the realm as being, like, monopoly-money or something, and then you spend it without realizing you're actually hemorrhaging budget. Fortunately, I came prepared for this, and so I've kept myself fairly under control. The following is an essay on the Euro, from an American perspective, and so it's not as much fun as some of the other things I've written about.

Okay. Pretty much anywhere you go on a vacation in Europe, the currency is now the Euro. This is a good thing, because it means that if you go from, say, France to Germany, you don't have to change your money. Anywhere but Britain (apparently) you're going to get the same money. This makes it much simpler, which I assume is why they did it in the first place.

So, now I will give you a step-by-step guide to using the Euro.

STEP ZERO: Before you go to Europe, talk to your bank. Tell them where you will be going, and when you will be there. You will have to fill out a form about this. Then, when you start trying to use it in Bulgaria or wherever, the bank will not be like, "Holy Shit! Bulgarian Hacker-Terrorists have stolen our credit cardz! We will hack the internets to stop them!" Also, if you haven't done this, no money will come out of the machine, no matter how much you cry or beg.

1. Go to a cash machine. This is like an ATM. Since you are in a first-world country, they are everywhere. Here in Utrecht, there are only slightly fewer ATMs than hot women on bicycles, which means you have to look past the flock of pretty ladies gliding down the street to see to the ATM beyond them. This is not entirely boring in itself. Do not use a bank. Do not do it at the currency exchange counter. You go to an ATM, because that is where you will get the best rate. Apparently, the Post Office is okay as well, but it is slower, less convenient, and you must deal with an actual human.

2. Use the cash machine. This is just like any other ATM. There will probably be a button for English, even, although you will have to select it rather than it being the default setting.

3. The system automatically converts however many euros you ask for, and then subtracts the appropriate amount from your account. There will probably be a service fee, on the order of 3%. Life's tough. But, don't go anywhere where the percentage is high, as that's a rip-off.

4. Okay. Now you have a big stack of Euros. Here is the thing. Euros are not cheap. Go look at the picture above again. That's a fifty-Euro bill, a one-euro coin on the left, and a two-euro coin on the right. The smallest bill is a five, so those coins are necessary. The exchange rate is about 1.5 dollars to 1 Euro right now, probably 1.6 dollars if I count in the exchange fee. So, if you got 250 Euros, which is pretty good for a few days wandering, eating, and shopping (if your lodging is already taken care of), you will have five fifty-euro bills. Every one of those is worth 75 dollars. Think about that. That two-euro coin? After a while, you'll have a handful of those. What you need to realize is that a few in the palm of your hand is fifteen bucks in US currency.

Do not treat this stuff as monopoly money.

5. Buy Stuff. This is easy. Look at anything you want. Multiply the cost times 1.5. That's how much you're paying for it.


See that? That's cheese. I've got a hundred grams of feta, a hundred grams of brie (which, btw, even post-conversion, the price compared very favorably to what I'd pay for brie in the US), a hundred grams of "vegetarisch" (which means vegetarian, and means that there are, and I quote, "plants" in it), and a hundred grams of Oude (old) Amsterdammer, or something like that. That last one is amazing, it's a very well-aged, strong cheese. You'd like it if you like good Gouda or aged sharp cheddar, that kind of thing. I bought all of these from a cheese shop in the open-air market (the market itself will most likely be my Saturday update.) They must have had a hundred very distinct cheeses in this still, and they'd cut you off a slice to sample of anything you liked. You had a ton of options there. There was many different cheeses that were, well, cheese with X inside it, many of which are very good (the Cumin I was fond of, but didn't buy. I couldn't possibly have bought everything I wanted.) Yes, people eat a LOT of cheese in these parts, probably somewhat because meat is so obscenely expensive. You do not even want to know how much cold-cuts cost in the grocery store. It's unspeakable. So, if you want a nice hearty sandwich, you put a big old block of mozzarella on there for substance, with some tomato sauce and just a little slice of ham on there for flavor. Also, you use real bread, with grains and nuts and oatmeal sticking out of it, not that nancy-ass white sandwich bread that people in the US are so often deluded into eating. No, I am not going native, I've been eating whole wheat/multigrain bread near-exclusively for years now. I'm just now lucky enough to be somewhere where that is the norm.

So, to the point, I picked out a bunch of cheeses, and it came to seven euros. That's essentially 10.50 in USD. Not too bad, when you kick in the brie and the Amsterdammer, which are the kind of cheeses you pay many dollars a pound for, if you can find them at all.


Trixie, for another example, cost me a total of 100 Euros, including the lock and the saddlebags. The guy cut a little off the price since I bought it all at once. That comes out to $160. I could have bought a whole new bike for that in Wal-Mart, I think, were I in the States, still. However, I am not in the states. You cannot go to Wal-Mart to buy cheapo versions of everything on the planet. You want [X]? You go to a goddamned [X] store, you deal with the proprietor himself, who knows all about [X], and you pay for the privilege and like it. Or, well, you walk. But even then, there is no wal-mart, so you will buy your walking-shoes in a shoe store, from a shoe guy, not from whatever blue-vested troglodyte wanders past.

I believe this has some impact on the psychology/sociology of material culture, but I don't think I'm qualified to write about it right now.

So, the point is, how much things cost in America is not a good guide to how much they will cost here, comparatively. Cheese is pretty cheap, for what you get. Meat is insanely expensive. Fish is gloriously inexpensive. Etc. Essentially, you have to shop around and get a feel for the market where you're at, not just buy things the same way you would at home. This requires a whole mental paradigm shift, and it's not at all obvious that you need to do this.

Forthcoming Posts: The open-air market, food in The Netherlands, Booze...I may begin to feel sadistic, and talk about international or comparative law (you know, that stuff I came here to study?), which is what I will do when I get tired of having people actually read this thing.

Also, Trixie tried to eat my fucking Eggplant the other day. I found a nice one at the Market, and put it in the saddlebags. Within a kilometer or so, she was chewing on it again. In a rage, I brought her home, and went downstairs to demonstrate, finally, who is boss. After ten minutes' work with pliers and some velcro, she is now much more pleasant to ride and generally obedient. We're getting along far better now. Also, I cussed her out in at least four or five languages, as every polyglot obscenity I have ever heard and forgotten rose unbidden to my mind. There are some SICK insults in Croatian, my friends, and I think that's at least part of why Trixie is now a much more pleasant companion.