Bosnian-Herzegovinian Money

The money is this country is apparently worthless. Here's what I mean...

Since I had to purchase a bus ticket back to Split I knew that I would need some local currency. The money in Bosnia and Herzegovina is called the Mark. And 100 Fennings make up 1 Mark.

I stopped by a bank just to find out what the exchange rate was. They told me $1 U.S. = 1.46 Marks. So I pulled out some money from the ATM. This gives you a better rate but banks still charge you a conversion fee.

I went to a pharmacy to purchase some cold tablets and the pharmacist told me the total was €5. I thought that this was kind of strange but I just happened to have a €5 bill on me so no worries.

Later, I grabbed some lunch. Everything on the menu was priced in Euros and the waiter brought me the bill in Euros. Did I mention that this country is not in the Eurozone and that it has its own currency - the Mark? I had to ask the waiter how much the bill was in Marks so that I could pay.

I went to a souvenir shop and picked up something small. The woman told me how much it was in Euros. Again, how much is it in Marks? She told me but then she could not make change for a 20 Mark bill unless she gave me change in Euros. WTF?!?! So I had to give her exact change.

When it came time to purchase my bus ticket, the driver could not make change for Marks. He asked if I had Euros? Nope. I asked he would take Croatian Kuna? Sure, no problem. When I made it back to Split I had about $50 in Marks that I couldn't do anything with so I exchanged them for more Croatian Kuna.

So I ended up paying money to get Marks but once I had them the people in the country didn't want them so I had to pay money to convert the Marks in to something else.