>>Imagine the days before the Euro, living in a small country like Belgium - within an hour's ride, you get into one of three areas where some other currency is used... and they speak a different language. You'd get used to it, no problem, but just try to imagine how it'd be.
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>People don't get paid in Euros, do they?

Nowadays they surely do, in most of the EU countries and Montenegro (long story...).

>I guess, with the euro, you could compare the cost of a magazine in each country. Can't really do goods since there is so much involved in the cost of goods like bread and vegetables, etc. Still, you'd have to know each country's exchange rate to the euro. It was easier to look at a price of a magazine in francs, then convert it to usdollars based on the daily exchane rate and decide if it was expensive or cheap because I knew what it would cost in the states :o)

Funny, though, the magazines are the places where the price in various currencies is prominent, and yet that's your worst source of comparison, because of all the reasons involved in calculating the price - the cost of distribution in a given country above all.

Can't really say what it looks like now, because the promotion of euro from a clearing currency into a real currency happened at the time when my passport was the wrong color (probably still is). A cheap way to get rid of a witness ;).

>It was really nice when the deutsche mark was 3.5 for each dollar (early 1985). People were buying really nice cars and shipping them home...(like porsches)

3.5? Wow, that must have been... in the previous century. I remember when Sloba fell, the ratio was 30 dinars for 1 DEM and 60 for 1 USD - a clear 2:1. BTW, dollar went all the way down to 53 dinars, but just came back to 59 yesterday. Which is about the first time in known (to me) history that dinar held its ground better than dollar.