Euros, Euros

I’ve just finished my usual pre-Europe tour of Cairo currency exchanges, assembling enough Euros to make this trip work. And I want to say that I’m grateful for how much easier this has become. The main remaining problem is that these places don’t always have huge stocks of the currencies you need… You’re often completely dependent on the question of “did some European people happen to stop in during the last 4 hours?”

During my first semester here, Fall 2000, Egypt devalued the Pound. Supposedly this was in order to let the exchange rate float and reach its true value, and in theory this ought to mean that there is no problem getting whatever currencies you want. But in practice, it seemed to be the case that someone in the government or elsewhere was hoarding hard currencies and not letting them onto the market (the Dollar was popular first, and later the Euro more so; the British Pound is a bit less in abundance, but still commands much respect among Egyptian currency traders).

What that meant is that you would have to start preparing for trips far ahead of time, gathering Dollars or Euros well in advance. Sometimes it was impossible to do so. There was one trip in particular, to Ireland in 2002, where I had no choice but to take a grab bag of Japanese Yen, Saudi Riyals, and UAE Dirhams, just because they’re all usually more exchangeable than Egyptian Pounds.

Luckily, something changed within the past couple of years. I’m not sure what. But it is much easier, if still not easy, to get the currencies you need for travelling.