Euro starter packs will give Europeans hands-on experience with the new coins

ULM, Germany (CNN) -- Ulm used to be its own economic powerhouse on the Danube -- a rich, trading city-state that has seen currency after currency come and go over the centuries.

Eventually swallowed up by a nation-state called Germany, Ulm is now adopting Europe's new currency.

Many residents looked forward to the switch, but for others it was a traumatic change they were never asked to vote on.

To win converts here and elsewhere, German officials took their "euro road show" around the country in late 2001, trying to calm concerns of their countrymen reluctant to give up their beloved Deutsch marks.

They explained how the switch would work -- how the euro, to which the Deutsch mark has been tied for several years, had already been boosting Germany in a vast, new single economy bigger than the United States.

But to many here in Ulm, especially older residents, the Deutsch mark is a powerful symbol of the world's third-biggest economy, rebuilt from the ashes of a shattered postwar nation.

Even the young folk asked, "Why a confusing switch from something proven?"

Officials insisted it would be simple. Prices, paychecks and bank accounts convert at precisely 1.95583 marks to the euro -- almost 2-1. But many remained concerned.

A 2001 poll showed more than one-fourth of Germans surveyed were fearful of the euro. Many in Ulm were worried what effect the switch would have on the price of basic goods.

One tool officials used in their effort to win over eurosceptics was a bag of shredded Deutsch marks. Like any other currency, it's only paper.

Sometimes, though, all this euro-proselytising may have seemed like a losing battle.

"Of course it's difficult to convey information about something which we are only talking about, and which is abstract," Angela Joosten of the Euro Action Group said ahead of the January 1, 2002, euro rollout.