I'm going to attempt to articulate something that has been on my mind for a while while being in Spain, and it probably is just going to be a massive brain fart so I apologize in advance. Adding to this that my English has been steadily worsening, I'm honestly expecting this to not be understandable but we'll see where it goes.
Behind the scenes info for anyone not familiar with money or euro notes or whatever (if you already know then totally skip this). As of right this second when I just googled it, 1 USD is equal to .75 EUR; so 1 EUR is equal to 1.33 USD. In addition to the difference in value, there are few key other distinctions that make each currency unique. You can get USD in coin denominations of .01, .05, .10, .25, .50 (rare), and 1 (but everyone hates dollar coins); bill denominations of 1, 2 (rare again), 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. Euro coins come in .01, .02, .05, .10, .20, .50, 1, and 2; bills come in 5, 10, 20, 50, and then 100, 200, and 500 for larger denominations (I personally have never seen with my eyes a note larger than 50).
Euro coins by themselves are a really awesome thing, compared to coins in the States. If I'm rummaging through my backpack in the library in Charlottesville and come across three quarters, I'll probably throw them in my parking meter fund and forget about it. What am I supposed to get for 75 cents? Half a bagel at Greenberry's? An almost-refill of coffee? An hour of parking behind Clark is about as good as it gets. Accounting for the exchange rate, however, if I open up my wallet here and see a euro coin, which is value-wise exactly equivalent to those quarters, it is AWESOME. That's two cups of coffee, or three loaves of bread, or 2 liters of water, or a shot or beer at El Castillo. That little coin is worth so much more than its monetary equivalent in the States.
With that said, the question that I have is kind of a mess and not really easy to articulate. First, why are things so much "cheaper" here than they are in the US? Even without accounting for exchange, the idea of buying anything for a dollar back home is absolutely laughable, unless it's Survivor Hour at Bilt in which case go for it. A single euro can take you so much further (farther? I never remember which one) than a dollar can. Something I think seems kind of related is the whole tax thing in the States -- when you see the ticket price for a cup of coffee, you mentally add in that extra little bit of tax and adjust accordingly. Yeah no, if your coffee is a euro twenty (the price of a café americano at Café de Las Luces, my favorite place ever), it's a euro twenty. So you hand over a dollar coin and a twenty cent coin and it's cool and you go on your way and come back tomorrow and it's the same song and dance all over again.
So. I am obviously not an econ major but I think all of this is probably economy based. Why is a cup of coffee here a euro twenty and like three or four dollars in the States? (Keep in mind Spain does kind of suck economically right now and I'm totally aware of that). AND, and and and, I believe this is my main question, does the cheapness of things lead to greater need and/or use of the 1 and 2 euro coins, or does the presence of the 1 and 2 euro coins lead to lower prices due to the convenience of carrying around lots of value in a tiny chunk of metal? This is like the whole chicken and egg thing only the question of the gallinas can be easily answered. Aaaaand we have a title for this blog post.
Does any of this even make sense? Once I get back to Charlottesville I know I'm going to take a look at all of these and laugh at how absurd my English sounds, because I already know that I'm using Spanish grammatical constructions in place of English ones but I can't help it.
Also, we watched Planta Cuarta in Medical Spanish and I was SO EXCITED to get to see it again. We watched it in my Spanish film class last fall (any Spanish majors or even just normal UVA people reading this TAKE THAT CLASS if you can because it's honestly one of the best classes I've ever taken and that's saying a lot) so I got to skip the whole "what's going on what is this plot why are they bald wow their accents are thick" and notice a lot more things that I didn't see the first time around. Also I'm supposed to come up with a cubist painting/drawing/creation for art class tomorrow which I completely haven't started but I'm pretty sure I could sneeze on a piece of paper and talk about how I deconstructed reality and put it back together in a way that looked like a still life and Enrique would totally buy it. Tempting.
Hasta luego!
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