Help me clarify this second-hand memory about bargaining in Europe

June 2, 2011 4:37 AM

I have a memory of being told, as a child, that in some (or more than one?) country in Europe, circa 1970, there were two types of stores. Type A was government regulated or licensed, and prices were fixed. Type B was not, and you were allowed to bargain. Does this sound familiar to anyone else? What was the actual situation (if I have it wrong) and in what country/countries?

It comes from this: my mother traveled through Europe circa 1970. I swear I remember her telling me about this situation, but she doesn't know what I'm talking about, so I may be combining or conflating different stories of hers or her stories with someone else.
Further half-recalled data-points which may be imaginary:
- if you were good at bargaining, you went to the non-regulated stores, but if you were not, you went to the regulated stores
- may have implicitly or explicitly been meant to limit or direct foreigners/tourists to the government regulated stores
- the two different stores may have had different taxes
- the government regulated stores had some sort of signage, which may have been a picture of the queen/a queen/a crown
- I seem to remember this as being from a Mediterranean/Iberian country, but it could also have been the Balkans, Germany, Austria, France (those are the countries I remember her as going to/through)
- this division may have applied only to certain types of stores, e.g. souvenir or liquor

posted by sarahkeebs to Travel & Transportation (9 answers total)

Best answer: Did she go to eastern Europe? This sounds a bit like Torgsin in the USSR; East German Intershops etc. Basically hard currency stores for tourists.
posted by plep at 4:55 AM on June 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yes, it also sounds like the PEWEX stores in Communist Poland.
posted by orrnyereg at 5:56 AM on June 2, 2011

It also sounds just like China in the early 2000s. I bet it is a Communist-country thing.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:02 AM on June 2, 2011

Yeah, this sounds like much of Eastern Europe during the cold war. A similar situation still exists in Cuba, where there are two currencies:

Pesos nacionales, which make up most of Cubans' pay, and which they can spend in shops stocking mostly locally-produced goods, which run out quickly, and often have queues when someone's unpacking something like that morning's box of bread.

Pesos convertibles, which are more of a "tourist currency", and are used in hotels, tourist restaurants and buses, and in shops selling imported or more expensive goods (including a lot of fairly basic stuff like soap, shampoo, etc).

For this reason, in Cuba you'll often find teachers/doctors/lawyers who have given up their profession (where they got paid in nacionales) to move to tourist-facing jobs like driving taxis, so they can get their hands on more convertibles.

(Pesos convertibles replaced US dollars, which used to perform the same "hard currency" function for many years).
posted by penguin pie at 6:05 AM on June 2, 2011

I was in the Soviet Union in the late 80s, and this reminds me of the Beryozka stores which only accepted foreign currency and sold a number of items not available to the general population.
posted by lilnublet at 7:09 AM on June 2, 2011

Best answer: I bet it is a Communist-country thing.

Yes, they were called Friendship stores in China. Equivalents existed all over Communist eastern Europe (though I suspect not in Yugoslavia, where the economy was a bit more liberalised and was definitely friendly to tourists - that would fit the criterion of 'Mediterranean'). Maybe she went to Bulgaria?
posted by plep at 8:14 AM on June 2, 2011

Yes, they were called Friendship stores in China.

It wasn't just the Friendship stores. Every big mall I went into had some government-owned stores. If you bought say, luggage in a government store, you had to pay the price on the tag. In other stores, you could bargain. I believe the government stores had no counterfeit goods, but I'm not sure about that.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:40 AM on June 2, 2011

In Czechoslovakia they were Tuzek stores. They were government-owned and sold name brand consumer goods (like Tide detergent, for example) that you couldn't find in regular shops. Tuzek only accepted American dollars, British pounds sterling or German deutschmarks. When I visited there in 1989 I took my Czech pen-pal shopping (at his begging) there, since I had US dollars. He'd pay me back in Czech crowns at double the bank rate, he said. The prices in the store were fairly inexpensive compared to what we'd pay in the States, so for a little less than $30 I was able to get him detergent, cigarettes, batteries, film, things like that. He and his wife were so grateful, and he gave me something like 80 crowns in exchange. I was rich! Except as I visited shop after shop in Prague and nearby cities, I found that there was next to nothing to buy. I finally ended up taking my pen-pal and a bunch of his friends out to lunch to get rid of that Czech money before I left the country. Even after buying many rounds of beer, appetizers, lunch and dessert for 10 people, I still had a purseful of crowns.
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:26 AM on June 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

I can confirm that there was something similar to what Oriole Adams describes in Bulgaria, which I visited three times during the 80's. As tourists, we were informed by people familiar with the country, it was a smart idea to tip waitresses and other service workers in US dollars or a couple of other major International currencies. They would love you for it because it allowed them to go to the special stores and buy "exotic" goods they couldn't get in the Bulgarian currency stores. Those stores had very limited selections, while the ones that only accepted foreign currencies had more "western" stuff.
posted by edlundart at 9:45 PM on June 3, 2011