Let me tell you, I have the utmost respect for folks who go to Mexico without speaking a lick of Spanish! It’s very isolating and frustrating to not even be able to exchange pleasantries with a neighbour. But I’m getting by and the folks I interact with daily are seeing some progress, or at least effort, on my part.
I just went down to the village store for beer and hoped to get yoghurt and jam. They didn’t have the latter, but they did have the good German butter I’ve fallen for. I thought maybe I missed the jam, because it seems like such a common thing for a convenience store to have, so I asked and was told “Ne.” Okay, fair enough.
The lady pointed to my bottles and said something. I knew she was telling me to return them, so I said, “Okay,” but I doubt she knew I understood her. She will when I go back in a few days with a bag full of empties! She told me my total and I understood it, 6.20BGN. Don’t ask me to tell you how to say that (I can write it, but oral numbers are different from spoken), but I understood her. Without looking at her piece of paper, I handed her a 20BGN note and a 20 stotinki coin, then kept digging around for the 1BGN coin I knew I had. When I finally fished it out, she went, “Ah!” and handed me back a 10BGN and a 5BGN note.
Bulgarian money is very easy to use and has been much more intuitive than the peso was at first because of the extra zero (eg. 100MXN being close to 10CAD versus 10BGN being close to 10CAD). The symbol for Bulgarian currency is лв (literally lv, for lev). I will stick to BGN rather than switching my keyboard back and forth. Right now, I am paying 0.75CAD for each BGN, very similar to the exchange rate I enjoyed in Mexico. So when I see a price here I think of it as being as par, and then happily adjust downwards when I balance the books.
Bulgarian currency has the following coins:
1 stotinka
2 stotinki
5 stotinki
10 stotinki
20 stotinki
50 stoinki
1 lev
2 leva
I have seen the following banknotes:
1 lev
2 leva
5 leva
10 leva
20 leva
There are also 50 and 100 leva notes. I find it interesting that they have both coins and notes for 1BGN and 2BGN.
In the US we have both coins and notes for $1 but you rarely see the coins.
I will never forget a BART station ticket machine giving me $1 coins as change and then having a really hard time spending them. Americans are irrational when it comes to using coins as legal tender.
Not all of us, Rae, so maybe better not to group us all in the same slot. Admire that are so adventurous. I guess I am one of those who travel to Mexico with little Spanish – thankfully DH get us through. Thanks for taking we readers along on your adventures.
You’re the exception. There are a lot of generalisations about Americans that are proven when the odd person like you gets offended by them rather than defending them. 🙂
I don’t think I’m that adventurous. We all have our own comfort levels.
Often we USA’er are referred to as Americans we which are but so are you Canadians and the Mexican people, too. So were you covering the whole North American continent and not just USA with that statement? 🙂 That is what I mean by not putting us all in the same slot. One could take your statement to mean that all Canadian and Mexicans do not like the use of coins and we both know that is not the case. Well, those are just my thoughts?
Sandy, I’m pretty sure we’ve had this discussion before. Of course Canadians and Mexicans and Brazilians are technically “Americans,” but that’s the term universally used for people from the United States and that’s how I use it. I am not going to get into a debate again over that.
OK 🙂 🙂 🙂
I am one of those people who travels to Mexico with very little spanish! My Mexican friends are very understanding and speak slowly for me if trying to communicate in spanish.
I studied and tried to learn the language; can read basics and know basics – but when there is a full on conversation at a quick pace, I am lost immediately.
Thankfully smartphone translation apps and some good old fashioned charades can save any situation lol
That’s still way more Spanish than I meant! 😀 You definitely have a lot more Spanish than do many of the expats I met in Maz.
I am still at the point where I also cannot followed a conversation at a quick pace.
I’m learning Bulgarian charades, LOL!