Romanian Currency
Bucharest, Romania
A quick lesson in Romanian currency. It's called the "Lei" and it's currently pretty messed up. Somehow the lei got so over valued (or is it under?) that the exchange rate with the US dollar is around 30,000 to 1 and around 35,000 to 1 Euro. So, when I exchanged 50 Euros (about 65 US dollars), got back around 1.4 million lei... Score!
So, someone decided that they should solve this problem by just knocking off 4 zero's from all the bills. So, a 500,000 lei bill becomes a 50 lei bill and so on. Of course, all the prices for goods get updated as well. This actually makes a bit of sense, if not for the fact that the change just happened earlier this year and right now they are in the process of using *both* currencies.
Now here's the kicker, the new bills look pretty much just like the old bills, only they don't have any zero's on them. So the 500,000 lei bill and the 50 lei bill are almost identical (but still different enough to tell them apart when you need to).
This all gets a bit confusing when you purchase anything because you can pay with either bill format and get your change back in either bill format. So if you get back a 10 lei bill, you have to quickly recognize that it's really a 100,000 lei bill,which goes with the 500,000 bill you got back as well.
Basically, you just have to trust that the person is giving you back a set of bills that adds up to the change you are owed because the first time you hand someone a 500,000 lei bill and get back two 20 lei bills (200,000 each) and a 50,000 lei bill you think you're getting ripped off like there's no tomorrow. (Even though that adds up to 450,000 which means you just bought something for 50,000 lei, or just under 2 dollars US)...
The real kicker, in 2006-2007 Romania is going to adopt the Euro, so they'll have to change over the currency yet again... Good luck guys.
Kenny
(P.S. With several casinos in Bucharest, I'm tempted to step inside and play a few hands of blackjack... Nothing like doubling down for half a million!)
A quick lesson in Romanian currency. It's called the "Lei" and it's currently pretty messed up. Somehow the lei got so over valued (or is it under?) that the exchange rate with the US dollar is around 30,000 to 1 and around 35,000 to 1 Euro. So, when I exchanged 50 Euros (about 65 US dollars), got back around 1.4 million lei... Score!
So, someone decided that they should solve this problem by just knocking off 4 zero's from all the bills. So, a 500,000 lei bill becomes a 50 lei bill and so on. Of course, all the prices for goods get updated as well. This actually makes a bit of sense, if not for the fact that the change just happened earlier this year and right now they are in the process of using *both* currencies.
Now here's the kicker, the new bills look pretty much just like the old bills, only they don't have any zero's on them. So the 500,000 lei bill and the 50 lei bill are almost identical (but still different enough to tell them apart when you need to).
This all gets a bit confusing when you purchase anything because you can pay with either bill format and get your change back in either bill format. So if you get back a 10 lei bill, you have to quickly recognize that it's really a 100,000 lei bill,which goes with the 500,000 bill you got back as well.
Basically, you just have to trust that the person is giving you back a set of bills that adds up to the change you are owed because the first time you hand someone a 500,000 lei bill and get back two 20 lei bills (200,000 each) and a 50,000 lei bill you think you're getting ripped off like there's no tomorrow. (Even though that adds up to 450,000 which means you just bought something for 50,000 lei, or just under 2 dollars US)...
The real kicker, in 2006-2007 Romania is going to adopt the Euro, so they'll have to change over the currency yet again... Good luck guys.
Kenny
(P.S. With several casinos in Bucharest, I'm tempted to step inside and play a few hands of blackjack... Nothing like doubling down for half a million!)
posted by Kenny Carruthers at 11/03/2005 01:12:00 PM
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