What currency am I using where in Europe?
Money! *cue that Pink Floyd song*
When I first wrote this out, most of the EU had just swapped to the euro and I was pleased about how much simpler it made things. It has kept getting simpler. Slovenia went euro, then Slovakia, then the Baltics, then Croatia at the start of 2023, and Bulgaria on the first of January 2026. Twenty-one EU countries use it now.
So the list is much shorter than the one I originally typed out. Here is what you actually need to think about.
The euro, which is most of it
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican use it too, and so do Kosovo and Montenegro without being in the club.
The ones that still have their own money
- Czech Republic - koruna
- Denmark - krone
- Hungary - forint
- Poland - zloty
- Romania - leu
- Sweden - krona
- United Kingdom - pound sterling
- Switzerland - franc
- Norway - krone
The Slovak koruna, which was on my original list, is gone. So is the Irish punt I said I had a feel for, though that one went before I ever left.
Why I have taken the exchange rates out
I originally printed a table of what a dollar bought in each currency, down to five decimal places, and then immediately admitted it did not tell me much.
That instinct was right, so the table has gone. Rates move, and a number frozen on a page is worse than no number because it looks authoritative. What matters is the thing I said next: what is the buying power of a zloty, a euro and a koruna? I can see how many there are to a dollar, but what does the hostel cost? How much is that trip to the pub or the fruit shop?
The numbers are a guide. They help you visualise a price, run a bit of mental maths, see how a bottle of wine priced in euro compares to the average price of a bottle back home. It is more a matter of getting used to thinking of the comparison, and then just getting a feel for the local currency, than anything else. Your phone will do the sum. Nothing will do the feel for you.
The bit that actually changed
Not the currencies. The cash.
- Most of Europe is card-first now, and Scandinavia is close to cashless. You can go a fortnight in Sweden without touching a note.
- Germany and Austria still like cash, and so do small bars, bakeries and market stalls almost everywhere. Carry some.
- Say no when a machine offers to charge you in your own currency. A card reader asking whether you would like to pay in dollars rather than euro is offering you its own exchange rate, and it is a bad one. Always choose the local currency.
- Traveller's cheques are finished. I packed a hundred dollars of them. Do not. Take a debit card, a credit card kept somewhere else, and enough cash to get from a station to a bed.
The rest of it I would write the same way today.
Posted 21 July 2003 by Ant in Eurail Planning · updated by Chris