Polish Money

The money here is the Zloty. I have yet to find some where in Europe that actually takes Euros, in fact I haven't ever seen a Euro. It seems that the countries we have been to still use their own currency. In Poland they have coins until you get to 10 zloty. the 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 are paper bills. They are kind of funny here about making change for you. If you get below 1 zloty then the coins are called grosz. They like to have the grosz portion of your bill be exact. So if you purchase some bread and it is $2.43, they would really like it if you gave them them the exact amount, but if you don't have a $2 coin, then give them something a little higher, but please give them the 43 grosz. And if you are buying something that cheap, then don't try to pay with a higher bill to make change for yourself. We have had to do that several times and I always have to gear up for the stares and looks i get from the shop keepers as i shake my head when they ask for smaller change. They really don't like to make change. It can be a little overwhelming as i am looking through my handful of change for the exact amount and i have had many cashiers reach into my hand and just take the right amount. I suppose they can spot the right coins quicker where i have to turn them over looking at the amounts. So often I just pull out my bigger coins and then just tell them I don't have the smaller ones. David was in a small shop where the shop keeper turned away a customer because he didn't have small change to pay for what he wanted to buy. He only had a larger amount.

The exchange rate is a little under $3.00 US dollars per zloty.

In Czech the exchange rate was around $18 US dollars per Czech Crown. Their money is so inflated, I can't imagine adding up my spending amounts each day. It was 55 crowns to buy a yummy pastry. Although it sounds expensive because of the high numbers, it is only about $3.00 US dollars. We went to the ATM there and it gave us money in the $1000 crown bill range and we thought, who is going to break down $1000 for us, as in Poland they would not like to do it, but in Czech we never had a problem. They easily gave us change and never asked for exact amounts.