You might think, not unreasonably, that staying on top of your finances when travelling in Europe has become a million times easier since the introduction of the single currency. Unfortunately, while this is undoubtedly true if you're the sort of person who never leaves your own doorstep or who considers a day trip to France or a long weekend in Milan to be the height of sophistication, things quickly get rather more complicated as soon as you start wandering aimlessly around the continent. You see, becoming part of the European Union does not automatically qualify you to use their currency - that would be far too simple. Within the scattered regions of the European Union, you'll find a separate entity referred to by Brussels as the Eurozone - a smaller subsection of the union deemed worthy of using the currency - and before anywhere is allowed to adopt the Euro, they have to jump through hoops, prove low levels of inflation and quite possibly sleep with Angela Merkel - a woman who I wouldn't personally trust with anything of any value until she at least learns how to pronounce her own name. The complexity doesn't stop there, either. We've already established that Montenegro isn't entitled to use the Euro but chooses to do so anyway while sticking a middle finger up at Brussels, poking it's tongue out and singing the "nerr nerr" song like a precocious six year old. Then there are all the Non-European Union countries, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which choose to accept the Euro, as well as the currencies of other countries nearby, in order to encourage tourism. On the whole, what we have at the moment in this part of the world is a mess of countries who can't make up their mind what currency they want to use - with the result that you will often find yourself with a pocket full of perfectly legitimate local currency while being quoted prices in Euros because the particular shopkeeper you're talking to at the time quite likes today's exchange rate.

The official currency of Bosnia and Herzogovina is the intriguingly named Bosnia and Herzogovina Convertible Mark, which in itself suggests that they are only too happy to convert it into whatever currency you would rather use. Still, at least this name conjures up images of an exotic country of intrigue and adventure - which is more than can be said for the Euro, which, lets face it, doesn't exactly have the coolest name in the world. The Euro - that's definitely what you call a 3am decision, isn't it? Some of the biggest brains in the financial world at your beck and call, and all you can come up with for the name of your new Europe wide currency unit is "The Euro". Nowhere else in the world are they this lazy. Do the British talk in proud tones about how strong the Brit is against the Americ today? No, we don't - because we actually recognise that coming up with a name for your currency is an important far reaching decision and just hacking the first four letters off of your own name doesn't cut it.

Realistically, if you're staying somewhere with more than a trickle of tourists - which really should be the collective noun for such a group, don't you think - Bosnia is more than happy to take what you've got as long as they can do something with it. I found, both in Mostar and at the small roadside shops that we passed on the way from Dubrovnik, that not only was everyone happy to accept both the Croatian Kuna and the Euro, but that they often tended to actually ignore their own currency altogether and quote prices in Euros by default, looking at you funny if you actually wanted to pay using local money. In general, prices in Bosnia are lower than many of the surrounding countries - although you won't exactly find yourself having to take out a second mortgage to travel anywhere in Eastern Europe. Personally, I've never been the sort of person who spends all his time counting the pennies and worrying whether I could've bought something down the road for a bit less - there's nothing guaranteed to ruin a holiday more than spending every spare moment worrying about what how much you've got left in the bank - but if you really must keep a tight rein on the purse strings, you should be aware that traders in Bosnia will generally give you a much better exchange rate on the Euro than they will on the Kuna. A cappuccino, for example, will cost you only about 1 Euro in many places over here - about a third of the price you would pay in Croatia and a fifth of the UK price at todays exchange rates - but if you decide to pay in Kuna then the price will suddenly double. This isn't a con as such - you really can't expect every small trader to check the current market prices and adjust his entire price list on a daily basis, so many of them will tend to pick a rate which they know will never lose them money and stick to it, even if this means being less than competitive. Of course, with the cost of living as low as it is in Bosnia, the price difference isn't likely to break the bank, but it's probably something to be aware of for those on a budget. ATMs, luckily, are just as prevalent in this part of the world as they are elsewhere, so my advice for anyone coming here on a day trip would be to turn up with enough Euros or Kuna to get you to the first city and then take what you need out of a hole in the wall - otherwise, you'll probably end up changing up more than you need at a bureau de change and finding yourself out of pocket - I would only recommend trying to spend the Bosnian Mark outside Bosnia if you really enjoy being laughed at. "Hole in the Wall", by the way, is British slang for an ATM machine - I'm not actually suggesting that you look for war damaged buildings and attempt to loot money from them through gaps in the brickwork. That would be wrong.

If you're a big coffee fan, by the way, I should probably warn you at this stage that almost the whole of the former Yugoslavia subscribe to the Italian method of serving coffee - you know, the method by which they try their very hardest not to actually give you any coffee at all. Coffee sellers, or Baristas if you're feeling particularly posh or work for Starbucks, all go out of their way here to find the smallest cup they've got in the kitchen, fill it with mostly foam and chocolate sprinkles and then top it off with about a gulp of ridiculously strong coffee with enough caffeine to keep you awake for a month. To add insult to injury, you can't even pick up the cup properly because the handle is too small to get your little finger through. Somebody, somewhere, is definitely taking the piss. To be honest, if you live anywhere remotely sane then this probably isn't what you want, so make sure you go out of your way to ask for a double cappuccino or that they serve your coffee American style if you want anything remotely recognisable - you'll pay more, of course, but you'll end up with something which actually takes more than ten seconds to drink. The Italians do have something of a habit of serving coffee in the same way the rest of the world serves shots, both in size and price, and unfortunately this trend seems to be catching on. I really don't know why we stand for it - perhaps we're just trying to appear cool to our European cousins. If you asked for a coke, and were brought a shot glass and charged the price of a bottle, I think you'd have something to say about it, wouldn't you? The next time you're in a posh European restaurant and order a coffee at the end of your meal which arrives in a cup the size of a thimble, I suggest you treat it like a wine sampler, downing it in one before saying to the waiter: "Yes, that's fine. I'll take a whole cup, please."

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.