Tagged With "Scandinavia"

While cashless transactions are convenient and popular, and I use them often, I am not supportive of this move. It is a little too much "Big Brother" for me. Consumers will migrate to the purchase platform of their choice. Cash, I'm sure, will become less and less popular with time. But it still has a place and I as a free individual want to make the decision on when and how I will use it. How will people make purchases if there ever is a complete shut down and hack of the bank's computers...

Although I don't use cash every day, I sure want it when I need it. After living through Hurricane Katrina and the LONG power outage of the aftermath, I recognize when cash is crucial. And yes, DrFumblefinger poses a good question about the lack of cash during cyber warfare, which goes on regularly even if we choose to ignore it. Maybe we should go back to bartering for everything. But most of us have lost the art.

On my last trip to London, I arrived at night and the Tube stopped running. The ticket machines for the buses weren't working and now the buses are cashless. Luckily the drivers let me on anyway, but I think as more places don't accept cash ,those type of scenarios will be more common.

I think what we're seeing here is a blindness in planning, which goes beyond questions of technology. You've identified some scenarios where cashless becomes hopeless/helpless. I see the same kind of lack of forethought when I see several huge residential towers being built in downtown Brooklyn...on top of already overcrowded subway stations, and with no forethought to larger sewer or water connections... In the bleakest possible view, we may self-destruct not through a world war, but...

I'm not surprised that this is happening in Scandinavia, of all places. Many years ago I had friends in Denmark and Erik was an electrician. There wasn't enough work for all the electricians so they rotated the work and he worked for 6 months, then had 6 months off, paid. Sounds good? However, during the 6 months he was off he wasn't allowed to do any electrical work at all, including on his own house. I (and he) found the rule regarding his own house absurd. I see it related to the banking...

Did you count how many bikes there were, PHeymont?

Morr than the stars in the skies, I think....

Now I know why I got the impression, on my last trip, that Europe was growing at a pretty robusr rate, opposite of what I'd heard.. I visited 5 of the top ten 10 growth cities on that list.

Air service in Scandinavian countries has seen days of disruption by strikes over labor rights, and it may get worse tomorrow (Wed. March 4).   SAS cabin crew have forced cancellation of some flights in a dispute over assignments to a domestic...

A new rail link to connect Stockholm and Oslo opens in August, cutting the time from 6 to 4-1/2 hours. It's aimed at international professionals who might otherwise have chosen to fly between Scandinavian capitals.   It almost got delayed;...

  Nordea, Norway's number two bank, with operations across Scandinavia, has announced that starting Monday its Norwegian branches will not handle cash. Period.   The bank's plan, surprising as it sounds, is part of Scandinavia's move toward...

Scene in Gamla Stan, Stockholm.                 Photo: Jurgen Howaldt / Wikipedia Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo, in that order, have been tabbed as Europe's fastest-growing cities in a report compiled for...

Amsterdam has the reputation, but Copenhagen has a real claim to being the city that most depends on bicycles for daily transportation. Every morning and evening you’ll see rush hour crowds of students, executives and older folks on the way to...

Norwegian Air Shuttle's first Fort Lauderdale to Copenhagen flight is off today, to be followed by flights tomorrow and Sunday to Oslo and Stockholm. The low-fare carrier will have 6 weekly roundtrips ferrying freezing Scandinavians to Florida for...

A German town on the Dutch border hopes to convince merchants, customers, and eventually all of Germany to stop using 1- and 2-cent coins.

Cash is still king for some travelers, but these guys took it to another level, traveling with big sacks of Scandinavian coins.

SAS pilots in Norway and Sweden are on the verge of a strike that could severely impact flights in Scandinavia.

Sounds good - but on smaller items the price always gets rounded up. When the UK went to a decimal system nothing went down to the nearest amount.

Canada got rid of the penny over 3 years ago. As Garry says, usually things are priced so that prices get rounded up to the nearest nickel, although they theoretically can also get rounded down. The reason was basic economics -- it cost about 1.5 cents to make the 1 cent coin. And a penny buys nothing any more. I'm glad to be rid of them.

The proposal to get rid of the penny keeps coming up here, too…and every time it does, it gets shot down by people who feel as if the ground will fall out from under the economy if there are no pennies. I wish we could follow Canada on that one (among other good ideas they’ve had). I’ve got a tray at my desk with leftover coins from here and there, and I’m always amazed by some of the little ones: Italian centimo coins from when they were 1/100 of 1/616 of a dollar. As nearly as I can tell,...

Judy Barford continues her tour of Norway and discovers that the country is obsessed with creatures of legend.

They look like all the Norwegians I've met!

Judy Barford takes a stroll through Copenhagen’s main attraction and finds it’s more than just an amusement park.