異域文化 雪域之行 瑞士 03

First, smart travelers use travelers’ checks. They are easy to change into cash and replaceable if lost or stolen. Shop around and see if you can find some checks without having to pay the fee.

Hello, can I change money here?

I use whichever major brand I can get without the one to one and a half percent fee. For instance, I can get major name-brand travelers’ checks free through my auto club or my credit union. Then, you have the question of denominations. Large checks save on time and book, but smaller checks are sometimes easier to cash and allow you to change just what you need. I get a mix, for instance, for 1,000 dollars I'd choose five one-hundreds, six fifties and ten twenty-dollar checks. Keep the receipts separate from the checks, and keep track of the serial numbers as you cash them in case you have a claim for lost or stolen checks. I also bring about a day’s spending money of local currency for each country I plan to visit, just enough to keep me going till I can get to a bank in each country.

Beautiful

Yes

Danke schon.(o should be o-umlaut)

So what about changing money? You can’t change money without losing money, not to mention losing time. So when you enter a new country, estimate carefully how much money you'll need, find a fair place to change your money and then buy your local currency. Then of course you'll put your cash in a money belt, your safety deposit vault. Let’s take a look at this board to see how this exchange business works. There's a buying and a selling rate. The bank makes money on every transaction. After all the traveling I’ve done, I still have a tough time conceptualizing who is buying and who is selling. It doesn’t matter. We lose. The rates are always changing, but right now if I’m changing US dollars, I can see I’ll get 1.3 Swiss francs for each dollar. And this column shows I'll have to give them 1.38 Swiss francs to get that dollar back. Every time I change, I’ll lose a few percent. So I want to change as accurately as possible. Let's say you are on your way out of a country, you only need a little money and you have only large checks. You change a hundred dollars, spend twenty and you're left with 80 dollars excess local currency which you’ll have to change again at another loss. That’s an expensive twenty dollars. And remember, don’t change back into dollars between currency because you’ll lose again. As you travel, see how close you can come to predicting how much local currency you'll need in each country. Minimize your bank losses.

And another tip, coins are generally not accepted outside their home country. And this one is worth over 3 dollars. Change them into paper, spend them or else once you’ve crossed that border, you've just purchased a pocketful of little souvenirs.

We’ve taken care of some important business. And here is an example of how to use a place like Interlaken. It’s a great administrative center at any time, but if you run into rain as we did, use the time to catch up on indoor chores. Take advantage of their post office, long distance phone booth, banks, tourist office, shops and so on