Money Matters

One of the first things that confuse visitors to a foreign land, I discovered, was getting used to the loose change.
Every visit to the supermarket found me exchanging paper money for coins ranging over all denominations – I never found myself quick witted enough to tender the exact change like those around me did. The result – I found myself unwittingly becoming the owner of a large coin collection.
Not that loose change had little utility; I badly needed coins to feed the cigarette vending machines that I so regularly patronized. But I discovered to my dismay that these contraptions accepted only half, one and two euro coins. Smaller change seemed to be meant for manual and more discrete handling.
At the end of the day I found myself running short of one and two euro coins.
I was perplexed by this dilemma till I found a novel solution.
Endingen had a mini gambling parlor which was patronized by a good number of residents. Loose change was the currency that the gambling machines spoke and the parlor had coin vending machines that broke up your paper money.
The matronly lady in charge gracefully turned a blind eye as I dutifully walked in daily after office hours to get my five euro note broken up into one and two euro coins.
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