Well, I had no problems converting from liras to euros a few weeks ago when I visited Rome: drop three zeroes and divide by two. Actually, it was easy because German mark is almost second national currency here (Croatia), and it has nice round 1:1000 rate towards lira and 2:1 towards euro.

Shortage of actual euro banknotes was very acute these last few months when our people brought several hunderd million DEM which they kept in proverbial old socks and under mattresses to banks for zero-fee conversion. Most were not very happy about having to leave their new euros on their accounts (or convert them, after paying fee, to dollars, pounds, Swiss francs...). Needless to say, banks are happy.

I actually prefer coins to notes, up to, say, $10 value. They somehow feel more substantial, you can leave them on the counter, newspaper stand or café table without weighting them down againt breeze and they sound better...

Those enormous lira notes are some 30-40 or so years old (probably this generation); even I barely remember them.