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Comment by iaskwhy | Hacker News Reader

Coming from a small European country, it's one of those things that you think it's really weird about countries like United States. Here you can withdraw money without paying anything from any ATM. I never even saw a ATM asking for a fee.

When I went to NYC it wasn't easy to find ATMs without fees (and then there was the problem of my card being part of the Maestro network which isn't available everywhere).

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On the other hand, the few times I've been to the EU, it wasn't easy to find public restrooms without fees :) In the US, I've never seen a public restroom that charged.

(Actually I saw one, at a tourist destination in Martha's Vineyard, that had a suggested donation. I was flabbergasted.)

That's very true! The trick is to enter a cafe and ask for a bottle of water while taking the chance to ask "oh, by the way, where's the restroom?"

Ah, similar to how one gets "free" WiFi in the States by ordering some coffee from a Starbucks :) I am touring Europe in a couple months and will keep this in mind, thanks!

I'd say it's the same logic but usually a bottle of water in Europe is much cheaper than any coffee from Starbucks. :)

That depends on the country. It used to be that in Germany you would pay a person whoes job it was to keep the toilets clean and nice.

I asked my friend, a native German, about that last summer when I was in Germany.

She said a lot of times that money does not even go to the person cleaning the toilets.

I did pay 1 euro to use a bathroom in a train station. It seemed to be similar to US truck stop bathroom/showers. As soon as I left they cleaned the bathroom.

It is because <small European country> only has one bank? ;-)

In Spain these charges are quite common too, but are grouped into competing ATM networks: servired, telebanco and 4B being the main ones.

Not really, I guess it really varies. I'm from the other side of the border, Portugal, the banks are pretty much the same as in Spain (well, they are almost all Spanish by now).

In my small European country (Romania) fees at other bank's ATMs came with the ATMs 20 years ago. I guess it varies.

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