In preparing for a trip to Europe, I recently exchange some dollars for what looks like Monopoly money. (It's helpful to have some of the local currency in hand when arriving in country.) Unfortunately, the euro currently trades for about 1.35 dollars, so it cost me a lot more than Monopoly money.(But I suppose this is preferable to a time in 1994 when I withdrew 250,000 rubles from a bank and traveled halfway across Moscow to buy a train ticket to Berlin.)