Thursday, January 29, 2015

Dollar vs. Euro

Dear few friends who still read my blog:  Please understand that the following post is my ENTP need to have an interesting discussion.

In SE Asia I was traveling with my friend Lukas.  He's my German friend that helped me see the place my great-great-grandfather came from.

I was very happy to travel with him in SE Asia in late 2014.  He has been everywhere I wanted to go:  Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Before I met up with him in Bangkok I said, "I want to see it all and we are not going by bus."  So we did a series of short trips by plane from Bangkok to Siem Reap (awesome) to Phnom Pen (disgusting) to Saigon (interesting) to Hue (quaint) to Da Nang (awesome) to Hanoi (surprisingly interesting).  I paid for his flights because he would have never made those flights; he would have gone by bus or - because he had already been there - he wouldn't have gone back to those cities.

So....  during the course of the trip I gave him money when he had not already converted it from euros.  I didn't keep track; I didn't care.  At the end of the trip he told me owed me $200.  I was like, "Ok, whatever."

A month passes.

He still doesn't have my IBAN number to send the money to my account (that's my mistake).  I finally gave it to him. He says, "I will send the euros I owe you."  The problem?  During the month the US dollar has appreciated 10% vs. the euro.  Sending me the euros means I lost 10%.

Should he send me $200 which is what I am expecting or should he send me 160 euros which is what he had in his mind when I gave him money?