If you've read past entries in my journal, you'll know by now that I'm an active euro enthusiast. Euros became legal tender today in twelve countries of the Union. I haven't been looking at the news, but from what I saw on the streets last night things seemed to be going pretty well. I saw a few people crying with emotion as they made their first euro payment (I'm not that enthusiastic). A fascinating scene: I saw someone that wasn't aware that we were switching for real and was surprised to see different notes come out of the distributing machine this afternoon. Other people around had to explain in full. The guy didn't look particularly stupid, but I wonder where he's been in the past two year (it has been all over every medium and in many discussions).
Mostly, what I've seen is business as usual, which is good. I wonder what the medium-term effect will be and hope that it'll make people feel more "european". Much more. As a general rule, people are too mono-cultural and I have tremendous problems communicating with mono-cultural people, even when they are open-minded.
I can't wait to see the coin backs from other countries (even though I found the german eagles to be rather ugly).
