My experience in Poland (Poznan) as a student who recently moved from Syria

Does Syria use coins much? Here they just had banknotes for a while and the return of coins came as a surprise. Now your pockets get loaded down with them.

yes we do ,but not like this ,since polish zloty is stronger than the syrian pound ,I guess it's normal that I see more coins in poland ,it's probably me doing something wrong ,when people pay they just show the cashier all their coins ,and the cashier takes the needed coins .

The cashiers that do that are usually ok. The thieving ones just name an outrageous price.

I usually pay using my debit card ,but don't know why biedronka doesn't accept cards ..

The card handling fee would eat their profit margin - and they're cheap enough as it is. They run on a tight margin.

yep ,they're really good too


didn't know that it was that significant

I like Biedronka. Very good fruit and veg and some surprisingly luxurious things. Excellent wine for not much money. The meat's not much good though - full of water and chemicals.

Why is it annoying?

Actually SYP was fairly stable until mid May.What happened is Syria then?PLN gained over 100% to SYP since.

because they give me 1 gorszy back :P which means more coins in my wallet


sometimes ,the crash of the SYP is related to a major event happening (a major battle ,a political decision "like the american strike ) .

It's amazing how the syrian pound hasn't collapsed yet ,I'm gonna explain briefly what made the syrian pound loses its value that much .

1- the economic embargo that the US and EU imposed on syria ,which means less foreign money in our central bank (that comes from exports of syrian goods )

2-of course ,the unstable condition due to the war ,lots of areas have fallen into the hands of the rebel and some main roads (between cities ) which affected greatly internal trades .

3- some people started a business from buying and selling foreign monetary ,those people did the most damage to the syrian pound .

The question is, what to do with those small coins. I put coins of 50g and under in charity boxes. Otherwise they wreck your trouser pockets (and those male coin purses are naff). You can also save 10, 20 and 50g coins of you need to use vending machines for anything.

I don't remember ever seeing any in those days, except for people showing me them. It's not unusual in inflationary currencies and/or places with low denomination notes.

But it doesn't mean that they did not exist. But current 1zł was worth 10 000zł in old currency, so old 1zł from the picture above would be worth 0.01 new grosz. Even then it was nothing. People used these aluminum coins instead of washers.

Those were amazing times, with prices getting higher day by day. Sometimes quicker than that. And really, I never saw a coin used.

Of course. After it lost all it's value (probably aluminum was worth more than 0.01 Grosz) I've only heard it being used for washers or recently for scams. Here somebody payed for shopping with old 100zł coin:

miasto-info.pl/myslenice/7101,myslenice-zaplacil-moneta-stuzlotowa-ktora-wyszla-z-obiegu-policja-prosi-o-ostroznosc.html

(btw. as you can see on the picture it's forged in 1990)

Now you mention forgeries, have you ever has a forged banknote here? I haven't, but saw a forged 100 once. It looked perfect but the paper was slightly wrong.

my mistake I meant minted not forged. I haven't seen forged money, but I was not working with money.

Apparently quite a lot ok UK pound coins are forged. I don't know about Polish - though I'm told some are.

Dany, What are you studying?

international business ,planning on doing a master in finance after getting my bachelor in international business :P

Its always difficult when you come to live in new country, i also had such a experience, you only need to have more time and patience.

pierogi <3 <3 <3 :P it's really something :) I loved it

Hey Dany how is it going?

really good for now :)

What is new with you? Busy with school?

yeah ,kind of busy with the university and my new friends , went to a club yesterday "SQ" ,the club was nice ,but I'm not really a person who enjoys clubs :P

Is your family still in Syria? What do they tell you about the situation? It must look different when you look at it from a distance.

my parents are back in syria yes .

About the situation ,syrians have so many facebook pages and groups about the news ,I liked around 20-40 news page and I joined a group that works in checking sources and giving important news ,so basically, my news feed on facebook is literally news feed about syria (it has been like this in the last 2.5 years ) ,and It gives news faster than normal media .

It doesn't look so much different ,because when I was in syria it was nearly the same thing ,checking news on facebook ,but in my home ,I can only hear bombardment and sometimes mig planes (and sometimes a suicide explosion that is far away )

from my university in syria (which is on a cliff of mountain qasioun ) so I can see all damascus ,I witnessed mig planes bombing the outskirts of damascus ,A suicide bomb attack that was really strong ,and everyday bombardment of the outskirts of damascus .

so the only difference is that I can't hear bombardments in poznan :P but I can still hear the sound of the plans (civil planes ) and remember our glorious mig fighters :P