Money Talks

Lots of college students take a "Euro trip" at some point in their academic career. Falling asleep on a train in one country and waking up in a completely new one can be very disorienting, not to mention a problem for your wallet. In recent years, the introduction of the Euro in most major European countries has definitely allieviated that problem to a certain extent. However, many European countries (not to mention, um, the rest of the world) have yet to join the economic union and you can find yourself with lots of different currencies floating around your wallet. It's a good idea to know how much you have, as numbers start to lose meaning when you're changing currencies a lot.

Even if you aren't doing any traveling, comparing currencies can be really fun. For instance, one US dollar goes pretty far in Albania: 102 lekes, which even sound like they'd be fun to spend. When I lived in Sweden, I got really used to the krona (Swedish for "crown;" they may have a democratic government but boy do they love their monarchy). When my parents came to visit me, a grocery trip with my father, who had obviously done his dollar-krona conversion homework, turned into one long exclamatory adventure: "A gallon of milk is FOUR DOLLARS?! Honey, did you realize you are spending FOUR DOLLARS on milk?! That's like - " he pauses for the mental calculation - "SEVENTY SIX CENTS A GLASS!"

Here's the website my father probably used to discover the price-per-sip of wholesome Swedish milk:

The World's Favorite Currency Converter

It contains a universal currency converter as well as self-updating Quick Cross Rates, comparing the world's top currencies. Simply put, the website can be quite addictive. Of course it's no Facebook but finding out I'm a millionaire in Albania is hard to beat ... that's a lot of milk, people, a lot of milk.