When money talks, no one is listening

Money is the thing that makes the world go round, isn't it? Nevertheless people never seem to have enough of it and it's extremely rare to hear someone complain that they have too much of it. Except if you happen to be living in Poland. In Poland even the blogger herself has come to understand the pain of having so much money that you don't know what to do with it. Unfortunately this is not because I'm sickly rich and it's impossible to deposit more into the bank account, but because the usage of large banknotes is banned, so to say.

For those who didn't already know, the currency of Poland is zloty. The smalles unit is the teeny-tiny coin of one grosz and the largest one is two hundred zloty. And two hundred zloty is good for nothing except maybe for charity.

It doesn't matter whether you are at a grocery store, cosmetics store, clothers store, restaurant (the list is endless, so I'll make a stop here), the cashier will expect the customer to have more common sense that to try and pay with hundred zloty if the price of the product is only twenty zloty. Keep your wealth a secret, please!

You will notice the aversion towards poor banknotes when you stand in front of the cashier and extract hundred zloty from your purse. The cashier will immediately step backwards in attempt to take some distance to that potentially dangerous object you are holding. They will invaribaly enquire if you have a more suitable bill hidden somewhere. My savior is my inability to understand Polish. It works miracles every time and I get my change.

Slowly even my absent minded self has understood that one cannot go to zloty war unprepared. Because of this "currency crisis" I'm indebted to someone most of the time and I'm sure my friends are sick and tired of paying me out when I fail to produce a suitable bill. So in the future I promise to carry a wider assortment of bills to be able to pay for my own food and drinks..

Next week I will start practicing what I just preached and promised by finally going to the post office. I've been postponing my visit because last week I didn't dare to go there waving my 50 zloty note, but now I have this harmless 20 zloty (see below). So let's see if I'll come out alive!