Lei
So we have the new lei now.
I have yet to see a bill, but I saw a coin in a store. Looks like the picture. As soon as I get some in my dirty little paws, I'll take a picture.
I wonder if it's still
I remember when France went to the euro in 2002. I went to Strasbourg to study in September 2002. The French people were having lots of trouble adjusting to the euro. Even when I lived with the Frenchies here in Timisoara, they still quoted prices infrancs.
I remembered thinking "How hard can it be to switch from francs to euros? I mean...it's just 6.43 to 1. Not hard at all. Those Frenchies must have some weird problem if they can't convert the prices.
Now I stand duly humbled and I send my sincere appologies to all Frenchies (and Europeans) I may have inadvertently insulted.
On July 1, we went from the old lei to the new lei. 10,000 lei became 1 lei.
I don't like this for several reasons.
1) I can't do math
2) I'm used to the old lei
I wish they had made 1000 equal 1 lei. Nice, easy, effective. Everyone pretty much knocks off the last three zeros anyways when talking about prices.
Now, the nice plastic green bill is reduced to a 1 lei note. Knocking four zeros off the price is much more inconvenient than knocking three.
Case in point:
(and please refer to 1) above)
They started putting dual prices last...oh...January, I think. Old lei and new lei.
I saw a lovely watermelon last April at the Stil supermarket. It was priced at 32.5 lei. Again, please refer to 1) above, I thought this meant that the melon in question was 32,500 lei. "Bonus!" I thought.
So I lugged this ripe, juicy melon up to the cash.
"That will be 325,000 lei"
Almost 10 euros.
!@#$
So of course I put the melon back and walk dejectedly home.
They say it's to...
I don't know the reason. I've been told it's to get people used to the euro, but who knows how long it will be until we adopt it? And personally, I kind of like our money system. You can make all sorts of jokes with our money.
1) I am a millionaire.
2) I can give people a 1000 lei coin and say "this is good for 1000 lays".
Anyways, I'll have to get used to it. Well, I'm leaving soon anyways. Oh well.
5 Comments:
That's my people for you.
Actually the exchange rate between francs and auro is "slightly" different:
1€=6.55957F :)
So, if you like, the easiest way to convert from francs to euros is to virtually maintain correspondance tables in your mind and not to compute instantly.
Otherwise I think that the moment when the official currency of France became the euro was quite easy to live, because they prepared it long time before. And this in comparison with the situation of 1st of July in Romania. The news from the newspapers about that are not so good: problems with the wall machines, problems with accounting in companies, etc.
i mailed you pics of the new "1 Leu"
in case you don't get some soon, you can post them :))
where are you leaving?
I've been in Australia since they bought out the new lei, so havn't seen it yet. Don't think i'll be a big fan! Too confusing.. PLus I like comming home and giving people 100,000 lei notes to look at, or even the old blue million. Always makes for good conversation! Moving to Timisoara soon from Bucharest and will know no one!!!! Would be great to be able to chat through here (if i ever get used to it, or bother setting up my own) but can always just post messages i guess!!!
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