Topic in English

[Eliezer]

Kiitos, Eliezer for my third inofficial intercontinental hit.

You're welcome, and thank you for giving it such an interesting route. It is also my "oldest" hit with its 2432 days and apparently yours, too.

EDIT: So the route should maybe look like this.

[Asiamaniac]

Yes, indeed. It outsmarts another hit by 210 days. And your "new map" is accurate,, too. By the way, from this year's holiday, a three-digit-number of bills to and from Thailand and Malaysia are still waiting to be detected again...

[kKeks]

Hi everyone,

just wanted to let you know about iEBT, that we have been developing for the better half of last year and released an update just a few days ago. The Post in the english forum can be found here: http://forum.eurobilltracker.com/viewto ... =5&t=21910" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

iEBT is an iPhone / iPod Touch Application for iOS 4.0 and later to record your notes and submit them (or submit them later) to EBT. It costs EUR 1.59, with which we hope to cover the fee we had to pay apple to be allowed to submit our app to the AppStore. If we are ever going to make a profit on iEBT, we will donate some money to the association.

Features include:
★ Offline storage. Enter your notes on the go and submit dem later!
★ Super easy note submission to EuroBillTracker.com!
★ Powerful Keyboard Switching for the fastest note entry experience!
★ Easily submit your euro notes to EuroBillTracker.com wherever you are, whenever you want!
★ Interactive note validation with instant feedback!
★ Location history for quick access to and easy entry of recent locations!
★ Hit and Duplicate note detection!

UPDATE: With version 1.1 we have added/changed/removed:
★ [NEW] Support for high resolution Retina displays
★ [NEW] Now in English, German, French and Dutch
★ [NEW] New Custom Made Keyboards (Including an inverse Number Pad)
★ [NEW] MapKit and Location Service utilization for quicker Address entry
★ [NEW] Serial and Printcode Lock Feature to assist with semi-sequential or fresh notes.
★ [NEW] Tiny Flags to indicate the region where the note has been printed and the country it has been printed for.
★ [CHANGE] Rearranged Submit Actionsheet
★ [REMOVE] Dropped checkboxes.

You can check it out [url=itms://itunes.apple.com/de/app/iebt-euro-bill-tracking-made/id409716509?mt=8]in iTunes[/url] or on the AppStore Website.

PLEASE NOTE: We are not (yet) affiliated with EuroBillTracker.com or the European Society for EuroBillTrackers.
Thus we cannot and do not want to claim to be the official EuroBillTracker App!

I'd be more than happy to answer all questions concerning iEBT. I would have loved to create a very own iEBT Thread, but my Finnish fails me :/

kindest regards,
your iEBT Team

[de*lerger]

Many thanks to kirko for finding this note.
It's my 1000th hit

[LArdennais]

Hi zeeta, congratulations on your first hit with Belgium...and also on your third "international hit" !!!

http://fr.eurobilltracker.com/notes/?id=91770795

[hinti111]

Hei dear Finnish EBT´ers from Greater Helsinki,

on 18.3. I have the pleasure to see Helsinki for 4 days.
In this topic I found some usefull informations regarding getting eurobills.
On the Monday I will also try some Nordea or Sampo branches for some smaller exchanges.

But what is with Suomen Pankki in the City-Center? Do they have also a cashier where
I can get 5-Euro-bundles for example ? Or can I leave small bills there and exchange
against bigger ones?

One other idea from me is if somebody is interested to swap
with me some UNTRACKED used bundles.
That means I would bring untracked 5 Euros from my area in Austria and exchange against finnish ones.
I would be very happy if anybody finds this idea great too - so drop me a PM if you are interested.
Cheers

[Craft]

You don't need to go to Suomen Pankki for bundles (if you don't have any other reason for going there). You can get bundles - or rather, piles - at any bank since they have those automatic machines that dispense notes in any denominations you ask the cashier. They just type it to the computer, and out comes what you asked for. For instance, if you have a couple of € 100 notes, just ask them to change those to 40 fivers etc.

Welcome to Finland!

[joergb30]

Tomorrow I will visit for 7 hours via Viking line because it's *very* difficult to change Eurobills here in Estonia
It seems that changing bills without commision fee and/or passport copying is impossible, so I decided to make my luck in your country for one day

Which banks can I visit in this short time (are there any branches located near the Helsinki harbor area?) and can you tell me the postal code from the harbor area?

Best regards
Joergb30

[Craft]

Hi, and welcome!

I'm not quite sure if it's as easy for foreign citizens to change cash as it is for Finns, but generally the banks should be friendly to clients (as far as the sums are well below any limits of money laundering suspicions).

The postal code in Katajanokka (Viking Line terminal) is 00160.

Elsewhere in the city centre there are many postal codes, but if you don't need to be absolutely precise, you can use 00100 which is the code for the area around Central railway station.

Some offices:

Nordea
http://maps.google.fi/maps?f=q&source=s ... inki+suomi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sampo
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 22638&z=16" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

OP
http://www.fonecta.fi/karttahaku/FI/HEL ... NKATU%2013" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.fonecta.fi/karttahaku/FI/HEL ... NKATU%2019" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Tarmo]

Which banks can I visit in this short time (are there any branches located near the Helsinki harbor area?) and can you tell me the postal code from the harbor area?

The ferry of Viking Line arrives at Katajanokka ferry terminal (post code 00160 Helsinki). There are no branches in Katajanokka, but there are many branches in the city centre 10-15 min away by foot or 5-6 stops by tram (route 4T at the terminal, every 14-15 min + route 4: nearest stop ca 150 m from the terminal, every 7-15 min). Look for branch signs of Nordea, Sampo, OP (Osuuspankki)... at Aleksanterinkatu, Mikonkatu, Mannerheimintie, Railway station...

Tervetuloa

[joergb30]

Many thanks for your answers, Craft and Tarmo
I'll do my best to collect notes and mybe make a hit with you.
Best regards,
Joergb30

[joergb30]

It's a real odyssey for foreigners to get notes in Helsinki from a bank or even a change office

No account? Sorry we only change for customers.

Sorry we don't change money. You may try it in the bank.

Why you want to change? You can pay with this notes as well. We only change foreign currencies e.g. Euro to £ or Euro to SEK but not Euro to Euro.

I wasted a long time in waiting rooms for nothing with 2 exceptions:
The cashier of a Nordea branch gave me 20 "normally we don't change but I make an exception" and only the cashier of the Osuuspankki changed my bills back into without a question.
3 hours later I decided to make a second dot far away from the capital but I couldn't find a timetable for arrivals anywhere in the railway station so I was crazy enough to by a ticket for an one-hour-trip to Hämeenlinna spontaneously.
It was too late now for changing my bills in a bank but luckily I got some notes in a supermarket and the cashier at the railway station gave me for 4 3 minutes before the train back to Helsinki arrived.
Maybe it's easier to get notes in smaller cities

[joergb30]

It's a real odyssey for foreigners to get notes in Helsinki from a bank or even a change office

No account? Sorry we only change for customers.

Sorry we don't change money. You may try it in the bank.

Why you want to change? You can pay with this notes as well. We only change foreign currencies e.g. Euro to £ or Euro to SEK but not Euro to Euro.

I wasted a long time in waiting rooms for nothing with 2 exceptions:
The cashier of a Nordea branch gave me 20 "normally we don't change but I make an exception" and only the cashier of the Osuuspankki changed my bills back into without a question.
3 hours later I decided to make a second dot far away from the capital but I couldn't find a timetable for arrivals anywhere in the railway station so I was crazy enough to by a ticket for an one-hour-trip to Hämeenlinna spontaneously.
It was too late now for changing my bills in a bank but luckily I got some notes in a supermarket and the cashier at the railway station gave me for 4 3 minutes before the train back to Helsinki arrived.
Maybe it's easier to get notes in smaller cities

edit: 44 notes from Helsinki, 5 from Hämeenlinna and I got this hit
Thank you 2fast4you, you made my day

[Craft]

Well, exchange offices are dedicated to changing currencies to other ones and their business idea is to get profit from their buying and selling rates. Exchanging notes of only one currency is not a business for them since there is no profit involved, so it is generally forbidden for their officials to accept such requests by clients. That's why I didn't even mention exchange offices as an opportunity for you in my reply above.

Banks should be more flexible in this sense, though exchanging euro notes is not a business for them either, but they usually do that as customer service. I haven't actually tested branch offices in the central Helsinki, and I'm sad to hear that they weren't as friendly as I expected. I have good experience of banks elsewhere in Finland, so you may be right in you guess about smaller towns.

It seems that nowadays everyone is supposed to find the railway timetables in the Internet in Finland . Anyway, there are printed timetable leaflets available at railway stations. (And this winter the timetables haven't been much help anyway since most trains run late, but that's another matter .)

The positive side is that hit probability in Finland is quite high as you already noticed, so congratulations! (By the way, incidentally, your hitpartner's alias 2fast4you was the Finnish state railways' slogan in their advertisements in 1980's.)

[Dakkus]

I once had half an hour of time and decided to try my luck finding the arrivals timetable at the Helsinki central station. After quite some searching I found them. They were in the ticket selling office, between the wall and a stand, quite invisible for anybody who doesn't get the funny idea of squeezing to the correct place.

But they were visible! Kinda.... I also noticed that the common standard of having yellow timetables for departures and white for arrivals is taken care of by VR, as well. The departure timetable has a small yellow stripe on the upper part, the arrivals timetable doesn't have it.

There are (or at least were) electronic terminals for checking timetables, but since their keyboards are broken and their touch-screens don't work correctly, they are sometimes "slightly difficult" to use.
The ticket selling machines can be used for checking arrival times, if you claim them you are buying a ticket from Hämeenlinna to Helsinki
And then there are the small leaflets. Generally speaking, Internet is the way to go. Or, you squeeze between the wall and a stand in a corner nobody has ever heard of