Albania is not part of the EU or the eurozone, but at least some restaurants, shops, and museums accept payment in euros. (Neighboring countries Kosovo and Montenegro unilaterally adopted the euro as the de facto national currency in 2002… Europe is complicated!)
According to Wikipedia, the Albanian currency lek (plural leke) is named after Alexander the Great, and Albania operated on a gold standard until 1939.
The value of the lek is not pegged, but at the moment, 100 leke is worth about 1 US dollar or 1 euro, so the tourist shopping math is trivial, converting from one of those currencies.
More about my experience with Albanian bills and coins below.
Oh, and here are the other two souvenirs I brought back (apart from three books).
Albanian Bills and Coins
Bills:
- 10,000 lek (about $100, didn’t use this bill while I was there)
- 5,000 lek (about $50… got one but didn’t bring it back, haha)
- 2,000 lek (about $20, brought back 2 different designs)
- 1,000 lek (about $10, brought back 2 different designs)
- 500 lek (about $5, brought back 2 different designs)
- 200 lek (about $2, brought back 2 of the same design)
Coins:
- 100 lek (about $1, two-toned, brought back 3)
- 50 lek (about 50 cents, silver-colored, brought back 2)
- 20 lek (about 20 cents, gold-colored, brought back 3)
- 10 lek (about 10 cents, gold-colored, brought back 2)
- 5 lek (about 5 cents, did not encounter)
- 1 lek (about 1 cent, did not encounter)
Wikipedia claims that 5 lek coins are common, but I didn’t see any. I asked the hotel staff if they had any, but they didn’t. 1 lek is presumably even more obsolete. (In China, in my experience, all physical currency is pretty much obsolete—except the bills used in red gift envelopes.)
The denominations of the Albanian bills and coins (apart from the ‘extra’ two 0’s on the bills) are a lot like the bills and coins of Singapore, though Singapore doesn’t use a 20-dollar bill; the 50-dollar bill is common there. I used to see 1-cent coins in Singapore, but by the time I left, they had disappeared, and even the 5-cent coins were becoming somewhat uncommon.
