The most cash I've ever carriedThere's nothing like carrying large amounts of cash to make yourself feel simultaneously like a lottery winner and an obvious target.
A friend went to buy a car for ten grand, panicked and stuffed it down his pants for safety. It was all a bit smelly by the time he got there and he had to search around for some of it...
Tell us the story behind the most cash you've ever carried.
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chthonic, Thu 22 Jun 2006, 10:39)
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If I were a rich man....Just after the Berlin wall came down, I went on a trip to Poland to stay in Zakopane in the Tatra mountains. In those days, you needed a visa to get in and out and the whole population of Krakow hadn't moved to West London. The currency was Zloti (I think) and you couldn't get it outside Poland and it was forbidden to take the currency out of country.
We got to the Polish border through east Germany (surreal experience eating McDonalds in dresden still charred from WWII bombs and communist mosaics still on the walls of the town square. A huge stretch limo nearly ran over an old guy about 80 with no shoes pulling a hand cart full of fire wood. It was mental). These two women at the border control who looked like really bad drag acts in hideous 70's looking night club gear changed our money for us. We had no idea how much to get so we all changed £200 each (there were 6 of us). One alligator wrestler had to go and get some more money from the safe and they took ages counting out the cash. We were eventually handed, no lie, a pile of notes each you could not stretch your hands round. i think there were 40,000 Zloti to the pound so we each had 8,000,000 each.
We got to the hotel and went out for some food. We soon realised our currency made us very very conspicuous in a small town. The smallest notes we had were 50,000 Zloti probably a weeks wages for the people who worked in the shops we were trying to spend it in and they could not change notes that size.
One very uncomfortable moment was in a bar when we tried to pay to leave. For 6 people with starters, main courses and lots of booze the bill came to about 8,000 Zloti. They could not change the 100,000 note I had so I said "OK, keep the change" it was about £2.50 worth. The bar maid was under the impression I was offering her cash for favours and the locals got quite uptight about it. We bought the whole bar a bottle of vodka each (cost me £3.00) and legged it.
Soon the whole village knew who we were and we bought everyone drinks. We had soooo many friends for the rest of our holiday.
So, I was a millionaire for about 2 weeks!
(, Thu 22 Jun 2006, 19:04, Reply)
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