On Jan. 1, 2002, 300 million people in 12 European countries ditched their old coins and bills and switched to the euro. This weblog kept track of the quirky human side of this gloriously epic yet tediously mundane transition, with correspondents in ten countries sharing their experiences.
CORRESPONDENTS
Your hosts were David F. Gallagher, an American journalist living and working in Milan, Italy, and Joyce-Ann Gatsoulis, an American journalist living and working in Athens, Greece.
Andreas Purkott is a German graphic designer living and working near Heidelberg, Germany.
Graham Spencer, a.k.a. Graybo, runs a small nursery and event management business in Chichester, England, where he also lives.
Sue Kane, a.k.a. pseudo morph, is an American who has lived in the Dutch province of Brabant for 18 years.
This Associated Press roundup of the euro situation says there is a movement underway in many countries to eliminate the one and five cent coins. Also, vending machine quirks continue.
I ran across a jar of francs that i had forgotten about this weekend. I bought a croissant and then some candy with them and got some really really nasty looks. Just a month dead, and now everyone scorns the franc.
People in the very Irish Woodlawn section of the Bronx in New York have just a few days left to get rid of their stashes of punts, The New York Times reports today.
Meanwhile, Woodlawn is fast becoming the euro capital of New York. Those returning from holiday trips have been flashing crisp euros in the pubs and Irish grocery stores to those people who have remained 3,000 miles away as the currency they grew up with disappears.
