As with any shopping, though, comes money to spend. Which leads me to my topic today. In America, we tend to use a credit card or debit card for our purchases. Although most people carry a small amount of cash, we don't use it often to buy our groceries or appliances and such. Occasionally, Americans also use checks to pay for items. Here in Germany, there is no such thing as a check. There is a debit card that they call the EC card that can be used at some places, but most places prefer cash. It has been a challenge to always think in terms of cash for the items we buy. It is also a bit of a challenge to get used to the different way money looks, too.
Germany is part of the European Union (the EU if you hear that in the news) and has adopted the official currency of the EU - Euros. Here they pronounce that oi-rows. Before the EU adopted a unified currency in January of 2002, Germany used the Deutsche Mark (pronounced Doich-uh Mark). Take a moment to look up some information on the history of the EU. Look at the picture below to see how different the money looks.
Not all the coins are shown above, but you can see how the money is all different colors. It is also all different sizes based on the amount of money the bill represents. They do not have a dollar bill, rather they have a coin to represent 1 Euro. They also have a 2 Euro coin. Paper money denominations are 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. Coins represent 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents, plus the 1 and 2 Euro coins. They do call their cents "cents".
I have not yet answered the question of the day that is on my personal information, so I need to take a minute now to tell you the answer. The question was: Where is the biggest Cuckoo clock in the world? The answer: Schonach, Germany. This town is in the region of Germany called Schwarzwald (pronounced Shvarts-vahld). It is better known as the Black Forest. The clock is the size of a house and chimes every hour on the hour.
For the question of the day feature, I have decided to move it to the end of each blog to make it easier to find, along with the word of the day. So here they are: Today's word is money - Das Geld (pronounced G as in gum: Gehld.) German uses three different ways to say "the" - a feminine word (die), a masculine word (der)) and the neuter word (das). Think of it as we think of ships as a she when we say the ship. In this word, the word "the" is "das".
The question of the day is: When did Germany join the EU?
Auf wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
