"NO. What will happen, (or at least, DID happen, when I was there), is you had francs on you, or you didn't BUY. Period. "
What?
What the hell twilight zone were you in?
In the summers of 1981 and 1983 I spent a total of about 6 weeks in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
In 1977 through 1979, I was LIVING in Europe.
Even in the smallest towns the shop keepers were happy to accept dollars at that day's published exchange rate.
They darn sure didn;t when I was there - of course, thanks to Jimmy Carter, it was trading at 1.21 mark to the dollar, so that may have had somehting to do with it...
Many of the places even had an exchange rate chalk board on which they would write that day's exchange rate for various currencies.
The ONLY place I ever went that accepted foreign currency was East Germany/East Berlin, where they would happily accept West German marks for East German marks - at 1 for 1, (they traded at 1 to 8 at the time, so you can see why...) or the Yankee capitalist dollar at... 1 for 1 (traded at 1 to 12).