An American Traveller's Perspective (The Euro)

Name: Cammij

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Product:	The Euro
Date:	21/02/03 (604 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy, Convenient, Can use anywhere, like Visa

Disadvantages: sillie little coins, Numeristically bland

I thought a perspective from an American traveller might be refreshing and interesting to some of you people. I am not here to teach economics 101 so I am going to shy away from the advantages of joining with the Euro from the position of the result to direct foreign investment and trade or even the numeristic intrigue. I am going to write about what it means to me as a drunk fat ass tourist to be able to use Euros instead of Pesos or Punts or whatever the hell they have in Northumbria.

I am going to let you all in on a little secret. You know I am Afrikaans but I have lived 20 years in America. As a Boer I have my own reasons to hate Britain (unless your history books got moth eaten for the years 1899-1902 you know what I am talking about) but you want to know why all Americans secretly resent Britons and harbor a resentment against them? Of course Americans in general don't know history well enough to know that Lord Mountbatten burnt down the White House during the War of Jenkins Ear or something like that, so that isn't it, nor is it the fact that you call fries chips and chips are crisps, we just mock that whole language thing, no, the real reason that yanks secretly hate the British is that Pounds cost more than dollars. It bugs the hell out of Americans, to look at a currency chart in the daily and see all these other currencies, like you get three trillion Lira, six or seven Francs and a about 7 of what those goofy Scandanavians can't spell "crown". Then you get to the Pound Sterling and it is like .65. It just ruins everything in the order of things, the uppitiness of it all to think that someone makes us give them more than one of ours to get one of theirs, it is sheer obnoxiousness. It is the sort of thing that makes you question if we won two world wars for nothing.

This whole euro thing started out right, but now they want 107 dollars for a hundred Euros, so you people best get out your gas masks and dig up you
r bomb shelters. I liked it when it was 95 cents per Euro but that went to hell. I was happy, I was thinking that it was just a matter of time before I could treat you all like Canadians (yes this means you MrsCanada with your currency you dare call a dollar instead of a more accurate 60% of a dollar, that's right, that is the new proper world for Ozzie and canadian currency (like the Irish Punt which is called pound) those currencies should be pronounced the "sixtypercentuvadolla".)

So what is my position? I like the Euro. To tell you the truth I like Romania and Russia where you give them fiftty real dollars (pay close attention you still colonials) and you get like 1.562 million Lei or Rubles back. It is nuts, like maybe we should kill a few decimals? But you feel so rich with 1.562 million of anything. Not that it is worth much. But you are a millionaire and it feels good. It is just cool to have all that money in your pocket. But that is too damn confusing. You got to figure out what each of them fruity things is worth, you end up mentally tabulating that the red ones are three dollars and the blue ones are a buck fifty, and you go from there. But it is still confusing, especially if you charge something or sign a bill and don't have to count the shit out where you can look at each bill and count it out to yourself. The Euro is so cool because it is like actual money. It actually counts as something. I don't like it when the coins are actually worth something, in America, unless I am in Vegas if I drop a coin I don't bother to pick it up, I try to kick it, but I do not stoop to pick up coins. Those Canadians have coins worth two dollars Canadian, which is like how much a family of four lives on for a month there, and I used to get those five mark coins in Germany and my cousin jumped my ass for throwing them in fountains, because I figured coins are coins, they are just a trinket they give you when you spend actual mon
>ey, I had no idea they could be worth three dollars at the time. You just wouldn't think that.

I am kind of a nerd and my favorite thing in the whole world is the Big Mac index in the Economist magazine. It always shows the purchase price parity in countries since the only thing that is universally the same is a Big Mac. You would think cocaine would be the same but I could tell you about the stepped on crap from Santa Ana square in Madrid that costs 90 euros for a half gram while I get good coke back here for 100 dollars a gram. Euros make all of this much easier. Or like one time I got tricked into going to a whorehouse in Frankfurt and I got cheated by the exchange rate, with Euros it is much easier to know when people are gypping you. Plus I get to collect all those coins from each of the countries that I ravish.

So overall I believe the Euro is good, especially for travellers because you can really understand how much money you are spending. It is a lot easier than pounds, every time I bought something in Ireland I had to always think that it was like a dolla fiffy for each pound and it made me mad, now you can just know that Euros and real American dollars are the same. I also think it is way cool that I don't need to get new money everytime I pass out on a train and end up in the wrong country or get lost, I get lost a lot and you used to never know what currency those people wanted. I would pass out on trains and the cops would try to deal with me and I never knew what currency to try to bribe them with. But I just like the idea if I am driving around in your sillie ass little patches of land that you call countries that we call townships back home that I can go from one to the other without ending up with a whole pile of fruity-ass looking money. It is kind of a drag if your kid collects money and you come home now and you have a bunch of coins since each country has their own design, or so I hear, I mean you feel like a big
shot
giving them real money not some tinnie ass coins. To me giving out coins is like passing out lint, it is just something that clogs your pockets and falls out of your wallet and cuts into your sloops.

So I support the Euro. It makes travel much easier for people like myself that don't really give a damn about the history, traditions or cultures of the places I visit. It is convenient and that is all that matters in this day and age.


Look I just realized the most important reason to support the Euro. I went to the everythings a dollar store tonite and heres what I got for a dollar; a new toothbrush, a three pack of breath drops, a mini-first aid kit, a four pack of c dry cells panasonic brand, a 3 pack of Jewel cases for Cds and a book. That is cool. Now what can you get for a Franc? A french streetwalker probaly, but a Lira? Maybe a Juventus shirt. But really it would suck not to have a currency that could get you a pair of socks made in a chinese prison labour camp. I mean can you have a 6.54 Franc store or a store called "everything is Six Krona?" So out of my love for the dollar store I support the Euro. note I also bought some fake-ass Jordache cologne version of Cool Water and a bottle of nail Polish remover. Just so you know why I bought the nail polish remover (I got a coke nail that goes 4 Cm past the end of my pinky and I paint it but what I really needed nail polish remover for is I heard about a way to find out if a girl really loves you or not. You take the filter off a cigarette (if you are a wimp that smokes filtered fags) and then you peel off the paper. Then you put it on the plam of your hand and then pour a little nailpolish remover on it. Then you close your hand and say her name 5 times and open you hand and look at it. If anyone wants to see the picture of my coke nail e-mail me and I will send you a picture of it.

Also sorry about all the typos but I can't type and my keyboard is all
covered with cigarette ashes so I can't see a lot of the keys. I have been using Skoal for afew days to try to cut back on smoking and it is the damndest thing, it says on the can that it is not a healthy alternative to smoking, like no dud, it isn't an alternative to smoking cuz I smoke while I chew.

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