Kevin 0'Connorlearned the hard way about changing money
The guidebooks tell you not to do it, your instincts tell you not to do it. Yet my perversity got the better of me, and I changed money on the streets of a foreign city.
In Moscow, shortly after the fall of communism, we were warned not to exchange money. "The Chechens are the crooks. They will fleece you." As it turned out, their rate of exchange was better than the local hotel's.
I was lucky, according to second-hand accounts of being done, with tales of dummy notes under a few genuine ones on top. In Sofia, years later, I was done, and it's worth telling, such was the skill.
I'm unable to resist local markets, and I enjoyed wandering around one near the hotel. The stalls had the usual array of post-communist militaria: caps, badges, belts of the Red Army that never got to cross the Danube in anger.
Though we were long warned of their imminent arrival by our own masters of paranoia, the western political establishment, the red hordes disbanded and left their uniforms to deck out countless market stalls across their former territories.
In my idle musings over the tides of history I was being watched as a likely target, so I showed no surprise when a money changer fell into step beside me, offering "two for one" - $2 for €1. He had marked me out by my style of dress, by the fact I was on my own and perhaps by sensing my curiosity. So much for my thinking I dressed like locals in leather jacket and woolly hat.
I went off smartly in the opposite direction when he suggested: "We go in car. I give you good rate." Having thought he got the message, I was surprised to find him in step beside me again later, replete in leather jacket and woolly hat. Straight out of Central Casting.
All my experience told me not to. But I did stop, determined in an open space on a bright winter Sunday to test the warnings. I took out a €50 note, put the rest of my money away securely and watched as he counted out $100. Before handing over my note I asked him to count his dollars again, which he did willingly. Nobody else was with us, though many were within shouting distance.
Before I handed over €50 he insisted on giving me his bundle and counted again as I held his notes. Same as twice before, his made $100. Satisfied, I handed over my €50, pocketed his dollars and went straight to my hotel, in case the whole encounter was a set-up for robbery.
In the bar I counted out his bundle. Fifty dollars, not 100. I checked my pockets: my original cash was there, but there was no sign of a missing $50. I asked the barman to count the bundle. He made the same amount: $50. Not the $100 I had seen Leather Jacket count in my hand.
Back in Ireland I ran the tale by someone who knows about these things. "Double counting," he repled, smugly. "They have a way of folding over a note to make it look like two. Happens all the time," he said, consolingly.
Like many things in life, I learned the hard way. The guidebooks are right.