The European Bathroom Report
Eating and shitting are two things that everyone has in common, so it comes as no surprise that going to the bathroom is one of the great bonding experiences of human kind. You may think that a toilet is a toilet, that there isn't much to tell about them apart from the quality or absence of bathroom graffitti, but this simplistic thinking could not be further from the truth. Going to the bathroom in Europe is an adventure, and European toilet technology includes devices barely conceivable to the American mind.
Many European countries have developed an idea that really goes against the American grain. If you go into a public restroom in Germany or Eastern Europe, there wil be a cranky old lady waiting near the doorway who expects you to pay!
I know what you're thinking: "When you gotta go, you gotta go!" This is true. Just make sure you have enough change.
I had been warned about this before I went over, but nothing could have prepared me for the first time I was running to the bathroom, and an old lady chased me down. "Penize! " she was screaming. "Money! Mon-ey!" Cultural sensitivity is a wonderful thing. But in the heat of the moment, proper etiquette was the last thing on my mind. I stormed out of the restroom and pissed outside, cursing the entire time.
But wait! Bathroom extortion is not limited to train stations and bus stops -oh, NO!!!- many restaurants are in on the game. Not only are you paying for lousy food and shitty service, but they are charging you for the toilet, too!
As time went by I became accustomed to this unusual institution. I began to notice that there were different customs in different places, and this only added to the thrill. In Poland at the train station, for example, bathrooms charge you double if you decide to wash your hands. Many restrooms charge a small fee to use the urinals; more money if you need to sit down. In the Czech Republic and Poland, this does not amount to much. Ten cents is the average price. But in Germany, using the toilet cost more than a buck!
I also learned that charging money in public restrooms fulfills an important social function: it keeps old women off the streets. According to several sources, the communists invented the job of toilet attendent so that the the Babicki ("grandmothers") would be fully employed. Supposedly, you are paying them to keep the bathroom clean and wipe off the seats. Having visited a lot of bathrooms, I can assure you that this cannot possibly be the case. Payingfor toilet paper is rather awkward and embarassing, which is where German technology comes in.
According to my friend Martin, the Germans have begun producing coin operated toilets that automatically open and lock behind you when you put your money in. Martin said it was somewhat of a challenge figuring out how to get out. "Germans seem to love producing worthless gadgets, " said Martin. " We do not charge money for toilets in Denmark."
But that's just the beginning. More exciting Euro-bathroom discoveries await!
Let's start with the basics: peeing (if you're a woman) or (everybody) taking a crap.
Turkish toilets can best be described as "nasty." When you go into the stall in a turkish bathroom, you squat down over a hole in the ground.
Equally disgusting are some Italian bathrooms, such as the discoteque Becky visited where the women all squatted and peed on the floor. Drains had been provided but I think she said that when she went there they were clogged.
In place of the standardized shitter used by millions of Americans, Eastern Europeans have have devised whole a range of sit-down toilets. The vast majority are variations of The Gravity Toilet. The tank on a gravity toilet is mounted on the wall at eye level, and to flush it, you have to pull down on a special cord. Water comes rushing down a pipe into the toilet bowl, located a good three feet below. The force of the falling water pushes everything in the toilet forward into -and down- the drainage hole, which is located at the front of the toilet, unlike American toilets which place it towards the back. Many toilets are also Platform Shitters. Platform shitters are like a sit-down toilet gone horribly, horribly wrong. The "bowl" of a platform toilet is exactly that: a long flat (dry) surface six inches below your butt. Urine and excrement fall down on the platform and pile up. There is no splash, just an ugly, dull thud. The platform slab juts forward, dropping down into a drainage hole at the front -that's why platform shitters need the power of a gravity toilet to force the contents forward and down. An unfortunate side-effect is that sometimes the shit will smear.
Other (non-gravity) toilets have a normal toilet bowl (i.e. it is shaped like a bowl not a football field) but the drainage hole is located at the exact center, not too far forward and not too far back. Instead of pushing down on a handle or pulling on a cord to flush them you pull up on a knob located on top of the tank, which pulls out a plastic stick which lifts up the plug that sends the water flushing down.
There are dozens of variations on these basic designs. In Hungary we found the Stealth Platform Shitter, which has the pipes hidden behind the wall. You won't know how it is flushing until the water comes rushing out.
"Is it as dirty as a Polish bathroom?" became a standard phrase among our group. I don't know what the communists did to the plumbing , but in Poland they fucked up. The toilets worked fine in peoples' houses and apartments, but the toilets we used in Krakow (especially in the hostel) essentially did not flush. The water would come down and push whatever was on the toilet platform down into the drainage hole -and there it sat. You could look down the toilet and see everyone's shit from the last week, which was gradually being forced further down the pipe by the weight of the stuff on top. Needless to say, the bathrooms smelled really bad.
Don't assume that just because there is a toilet, that there is toilet paper, too.
Many bathrooms make no allowance for toilet paper, so it is wise to carry your own roll. Public restrooms charge money for this product, and as you are entering the restroom, the toilet attendent will dilligently hand it out. If you are lucky, they will give you an entire roll. Most places tear off little sections and hand them to you. These sections are rarely more than a foot in length.
The Czechs came up with the brilliant idea of placing one roll of toilet paper on a rack at the front of the restroom. You're supposed to tear off what you'll need before you sit down, which inevitably means that you tear off too little paper or (much more often) way too much.
The paper itself ranges from standard white toilet paper to brown abrasive stuff. It is a question of extremes. In the U.S. we are given puffy white toilet tissues that are supposed to be "squeezably soft." Complete overkill. In Europe you'll find rolls of toilet paper that feel like sandpaper on your butt. They're both ridiculous. Take your pick.
Urinals I have known and loved
The best urinals in Europe -or anywhere else for that matter- are in the Netherlands. Why? Because the Dutch came up with a wonderful invention and placed it in their toilets. If you go to a public restroom in Amsterdam, look to see if the urinals come equipped with life-sized prints of a big fly.
Sometime in October, an American in Prague had told me that the Dutch and their urinals with flies, the idea being that men (who are notoriously messy when they're pissing) would drop their pants and aim for the fly. "They're quite proud of their invention," he said.
I told a lot of people about The Fly. People thought that the American had been pulling my leg. No one else who had been to Amsterdam had ever seen urinals with flies printed on the sides. I was sad.
On my way home in December, I had to change planes in Amsterdam. I visited the restroom. The bathroom was sparkling white and super-clean. The urinals were spotless, chic, and free. And inside every one of them I found a life-sized picture of a fly.
Urinals in the Czech republic are just like urinals in the United States. But they also have things called Piss Walls where your urine runs down a wall into a drain. A constant trickle of water flows down the wall to wash the urine down. The smell of a piss wall is fairly rank.
Much more entertaining than a piss wall are a variety of Czech urinal where the piss runs out onto the floor! You step up to the toilet, the urine drains out the bottom into a tube or pipe, the pipe runs down a few feet and pours out near a drain built on the floor. A little barrier keeps the piss from getting on your feet. We found a fancy version of this in a restaurant in Terezien -the urine fell into a trough with a stream of running water that swept the piss away into the drain.
or so I've heard...
