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重新拿德国马克购物

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Shopping for pain reliever here on a recent sunny morning, Ulrike Berger giddily counted her coins and approached the pharmacy counter. She had just enough to make the purchase: 31.09 deutsche marks.


近一个阳光灿烂的早晨，55岁的学前教师乌尔丽克·贝格尔(Ulrike Berger)走到德国南部小村盖贝格(Gaiberg)一家药店的柜台前，准备购买止痛药。她手头的钱刚好够：31.09德国马克。这些硬币让她数得头昏眼花。



'They just feel nice to hold again,' the 55-year-old preschool teacher marveled, cupping the grubby coins fished from the crevices of her castaway living room sofa. 'And they're still worth something.'


她手捧着硬币感叹道，"再一次把它们拿在手上的感觉真不错。它们还值些钱。"这些脏兮兮的硬币是她从弃置的起居室沙发的缝隙里搜罗出来的。



Behind the counter of Rolf-Dieter Schaetzle's pharmacy in this southern German village lay a tray full of deutsche mark notes and coins-a month's worth of sales.


药店老板罗尔夫-迪特尔·舍策尔(Rolf-Dieter Schaetzle)在柜台后面放了一个盘子，盘子里装满德国马克纸币和硬币──是这一个月收来的。



Germans have yet to give up on the euro. But as Europe's debt crisis rages on, many are indulging their nostalgia for the abandoned mark by shopping with it again--and retailers are happily going along.


德国尚未放弃欧元。但随着欧洲债务危机的肆虐，许多人开始沉浸在怀旧情绪中，他们又开始拿已经停用的德国马克来购物了──零售商也乐意收马克。



As defunct currencies go, 'die gute alte D-mark,' or 'the good old D-mark,' as it is still affectionately called, is far from dead. Germans officially traded in the currency for euro bills and coins on Jan. 1, 2002, and the mark immediately ceased to be legal tender. But 13.2 billion marks--worth 6.75 billion ($8.3 billion)--remain tucked in mattresses, old prayer books, coat pockets or otherwise in circulation, according to the Bundesbank, more lucre than the euro bloc's 16 other ex-currencies combined.


虽然货币失效后往往会退出历史舞台，但德国马克却远未丧失生命，它仍被亲切地称作"亲爱的老马克"。德国从2002年1月1日开始正式以欧元取代德国马克，马克随即不再作为法定货币。但德国央行(Bundesbank)称，有132亿马克──价值67.5亿欧元（83亿美元）──藏在床垫下，旧祈祷书里，大衣口袋内，或者还在流通，高于欧元区16种其他前货币的总额。



Unlike neighbors such as Italy and France, which let their liras and francs officiallyexpire over the past year, Germany never set a deadline for exchanging its old money for euros. So, if they decide to accept marks, retailers and other businesses can still exchange them at German central bank branches.


与意大利和法国等邻国不同（这两个国家分别在去年底和今年2月正式宣布里拉和法郎失效），德国从来没有为马克兑换欧元设定最后期限。因此，如果零售商和其他企业决定接受马克，他们仍然可以在德国央行的分支机构进行兑换。



The deutsche mark, introduced in the occupied western zones of Germany in 1948, before there was a West German flag, national anthem or even constitution, was never just a currency. It became a symbol of the country's postwar economic miracle amid the ashes of World War II and one of the few in which Germans could comfortably express national pride.


德国马克是1948年在德国西部占领区推出的，当时还没有西德国旗、国歌，甚至连宪法都没有。德国马克从来就不仅仅是一种货币，它是德国从二战废墟中崛起、创造战后经济奇迹的象征，是德国人可借以畅快表达民族自豪感的为数不多的东西之一。



'Flags weren't acceptable-Hitler had flags,' said Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German deputy foreign minister who is now chairman of the Munich Security Conference. But 'the D-mark was a clean German success story. Giving that up was hard to do.'


德国外交部前副部长、现任慕尼黑安全政策会议(Munich Security Conference)主席的沃尔夫冈·伊申格尔(Wolfgang Ischinger)称，"德国国旗无法获得认可──希特勒(Hitler)时期也有国旗，但德国马克代表着一段清白的德国成功故事。放弃德国马克是很难的。"



With so much left of the currency--which is exchanged at about 1.96 marks per euro--some retailers have made a mint from taking it in.


由于马克中还蕴藏着巨大的价值（约1.96马克可兑换1欧元），一些零售商通过收取马克获得了丰厚利润。



'Leave your last pfennig in Gaiberg!' read the slogan of this hilltop village's annual May campaign to lure the former German pennies, coins and notes to its handful of restaurants and shops.


坐落在山顶的小村庄盖贝格每年5月份举办一项年度活动，以吸引人们在当地为数不多的餐馆和商店里使用德国马克。这项活动的口号是，"把你最后的一芬尼留在盖贝格！"



'We're not doing this just to do people a favor,' said Mr. Schaetzle of Gaiberg, where shoppers from as far as Frankfurt spent 15,000 marks this May. 'Probably 90% of it is money we'd otherwise never see.'


盖贝格的舍策尔说，"我们这样做不仅仅是为了给人们提供方便。"今年5月份，购物者（甚至还有从法兰克福远道而来的人）在这里花了15,000马克。他说，"如果没有这项活动，这其中可能有90%的钱我们是根本赚不到的。"



C&A, an international clothing store chain whose biggest market is Germany, began accepting marks again in 2003 and still reaps up to 150,000 marks in monthly sales at its nearly 500 German outlets. Some 90% of Deutsche Telekom's coin-operated telephone booths take the former German coins.


C&A是一家国际服装连锁公司，最大的市场在德国。该公司从2003年重新开始收马克，目前，C&A在德国的近500家门店每月仍能收到多达15万马克。德国电信(Deutsche Telekom)有90%左右的投币电话亭可以收德国马克硬币。



The old currency is breathing life into more unusual pockets of the German economy, too. Martin Butzbach, owner of Vitatherm, which sells home-installed infrared cabins that tout improved health benefits, says he never thought there could be a deutsche mark market for his EUR2,500-plus products. 'I thought all that's left is a bunch of coins,' he said.


马克也为德国经济中一些比较特殊的部门注入了生机。Vitatherm是一家销售家用红外线桑拿房的公司，该公司称这种桑拿房有助于增进健康。Vitatherm的老板马丁·布茨巴赫(Martin Butzbach)称，他从未想到自己这些售价超过2,500欧元的产品会拥有德国马克市场。他说，"我以为人们手里只剩下一堆马克硬币了。"



Then a customer approached him last fall with a stack of bills he discovered stashed away in his recently deceased grandmother's home. 'He said, 'Do you take D-marks? I've got 5,000 of them.' ' Inspired to launch a mark campaign afterward, Mr. Butzbach says 20 customers have since used the old currency to snap up infrared cabins.


去年秋季，一名顾客带着一叠钞票来买桑拿房，这些钱是他在最近去世的祖母家里发现的。布茨巴赫说，"顾客问，'你收不收德国马克？我有5,000马克。'"受这件事启发，布茨巴赫后来启动了一个马克项目，他说，自此之后已有20名顾客使用这种老货币购买了他的红外线桑拿房。



For some, the mark revival has been a chance to collect even more of them. Dorothee Reess, a retired secretary in the southern German village of Belsen, already had a small sack of her favorite mark pieces. But upon discovering neighbor Inge Trautmann was accepting marks at her mom-and-pop store last winter, she rushed over to buy more.


对一些人来说，德国马克的再度流行让他们有机会收集更多马克。德国南部村庄贝尔森(Belsen)的退休秘书多萝茜·雷斯(Dorothee Reess)已经收藏了一小袋她最喜欢的马克硬币。但去年冬季发现邻居英格·特劳特曼(Inge Trautmann)开的小零售店收德国马克之后，她就赶紧跑到那里去买更多的硬币。



Part of her bounty: A special edition 5 mark piece from 1975 commemorating the 10th anniversary of Albert Schweitzer's death and another embossed with the image of Weimar Republic President Friedrich Ebert.


以下是她的部分藏品：一枚1975年为纪念艾伯特·史怀哲(Albert Schweitzer)逝世10周年而发行的五马克纪念币，还有一枚硬币上印有魏玛共和国(Weimar Republic)总统弗里德利希·艾伯特(Friedrich Ebert)的肖像。



'Everything about the D-mark is nicer--the look, the feel,' she said.


她说，"德国马克方方面面都更好──无论是外观还是手感。"



Indeed, compared with the euro--which deliberately avoids images deemed too national--the mark bears elaborate portraits of German writers, artists and scientists, from the composer Clara Schumann (on the 100 mark note) to the Brothers Grimm (on the 1,000 mark bill).


的确，德国马克不像欧元那样刻意回避国家色彩过于浓厚的图案，马克上印有精致的德国作家、艺术家和科学家肖像，比如100马克纸币上的作曲家克拉拉·舒曼(Clara Schumann)肖像和1,000马克纸币上的格林兄弟(Brothers Grimm)肖像。



The euro, on the other hand, 'is more like a big stew with every vegetable,' Ms. Reess said. 'Some of them aren't so tasty.'


雷斯说，欧元则"更像一锅什么蔬菜都炖的大杂烩，有些并不那么可口。"



Others cite a more mundane reason for so many lingering marks: Many Germans, renowned as savers, squirreled away so much cash that they simply forgot where they put it. In Gaiberg, customers arrived with marks found under washing machines, in dusty record album covers and old purses, even in a couple of shoe boxes unearthed in a church rectory closet.


另一些人认为，这么多马克还在流通的原因其实很普通：德国人以爱储蓄而闻名，许多德国人攒了太多现金，结果他们都忘了钱放在哪里了。在盖贝格，顾客们会带着从洗衣机底下、落满灰尘的唱片套里和旧钱包中找出来的马克来购物，甚至还有马克藏在从教区长住宅壁橱里翻出的两只鞋盒里。



'I couldn't fathom how people could just leave money lying around,' said Gaiberg native Helga Weis. That was before she prodded her husband, as their 50th anniversary approached last year, to finally get rid of his wedding suit. A last check of the pockets uncovered an envelope with nearly 300 marks, a long forgotten gift Mr. Weis had tucked away at the reception that day in 1961.


盖贝格当地人黑尔佳·魏斯(Helga Weis)说，"我想不通人们怎么会把钱扔在那里不管。"不过后来同样的事情也发生在了她的身上。去年，在魏斯和先生50周年结婚纪念日前夕，她总算说服她的先生扔掉了他的结婚礼服。最后检查衣服口袋时，他们发现了一个信封，里面装着近300马克，这是1961年两人结婚当日魏斯的先生在接待处揣进口袋的礼物，但他们早就忘了这事儿了。



Five decades later, the rediscovered cash was enough to buy the cakes for their anniversarycelebration from Gaiberg's mark-accepting bakery.


五十年后的今天，这些重见天日的钞票足够让夫妻俩从盖贝格收马克的面包房里买些蛋糕，庆祝周年纪念日了。



Reviving the retired currency, as Gaiberg's retailers have learned, comes with its share of hassles. D-mark customers often arrive with a sackful of coins, many of them 1-, 2- and 5 pfennig pieces, which have to be quickly sorted and calculated against the officially fixed EUR1 to 1.95583 mark exchange rate.


盖贝格的零售商已经认识到，重新使用已经退役的货币自有麻烦之处。用马克买东西的顾客通常会带来成袋的硬币，其中许多是一芬尼、二芬尼和五芬尼的硬币，必须将其迅速分类并按照一欧元兑1.95583马克的官方固定汇率进行计算。



Two years ago, the village bank's only automated mark counter broke. Now, the bank staff has to painstakingly recount all of the bills and notes by hand before carting them off to the nearby central bank branch in Karlsruhe for exchange.


两年前，村里银行唯一的马克自动点钞机坏了。现在，银行的工作人员不得不费力地用手清点所有钞票，然后再把它们运到附近卡尔斯鲁厄(Karlsruhe)的央行分支机构去兑换欧元。



And while Gaiberg baker Gitta Stadler said she admires the intricate designs and sturdy feel of the old marks, handling the long lost and often filthy money has another downside:


盖贝格的面包师吉塔·施塔德勒(Gitta Stadler)说，她很欣赏老德国马克精细的设计和结实的手感，但处理这些被遗忘很长时间、脏兮兮的钱通常还有一个不好的地方：



'Frankly,' she said, sifting through a large pile of tarnished mark coins, 'it kind of smells.'


她一边仔细清点着一大堆失去光泽的马克硬币，一边说，"说实话有点难闻。"



Vanessa Fuhrmans


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