One of the bemusing hassles of living in Russia is the amount of coins that ends up in your pocket. Some of the coins are worth so little now, that they might as well be worth nothing. One ruble (the Russian currency) is now worth about 3.5 cents. (We have deleted one and two cents in Australia, and five cents is due for the chopping block soon, New Zealand already having gone that way.) This means that some of the kopeck coins are ridiculously low in value. There are 50 kopeck, 10 kopeck, 5 kopeck and 1 kopeck coins. One kopeck coins are rare, but they do exist and I have been given them in the supermarket before.
Russia uses a lot more cash than we do in the west, but is moving towards electronic transactions all the time. I will confess that I usually use my bank card in Australia and rarely carry more than 20 dollars cash around for the odd occasion I need it. Here, I try to use my card as much as possible, but always need cash, and inevitably end up taking about 5000 rubles or $200 out at a time.
So long as I shop at our local supermarket or in bigger shoppings centres I can get away with using the card. At the local market, cash is required, but it doesn't seem to be a big problem because they are smart enough to price everything in round rubles. Even when buying vegetables by the kg, the price is rounded to the nearest ruble.
Occasionally I have to use cash in the supermarket, and that is dangerous. Their prices are all done with kopeck extensions. As far as I can tell there is no official kopeck rounding system, sometimes they will go up or down to the nearest 10 kopecks, depending on their mood, and sometimes if they have exact kopecks, then they will dish those out in change too.
But it is getting on the bus that is the most risky of all. The bus costs 11 rubles. I try to have exact change, but this can't always be helped. I have even given a hundred rubles on occasion to be lumped with a whole fistful of coins as change. The same thing happened to Melody yesterday. She opened her purse to see a whole bunch of kopecks, that she could have used to pay for her ticket. But instead, not wanting to lump the conductor with kopecks, she gave the conductor two 10 ruble notes (a 20 ruble note does not exist). The conductor could have given simple ruble coins, knowing Melody had spared her the kopecks. But instead Melody received even more kopecks as change.
Can't you just take them to the bank? I hear you ask. Well for starters you don't want to go to the bank unless you have a good reason because the lines are always long. I always wondered if vendors did go to the bank, to hand in their change. I have never met a vendor that seems to know what the concept of a "cash float" is. They always find it hard to change the big notes such as a 1000 or 500 (but when you realise that a 1000 is now only worth $35, that's a bit ridiculous too). Eventually I was meaning to ask a vendor, if I ever became friendly enough with them, though I suspected that the answer is no, they don't change money at the back.
Then I came upon this article in the Moscow Times. As I suspected, it is far more hassle than it is worth to change coins at the bank. I had a good chuckle reading the article.
Abigail loves picking up 10 kopeck coins from the ground, which can even get dangerous at times when traffic is involved, we have to keep a close eye on her.
Oh, beloved kopeck, I know how important you are to Russia's cultural tradition, but you are literally wearing holes in my pockets from your weight. What to do? :)
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