Did you get your receipt?

I am now a proud owner of a receipt for using the bathroom. After taking a 20-minute train ride from Amsterdam to Haarlem and then riding bikes to the North Sea, I really needed to use the facilities. Inside a seaside restaurant, there were bathrooms but there was also an automated machine blocking access to them. After trying to figure out how to use it for a few minutes, I concluded that the machine was the most amazing I had ever seen when it comes to bathroom payment in Europe. Because it was much more advanced than the “give the woman behind the mop 50 cents and you can pass” strategy. No. I put my money in this crazy machine and not only did it spit out the correct change, it even gave me a receipt for my payment. My very first, “I used the bathroom” receipt. Too bad it was in Dutch.