Much of my current work in progress is set in France, and I keep thinking about how cool it would be to say "francs" when talking about money. What a source of flavor! What a brilliant way to say, "Hell yeah, we're in France, and we do French things here." Too bad--they don't exist anymore! Meanwhile, I refuse to use the word "euros" in the text, because it's just so lame. I consistently avoid it by saying "bills," or "cash," or pretty much anything else on earth as long as I can get away with not using "euros" to describe money. Fuck the euro!
I carry a 5 cent euro coin with me to scratch off the bar code on lottery tickets so I can scan them to submit for second chance drawings. I'm sure the franc will make it's return sometime after you leave and that will give you the chance to gripe that nobody will believe you were there because you don't have any.
Yeah, I hate having to constantly differentiate between Canadian Dollars and US Dollars in real life. Maybe France has a few nicknames for the currency, like Canada has Loonies of Toonies for the one and two dollar coins respectively. I've even heard hundred dollar bills referred to as Bordens. When I was in the States I even knew an old guy that called tens "saw bucks," though I never figured out why.
It's because the roman numeral 10 (X) looks like the legs (ends) on a sawhorse. ETA: I know that because my great-grandfather called them that and I asked.
In the mid 1800s the 10 dollar bill had a big roman numeral X, which resembled a 'sawbuck', now referred to as a sawhorse.
set your story before 2002 , or set it in switzerland or Lichtenstein or former french colonies in africa (which is to say that just mentioning Franc doesnt automatically make one think of france - prior to the euro, luxembourg used francs as well as did belgium.... whilst monnaco and andorra accepted french francs as legal tender
In case anyone cares, when power moved west in the US and planks became available, a top was put on the sawbuck to make what we now call a sawhorse. A sawbuck is great for working with rounds (logs) since they are held in place, but not good for working with planks, which would just flop back and forth when trying to saw them.