Those automatic robot superettes behind a glass storefront really amaze me in France, even if the first one I ever saw was in the Zurich train station in 1971.

www.yatoopartoo.fr

<i>&quot;il y a tout partout&quot;</i> = &quot;everything everywhere&quot;

Years ago - the pneumatic system in Paris of sending letters across town via penumatic tubes. Gone now but for its day!

The pneumatic system was in service in Paris from 1866 to 1984. 467 km of pneumatic tubes!

Wikipedia claims that the service is still functioning in Prague.

Used to exist in the U.S. in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Saint Louis.

Used to exist in the U.S. in

LJ
Funny you should mention the self weighing of produce. I just for the first time this past week saw it at a grocery store here in the US. I was surprised as previously I had only seen it in France and for many years.

My best techno memory was being in a small village in Ghana West Africa, one side of the street old building with goats rummaging around, kids playing soccer with partially deflated ball, road was dirt, with bits of pavement...and right there across street was an internet cafe...still blows me away.

And yet some hotels are slow to answer emails while they will answer FAXes within 24 hours. I still can't figure that one out.

Self-cleaning toilet seat in Vienna.

MvK

Braille marks on Swiss banknotes for the blind?

How about something incredibly simple but incredibly useful: In Germany, when a toilet stall is locked (and presumably occupied), a little red square shows up on the knob. When it's unlocked (and unoccupied), it shows green. No more checking doors to figure out which are in use and which are not.

Paul

We were driving back to Paris from Provence and decided we were too tired to drive straight through. We stayed at a very inexpensive roadside motel that was completely self-service (all transactions completed on a computer screen outside the motel which then issued the pass key). The room itself was nothing fancy but we had our own bathroom and everything was clean. That's about all we cared about at 1:00 a.m.

In several French restaurants, I noticed some self-cleaning toilets. After flushing, an automatic squeegee (sp?) cleans the toilet seat with some disinfectant.

If they applied that technology to clean the toilet bowl rim, I'd buy it in a second for my house.

&gt;Self-cleaning toilet seat in Vienna.&lt;

Self-cleaning enclosed toilets on the streets of Paris.

Do not try to sneak in on someone else's dime. (I think that they are now free.)

Automobile glove boxes connected to the HVAC to keep things hot or cold.

((I))

Even in the 1990s, pneumatic systems were still in use in parts of Philadelphia, particularly the mega medical complex at the University of Pennsylvania. Biopsies taken during surgery that needed instant analysis were sent by pneumatic tube to the lab, instead of needing a staffer to walk them over. I don't know if that system is still in use.

Not a high tech thing, but I appreciated the German practice of designating parking spots closest to exits or entrances for women only after dark.

As for McDonald's, the freestanding ATM style machines wouldn't work for me. I'm such a fusspot, I don't want ketchup or pickles or onions or whatever on my burgers, so no go (in some places in Europe, when you tell them no sauce, they think you don't want any of the extra sauces you pay for, they don't realize you don't want the sauces that normally come with the item).

I like that parking meters in Vienna (and other places) are solar powered, well, in as much as you can like anything about parking meters. Are they solar powered in U.S. cities as well?

One technology I'm glad has NOT been widespread in Europe is the system of charging for minibar items that are moved or simply touched slightly. Most of the European hotels we stay at allow us to move things around in the minibar fridges to make way for our own stuff, if so inclined.

Make a Deutsche Bahn reservation on your cell phone, charge to your Card On File, and a confirmation pattern is sent to display on your phone. The conductor scans it - bam, done!

The streetcars in Amsterdam have LED displays showing the next four or five stops - so you know when to prepare to get ready and when to commence beginning.

Not technology - just little &quot;niceties&quot; that make European travel (and living!) more pleasant. Such as:

The buses in Bonn and Cologne will stop on request <u>at your street corner</u> after 9:00 PM.

I suppose like the self cleaning toilets or things payed by a cellphone, one of these technical niceties I like here (Finland) are the censory water things at gas station loos. You just put your hands under the tap and water pours out, you take your hands out and the water flow stops. You don´t touch anything.

I just saw on tonight's French news program 'Le Journal' that live TV will soon be offered on cell phones (even on the metro) perhaps in time for the Beijing Olympics.

BTilke - I am intringued. Am I meant to assume from your post that if you simply move things around in your mini-bar you are charged for them. As someone who tends to take half the stuff out and put it to the side until we go (and then put them back) I would have a fit to be charged for non-consumed items. Are you referring to only upmarket hotels or is this common practice?

Here in the northeast US, we've had roundabouts for at least as long as I've been alive - we call them rotaries. In fact, they've been in the process of removing them over the last decade or so, since supposedly they cause more accidents than traffic lights do.

As for unexpected tech, ever since I first saw them as a kid, I've always loved the light switches on timers in French hallways and stairwells. Such a simple and elegant way to save electricity!

Not sure how new this is (hadn't done much shoe-shopping in a few months), but I only recently encountered the hand-held computers in Macy's shoe department that let the salespeople check whether your size is in stock.

Oh yeah and another one (that we now have here in the US): FNAC was the first place I experienced those gadgets that scan CDs and play snippets of each track. I spent hours in there the first time I tried it - and walked away with a stack of discs, which I'm sure was just the point. ;)