h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's now the 3rd of January and the new Euro money has been around for two whole days. I've nearly got rid of all my old Irish money, except for the few coins I'm keeping as a souvenir. From now on it will be Euros all the way.

I can see a fight brewing over whether we call them Euro or Euros. The official line is that they are Euro, because the Government didn't have the gumption to stand up for the language and insist on some common sense. But popular culture has already decided that they are Euros. I'll throw my hat in with popular culture.

I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing the non-Irish Euro coins in circulation here. All Irish Euro coins have a harp surrounded by 12 stars on the back (12 stars being the symbol of the European Union).

Yesterday, 9 Jan 2002, I saw my first non-Irish Euro coin. It was a Spanish 50 Cent coin, dated 2001, with a picture of Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, on it.

Rumour has it that a French Euro coin was handed in as payment in an Irish pub at two minutes past midnight on 1 Jan 2002, when Ireland had been using Euros for all of two minutes!

wow. i'd throw my hat at anything in ireland. stupid england hasn't addopted the euro yet.

I saw a French Euro coin handed in at the Merrion (nice pub) at 11.45am on New year's Day. I was almost given it in change but the barman decided he'd hang on to it for a souvenir.

I have had a single Dutch 50c coin so far.
I'm suprised not to have seen any German coind yet - there seem to be a large number of Germans in town at the moment.

I've seen a Belgian 1 euro and a German 1 cent.

It is possible to convert between sterling and euro without a calculator. What you do is get a car, accelerate to the sterling amount in miles per hour then look at the kilometers per hour on the guage - that shoudl be (approximiately) the euro amount.

This is not advised for amounts over £70

hehe, good plan.