GUWonder

Sounds like it was a person who accepted the USD bill for payment, rather than an automated control door for a public paid toilet. The USD $5 notes don't scan into any automated money-takers in Sweden except perhaps at some banks/forex places. It sounds like the lady just decided to take your money because personally she didn't mind having USD. Did she give you back any Swedish coins or any other currency/coins back?

If you paid her $5 for use of just a public toilet that normally costs less than a third of that in the local equivalent, no surprise she said "no problem".

YesLetsDiscuss

My recent experience in Norway is that wherever toilets required cash payment, they accepted NOK (between 7 and 10), USD (always 1) and EUR (always 1). Some places had that clearly written on the door and others only had NOK, but took all three.

WalterSFO

just left Oslo last night and yes, that was my experience as well... probably used 5 public paid toilets during the few days I was there. As a test, I deliberately asked to pay in euros and US dollars and none turned me down. (who really turns down money? it wasn't like I was asking to pay in North Korean coins, right? )

WilcoRoger

Have you ever tried to pay with any foreign currency in the US?

:D!

Did you try to pay your restaurant bills or supermarket shopping in Norway with US dollars?

So, I was in Bergen trying to buy some food from the market stalls on the seafront, but some old French ladies were taking a very long time to pay. It turned out that this was because they had all sorts of holey coins which somehow they were confusing with the Norwegian 1 and 5kr. These were mainly Danish 1,2 and 5kr but also some Japanese 50 yen and what's more, some Spanish 25 pesetas which stopped being used in 2002 but can be exchanged until 2020 as well as some Danish 25 øre that stopped being used before I was born (now scrap metal) .

If anyone was going to accept foreign coins other than a toilet "dragon" who after all isn't selling a specific good that needs to be paid for, it would be a market trader who works for himself, but he wasn't having any of them. Anyway, I told them to stop arguing, and I paid for their food but took all the coins. The coins worked out to be about 1.5x the value of the food that I bought for them (I estimated this to be the case beforehand, otherwise I wouldn't have done it).

onobond

Rumor has it, the Mexican 1 Peso coin is widely accepted at pay toilets all over the US

GUWonder

I can't recall ever having used a pay-toilet in the US in the past 20 years at least.

WalterSFO

I wonder what happened to these pay toilets in New York City....

"Prices for the Midtown [toilet] facility, which is set to open around June, start at $24 for a three-day pass (or $8 a day), plus a mandatory $15 annual membership fee."
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/flu...ple-2014-02-19

GUWonder

As I said, I can't recall ever having used a pay-toilet in the US in the past 20 years at least. In Manhattan, I have little to no problem finding a toilet to use without having to pay for one. While I've seen pay toilets in the US in this time frame, I also know how to try to locate the restrooms without having to pay for just using that. I go around NYC a lot, and I've certainly not paid to use a toilet in at least the past 20 years even as there have been pay toilets in places.

milepig

I truly had a hard time finding a place to empty my bladder in Bergen. Every place I tried wanted you to touch our credit card (not swipe) and being an Amurrican, we tend to not have touch cards. I didn't try, but I might have been able to touch my iphone, but I was in no shape to spend time experimenting. No coins, just credit cards, and even the facilities in the tourist office weren't free. I finally resorted to buying a $6 cup of coffee in Starbucks that I didn't want, and that came with an access code printed on the receipt. The rest room in the large department stores also wanted payment.

:D!

I don't remember being desperate in Bergen, but we spent a few hours on a local fjord cruise and I guess the toilets on the boat were free. As Bergen is a terminal rail station, trains wait there for some time and I may have boarded a train to use the toilet without intending to travel.

mandolino

I use shopping malls and pubs - none have ever said anything about me not buying a drink but I try to be discreet.

GUWonder

The Norwegian boats/ferries in the fjords and for the coastal islands have free bathrooms. The Scandinavian boat/ferry terminals/ports for embarking and disembarking may or may not have free bathrooms.

What some people do at such places is wait for someone (who has paid for bathroom access or has a bathroom code) to use and exit the bathroom and then enter before the door closes. It works at Scandinavian fast food places and coffee shops. Also, most hotels have bathrooms in or near the lobby or other publicly accessible part of the hotel, and such hotels will often give the bathroom directions and any bathroom code/pass to most who ask. Shopping mall bathrooms in Scandinavia are usually free nowadays — and it’s been over a decade since I last encountered a Scandinavian shopping mall that had no free bathrooms for visitors.

For places that take contactless cards for payment, ApplePay mostly works but sometimes it works with some ApplePay-loaded US bank cards while not working with say some other ApplePay-loaded US bank cards. For example, ApplePay using my Amex Plat or Centurion cards wouldn’t work at some fast food places in France and Sweden, but if I switched the ApplePay selection to the Chase Sapphire Reserve it worked fine.

NewbieRunner

I spent a couple of days in Stockholm recently and found all public toilets I have seen required payment. But this is a country where you can tip a tour guide by a credit card and some shops don’t accept cash. Many public toilets accept card payment and I had to keep a receipt with a QR code as a souvenir. 10KR is almost 1 Euro. This was in a shopping mall and the transaction appeared on my credit card statement as “shopping”.

GUWonder

The Gallerian Mall in Stockholm is an exception I know of in Stockholm, when it comes to the larger shopping malls in Sweden. It used to have free public toilets several years ago.

Mood-Gallerian/Stockholm is a short (sub-5 minute) walk away and has free toilets IIRC.