NOTES AND COINS WE USED ON EURO HOLS

AUSTRIAN SCHILLING

SERIOUS money mostly featuring serious men – including psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud – with impressive sideburns, beards, moustaches and stern expressions.

Mozart was on the highest denomination one, reducing the facial hair but adding a wig.

BELGIAN FRANC

FOR a country often unfairly labelled as boring (fabulous chips, beer and chocolate – hardly dull!), Belgium’s old money was cheery and colourful. Portraits included the saxophone’s inventor (Adolphe Sax) and artist René Magritte.

As a bonus, there were two languages on the notes (French/Flemish) and some of the old coins even had holes in the middle.

GERMAN MARK

CONFESSION time: the old 5p was the same size and weight as one mark and on a trip to West Germany, me and my mates merrily used them in vending machines and so forth (5p equalled about 22p back in 1980, so it was a great deal). Sorry, Germans – we were pretty skint back then.

International currency fraud aside, West German money was solid looking and notes had pictures of people you’d never heard of. Where was football legend Gerd Müller?!

NETHERLANDS GUILDER

COLOURFUL! Dutch money was hip and happening – it was like a set of maverick Berol felt-tip pens had escaped from the factory and said: “Let’s design banknotes!”

Men with pointy beards, a bird and a sunflower adorned these beauties.

Buying a couple of Heinekens with a green Joost (van den Vondel, poet, five guilders) was never more enjoyable

FRENCH FRANC

THE 70s and 80s ones were crinkly currency with dramatist Pierre Corneille and artists Eugène Delacroix and Maurice Quentin de La Tour (in a funny hat).

It felt, well, properly papery and was often a bit grubby – the currency equivalent of a crafty Gauloises behind the bike sheds.

In the 90s they were updated to be a bit more modern and colourful with the likes of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Gustave Eiffel and Marie Curie featured.

GREEK DRACHMA

BEFITTING the cradle of Western civilisation, these were some classic notes.

May a thunderbolt strike you if you don’t want gods such as Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo and Athena on your cash!

More modern generals, philosophers, doctors and statesmen would also appear in later issues.

ITALIAN LIRA

THE 70s and early 80s notes were a real mixed bag of design but by the late 80s and 90s they had some sort of consistency, featuring icons such as Maria Montessori, Guglielmo Marconi, Alessandro Volta and Caravaggio.

The 500 lira note from 1974 featuring a winged Mercury head is an old-school currency classic.

PORTUGUESE ESCUDO

THERE’S so much to like about mainland

Europe’s western outpost and that includes old cash. The first wave of tourists from the UK in n the 60s will have handled some pretty staid notes, notes but by the 80s we were treated to snazzy, angular efforts such as the 100 escudo note featuring writer Fernando Pessoa looking Poirot-esque in a trilby.

SPANISH PESETA

THE first big influx of Brits heading to the costas of Franco’s Spain would have seen lots of 100 peseta banknotes featuring poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (issued 1965) and composer Manuel de Falla (1970) – both solid spending money.

By the late 70s, Spain had returned to democracy, and notes were modernised to show the likes of King Juan Carlos I and Christopher Columbus.