Condensation dryer...heard of it?

When I first got into my house here in Italy I did about two loads of laundry and my dryer stopped working. I could not figure out what the heck was wrong with it. Finally I pulled this little drawer out and it was full of water. I wasn't sure what it was but there was a little hole so I decided to empty it, my dryer went back to working. It's called a condensation dryer, have you heard of this? Maybe I'm ridiculous but I've never heard of it.

From Wikipedia:
"Just as in a normal dryer, condenser dryers pass heated air through the load. However, instead of exhausting this air, the dryer uses a heat exchanger to cool the air and condense the water vapor into either a drain pipe or a collection tank. This air is run through the loop again. The heat exchanger typically uses ambient air as its coolant, therefore the heat produced by the dryer will go into the immediate surroundings instead of the outside, increasing the room temperature."

P.S. Speaking of laundry there are a few other quirks you might want to know about...the machines here take FOREVER. The washer takes 2 hours unless I run the "quick" 1 hour cycle.  The dryer also takes about two hours, depending on how much I'm drying. And to make things worse, if I try to run both at the same time it flips the breaker. A lot of other ladies here have told me that the same thing happens to them.