Overprepared

We hosted some visitors from Germany this week. When they prepared for their trip to Norway, they asked their local bank for Norwegian currency. Usually, you can retrieve cash from ATMs in many places in Norway, and paying cashless is quite common. But, nevertheless, just in case it would not have been possible to equip with cash and being unable to pay for food or public transport, our guests insisted that they be outfitted with Norwegian currency before entering the country.

The local branch office was located in a small town, and the clerk appeared to have entered the workforce only recently. He had to ask a colleague, and it turned out that nobody in that town had requested Norwegian currency for years. Finally, they found a small number of banknotes and handed over a 50 NOK note (worth ca. 6 EUR).

Travelling with children poses some challenges, and when our visitors arrived at the airport, they needed to buy some food to fulfill a promise made to their children. Happily, they handed over the 50 NOK note to pay for some water and chocolate. The clerk at the Narvesen kiosk looked at the note, looked again, asked a colleague, and then refused to take it. The note had been taken out of circulation in 2008 and was no longer a valid means of payment.

The current 50 NOK note (shown to the right) might be replaced with a coin in the future, but to the best of Wikipedia’s knowledge, there are no plans yet.

About Author: Hanno Langweg

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