Yesterday I talked about how living overseas can turn you into a minor currency speculator. Today I’ll talk about how, when I was in Albania, the Albanians clung to their old money but accepted new money.

When we got to Albania, one of the things we were warned about was the difference between Old Lek and New Lek. Basically, in 1965 or so, the then dictator Enver Hoxha (“xh” is pronounced “J” as “jump”) revalued the Lek and introduced new notes and coins. The new value was 1 New Lek for 10 Old Lek. If you had 10,000 Lek in the bank it suddenly had a value of 1,000 Lek.

The problem is the Albanians, being stubborn and prone to keeping their history close and alive, continued to price things in Old Lek and refer to them in Old Lek but would accept the New Lek value. For example, if the street vendor said “30 lek” he would take 3 lek. If the shopkeeper said “100 lek” she would accept 10 lek.

Adding to the confusion, the price tag on something you’d asked about would say 20 Lek, but the vendor would say “That’ll be 200 lek” as he handed it to you.

Note: When I was there $1 US = about 105 Lek.

It got confusing but most vendors, to their credit, were honest with us. With a couple exceptions.

For example, when we first got to Albania, one of my fellow volunteers payed 250 lek for rice (or some other kind of food). Our language trainers’ faces turned very sour and they made him take them to the vendor so they could help him get his money back. The price was actually 25 New Lek, but had been quoted in Old Lek.

In my case, I remember being confused about if the Chinese-made fountain pens I was buying were 150 lek each or 15 lek each and the vendor seemed to be encouraging the confusion. I gave the vendor 30 Lek and he seemed satisfied.

Of course, part of the problem was that we were seeing the prices as cheap, even when quoted in Old Lek. Despite that, we were instructed not to drive up the prices of goods by paying Old Lek for them.