1999
Usually very careful, the sentinels on duty on the ramparts are now distracted by the graces of two young ladies (fashion models?) guests of a close-by hostel. Some strollers, interested in what goes on in the Arms factory yard, are sent away by the security: could they be spies of Barbarossa? Nobody trusts anybody, in today's Mediolanum: we see so many characters around!
Beyond the Naviglio, in the Southern Industrial Estate, a new factory has been opened. They thermoform large plastic sheets here, to make large bathtubs - used by the locals as troughs for cattle, grown with industrial methods in the surrounding country. There is a tough local competition for this stuff, and the sophisticated machines imported from Britannia suffer for the bad exchange rate between Libra and Scudo. 
If these things don't get fixed soon, we'll end importing nothing from those remote islands. Let's hope in a near future when - maybe - some order could reign in these money-related matters: alas, if we only could deal with one currency only! Things would be less complex, probably.