Geldmuseum der Deutschen Bundesbank

I enjoy central bank monetary museums. A lot. I would be lying if I said getting to come here was not one of the main reasons I took a study abroad trip.

We were given an overview of the workings of the Bundesbank, which thanks to the euro is just a whole lot of price stability. There were plenty of information booklets AND tote bags to go around. Then it was down to the money museum.

This blows the Atlanta Fed's museum out of the water. I am still mad that we didn't get to stay that long because I think I only explored half of it. There was so much currency to look at. We're talking ancient coins to the current Euro denominations.

The inner workings of a central bank were explained in an interactive way. There was a game where you play the president, and I was terrible at it. It also stopped working on me, probably because I was that bad.

They do not give you free shredded money, however, and all the packages you could buy were a bit too big for me.

I was one of the last in the group to leave, and I was returning my little token to use the locker. The security guard was so nice, and gave me on booklet I may have probably ignored otherwise. It was entirely in German, but it showed every Euro coin so I could figure out where all my coins were from. Without him giving me that booklet, I probably wouldn't have 12 coins stored away right now. And he made sure to point out the free chocolate coins, which are kind of cooler than shredded money...

As a normal citizen or visitor, you usually do not get to see the Central Bank of a country. However, sometimes they can help you:


1. Search for a German bank code. In most German Online Banking programs, there is a search option for bank codes to make online payments. However, at the site http://www.bundesbank.de I can validate bank codes and get complete bank code lists - for free, however only in German language.


2. Are you still holding Deutschmarks at home. No problem: the next Bundesbank branch will exchange them free of charge against Euro. This takes a little while. However, if you are far away from the next exchange office, you can send in the Deutschmark bills by mail and ask them to transfer the Euro counter value to your bank account somewhere in Europe. For this purpose you need to download a form from their website.


Branches are only in the largest cities, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich. "County" seats do not have a branch.

this is the best I enjoy central museums. as a normal tourist I was really enjoy+