Pounds are a pain...

...and here I am not just talking about the ones that I seem to gain rather easily. I hate that kind, since for some stupid reason I have no problem gaining them, but to get rid of them is painful and hard. However, when I am in Russia I usually shed a couple of pounds off my weight, although I am not sure why it works that way. However, this post is more about the British currency which is a pound sterling. Well, that kind of a pound is pretty hard to get rid of in Russia unless you are in Moscow or St. Petersburg. The reason I have English currency is because I came from England and my hubby gave me English pounds for spending money, but it's not much good for spending if it is in pounds, I will tell you that.

Anyway, after calling around all the banks in Taganrog I found out that I could not exchange pounds for rubles in this city of 300,000 people where I grew up and where my parents live. Apparently I had to go to a nearby city, Rostov on Don, that has a population of 1,000,000 million and about an hour and a half away in order to even have a shot at finding a bank that would help me out. My sister's best friend met me in Rostov today and we walked to 2 banks that were supposed to exchange pounds :) One of them was closed, as a result of the economic crisis in Russia. The other one, well, we did not find it, so either it was closed as well or it was under construction and we passed it. So, finally, my sister's friend offered me to buy the pounds from me and give me roubles for them. It seemed to me like a good idea, so we got to his house, looked up the exchange rates and completed the deal :) He will be traveling to Moscow soon, so he did not mind holding on to pounds :) And I needed cash, so it's all good. Plus if he holds on to pounds he might be able to exchange them at a better rate :) Since pounds is somewhat climbing, actually the rouble is falling is more like it :)

A word of advice....if you are traveling to Russia, bring only Euros or Dollars!!! Anything else and you just might be out of luck if you travel beyond Moscow or St. Petersburg. But I guess most people would not want to travel anywhere else in Russia anyway. See, Russia is one exciting country full of adventures!!!