Forged Euro's in Germany - tentatively related to St Adalbert (lived and died in Germany)

Forged Euro’s

Tentatively related to St Adalbert (German connection). I was working in Celle in Germany for a few days, visiting clients around 2010.  This was my third or fourth visit and I was staying at the same hotel as I had stayed before – Ringhotel Celler Tor https://www.celler-tor.de, a really nice hotel with great food and pool/jacuzzi and sauna.  I had landed at Hannover and taken a cab the 20 miles to the hotel.  I paid the driver, checked in and went to my room.  A few minutes later I had a call from reception asking me to come back down to them. 

The taxi driver was there, I assumed he wanted to give me a card and let me know he could drive me to my appointments, however, he did not.  He had realised that the Euro’s I had given him were forged.  He showed me how he knew, of course I had no idea not dealing with Euro’s often.  Luckily, I had enough Euro’s to pay him still. 

Apparently, in this situation the police are usually called but I must have looked shocked enough for the driver to realise it was a genuine mistake.

At the time I was living in a small town in Devon and was a regular at the Post Office, getting foreign currency.  As soon as I was back in my room, I phoned the Post Office and explained what had happened.  Fortunately, the lady who had served me the Euro’s a couple of days before remembered doing so and said they would sort it out when I got back, which they did.

It turns out that a couple of men were going into different post offices around Devon – and possibly elsewhere, with forged 20 Euro notes and exchanging them for pounds.  I had to give a statement to the police although as I was only the receiver of the notes, I am not sure how helpful that would have been.

Anyway, that was a lesson learnt for both me and the post office who are now a lot more aware of forged notes.