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Updated January 2005
St.
Petersburg
,
Russia
On a recent mission trip to
Russia
, I was reminded of just how happy I am to be an American, much of the joy
revolving around our public and FREE public toilets. We were doing some
ministry with some street kids, who actually are quite frequent in St.
Pete, and a few of us had to go. Our host told us that there were some
bathrooms at the entrance of the area where we were, and that we may have
to pay to use them. We approached the place, and it looked like a wooden
old ""
West Virginia
style"" mobile home had been raised up on stilts. We looked at
each other, steeled ourselves, and went in. There was, indeed, a little
window area where you were supposed to pay to use the bathroom, (3 rubles,
about 10 cents at the time) but I couldn't see anyone there. Turns out a
small child was there, and yelling at me in Russian. When I walked in,
there was a line of wooden stalls, in a dimly lit area, rather like
something that Steven King would dream up. The small basket on the floor
for the toilet paper had some in it, and it was terribly bloody. I really
didn't want to think about why, and certainly realized that I could
""hold it"" so as not to have to sit on the filthy
toilet. I did stand, and finished what I had to do, and thanked God as I
flushed my paper when I returned home "
Ukraine
I was visiting my son when he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in
Ukraine
. There are several bathroom stories to tell but the most horrible
experience for me was the day we went to Truskavetc. This is a holiday/spa
town in the hills in the eastern area of
Ukraine
. It was explained to me that this is the place that everyone likes to
come to for a healthy vacation and it is considered a luxury resort town.
They are known for their healing waters. So of course I drank the water.
After a while I found the need to seek the ladies room. My son's Ukrainian
girlfriend (who did not speak English at all) led me to the public
toilets. They seemed to be built into the side of a hill and it was
necessary to go down a staircase to get to them. When we got there an old
woman with only a few teeth was waiting to take our money to use the
facility. I have no idea what the cost was because the girlfriend paid.
But anyway I was led into this dark cavern with stalls. The smell was
overwhelming. I opened a door to a stall expecting to see a toilet but was
greeted with a filthy hole in the ground. As I shut the door behind me for
privacy I realized that I was in the pitch dark and I had no idea where
the hole actually was. So, I hiked up my skirt and tried to squat over the
hole, hoping I was hitting the mark. When I emerged from the stall the old
toothless woman began yelling at me in Ukrainian and proceeded to spray a
hose at my feet and into the stall. Apparently I had missed the hole! I
could not get out of there fast enough. This is apparently the Soviet idea
of a vacation paradise.
Hungary
There was one time when I went to Hungary & I
really needed to go. But it cost 50 forint to use the bathroom.
I thought ‘alright it will probably be cleaner then free
bathrooms. So I paid.
When I went in the bathroom it was so dirty.
Brooms and mops when just lying around and the
floor was almost black (the original color of it is white) and the
employee who you paid was like a bum who probably did not take a shower in
like a month. Also even though I paid 50 forint she kept on saying in
Hungarian "don’t use that much water".
Athens
Airport
I
admit it was partly my fault -- I knew we would not have much to eat the
day we left our cruise ship, so I stoked up on a wonderful, filling,
American-style breakfast: eggs, pancakes and lots of bacon. Bad decision.
By the time we had transferred (as they say) to
the
Athens
airport, by tummy was rumbling. After a quick check-in -- security is not
the tightest in
Athens
-- it was not exactly a run, but was a brisk walk to the
"Men's."
No partitions. Hum. Lots of people in and out,
but what choice do you have? When in
Athens
, do as the Athenians do, I guess. Hardly conducive to explosive problems,
but, after all . . .
I reached back to flush. I looked for the
flusher. I pivoted and looked harder. This baby does not flush. It seems
to be self-cleaning -- a trickle of water into the bowl. At the rate the
water is trickling and the rate my digestive system is operating, this
bowl will be clean about the same time my flight is due to land in
New York
.
Since things are calming down, my main goal was
to get out of the place, find my wife and get the lomotil as soon as
possible. They *did* have toilet paper -- and a sign which said to deposit
the used paper in a basket beside the facility. Gross.
It took four lomotil and three more trips to this
non-loo before things settled down. My advice, never eat less than 24
hours before flying out of
Athens
Italy
Rest Stop
I
was driving with my Aunt and Uncle through
Italy
when we decided to stop at a busy roadside rest stop.
The restroom was very nice with about 8 private stalls and a row of
sinks across from them. I
finished my task and when I tried to exit the stall I realized that I
couldn't open the door.
I was locked in!
I pushed and jiggled the button on the latch every way I could
think of for what seemed like an eternity and couldn't unlock it.
There wasn't enough open space at the bottom of the door to crawl
out even if I did want to get down on the damp floor.
By this time panic had begun to set in and I started
calling out "Hello, Can anyone help me?" while knocking on the
door loudly. I could hear
several people busily flushing, washing, and talking, but not one person
came to my aid.
Puzzled, I persisted, and then finally realized that I
was speaking English and apparently no one streaming in and out of the
restroom knew what I was saying! Helpless
and frustrated, I realized that the only Italian I knew were the words for
"thank-you", "please," and "yes."
Finally my Aunt decided to come looking for me, when at
that exact moment I pulled and lifted the door button in precisely the
right combination to open it. She
whisked me away in my embarrassment and hurriedly packed me into the car
and we sped off laughing, leaving a lot of perplexed people wondering what
that crazy woman was knocking and yelling about. Moral of the story: add
the words "help open door" to your travel vocabulary!
Culture
Reflected in Irish Restrooms
Traveling in Ireland was
quite an experience, especially when using public restrooms.
The urinals were not so much individual urinals as much as an
entire wall with drains at the floor.
The heavy drinking, be it alchoholic or not, of the society is seen
in this common sense method of dealing with mass amounts of excreted
liquids.
On a side note,
every bathroom also had condom dispensers, selling them in the same
machine as candy and toothpaste. I
thought this was honest considering America's method of sticking them in
the back corner of CVS.
Republic
of Georgia
The worst toilets I've encountered were in the Republic of Georgia.
A magnificent country full of the most wonderful, fun people, grand
architecture, beautiful music and outstanding food---BUT...the toilets
were abysmal. The stench makes one vomatose. (Tbilisi; Kutaisi;
Goordjahni)
My question for you and the reason for my writing:
Has any device been invented for travelers to use when using these
vile facilities that is capable of quelling the stench? Please do
not say for one to put perfume on the wrist or such as that. NOTHING
works. Surely with all the people traveling, someone would have invented
something to fix this problem. Or perhaps you could throw it out to the
world at large as a challenge!
Turkey,
1976
Some friends and I got snowed-in and
were rescued by a wonderful family who insisted we take refuge in their
house. Their 'bathroom' was a rickety box on the second story jutting out
from the building. It had a concrete floor sloping down to a large central
hole. The idea was to 'evacuate' over the hole, underneath which was an
enormous pile of frozen sh*t which, I was told, was used as manure when it
thawed in the spring.
Muslim families traditionally remove
their shoes at the front door. Outside the bathroom door, there were huge boat
like shoes to slip on before entering. After closing the door behind me, I
rolled down my jeans and tried to straddle the hole. Unfortunately, the
efforts of previous occupants had made the floor into a skating rink, so I
quickly found my ill-clad feet sliding towards the hole and, there being
nothing solid to grab on to, whooshed down, dangling half in and
half out of the diabolical contraption.
To
this day I feel the shame of knowing that the entire village was treated
to the sight of my bare bottom and legs swinging around wildly in an
effort to hoist myself back up the hole, while trying desperately not to
slip through and land on the mound of indescribable filth beneath me.
Since then, every other type of third world toilet has been a cinch.
Italy by Train
Three of us were travelling by train
on a overnight through Europe with a final destination at Pisa. Well, I must have had "irritable bowel syndrome"
and needed in a very bad way to go to the bathroom. Lo and behold, we were warned not to go on the train
(especially when it is at a stop) because anything that goes through the
toilet is just dropped either directly onto the tracks or sometimes can
cling to the "pipes." This
apparently would create a rather malodorous situation.
We arrived around midnight at the station in Milan. I thought I was
in luck, but they were cleaning both the bathrooms! I was therefore resolved to stick it out all the way to Pisa.
At that point I was already just about poking daylight!
Upon our arrival in Pisa, I was more
concerned about finding facilities then about seeing the Leaning Tower!
We found a small cafe/restaurant (the only one around) in which we
could eat and I could use the WC. I
was shocked to enter the "bathroom" as it was just a plain old
hole in the ground in a drab room! At
that time, however, it was the best looking sight I had seen for quite
some time.
Spain
This is a wonderful website, since I suffer from some
gastrointestinal problems, finding bathrooms that are user friendly has
been a challenge for me over the years.
I will share one story with you that happened in the early 80's in
Madrid, Spain, a wonderful beautiful country that I was lucky to visit
with my husband who at the time was working for the State Department.
We were out for a night on the town, with
another couple and Madrid has many wonderful places to stop and get a
drink of the local wine and tapa's. Myself
and the other gal that I was with needed to go to the bathroom, they did
have ladies and men's rooms.
So, we went together and it was a normal
toilet by American standards (no pun intended), except the tank was
mounted on the wall above the toilet seat, the handle to flush the toilet
was hanging from the tank by a plastic cord with a knob of sorts.
We preceded to finish and as I pulled to flush, the whole cord and
handle came off in my hand.
We just looked at it in my hand, started to
laugh so hard, that when our husbands came looking for us, they heard us
laughing and opened the door and saw what had happened and took a picture
and it is a great one. I kept
that cord and handle for years and when my husband would tell the story
and show people the picture he would also show my keepsake from a
wonderful slightly drunk evening in Madrid.
Keep the stories coming they are great.
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Paris
Sidewalk
In
1973 we visited
Paris
with our 14 and 16 year old daughters.
Sidewalk urinals were still in use.
The side panels were approximately 7' high with a 2' opening at the
bottom. The urinals were on
the outside walls. While my
spouse and the girls were looking at the sights I entered and attended to
business. The following
conversation ensued: "Where
is Dad?" "He is in
that strange building." "How
do you know?" "I see
his shoes."
I was disappointed to find that on my next visit
in 1979 these unusual facilties had been removed.
Russia
- Cruising on the
Volga
River
Many
years ago I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to take a cruise on the '
Volga
' for a week.
Along side the toilets on the boat there were wicker
baskets. I thought they were for people to keep the room tidy by putting
chocolate wrappers and cotton buds in.
As the days passed I noticed the baskets getting
fuller and wondered when the cleaners would empty them.
As more days passed I realized the baskets were
for putting used toilet paper in and the smell alerted me to this fact.
Not being aware of this I and had been putting
all my paper in the toilet and flushing as my mother had taught me.
After about 6 days a barge pulled up alongside
the cruise boat and hoses attached to the barge whereby all the sewerage
was pumped over. A lovely
little family of Mum, Dad and very small children lived on this barge. It
would appear that if paper was flushed into the tanks it may clog up the
works.
Praha
,
Czech Republic
If you have ever been to Praha, maybe you have
also seen the bathroom at the main station.
It's ok, its clean and quite big. And, as often, there's sitting a
toilet-man or -woman before it and takes the money for using the urgently
needed place. At the very
bathroom, the toilet-man sat behind a table like a business-man, in front
of him, the toilet paper was accurately sorted on the table, always two
pieces for one user.
The advantage for the cleaner: everybody had to
pay before using the toilet, and nobody could take too much paper.
Austrian
Adventure
After spending four months in
Vienna
,
Austria
, I learned to appreciate the different bathroom (WC) culture. At least
for Austria, the way the system usually works in public places is that
(for guys of course) if you have to answer nature’s call, you walk into
the bathroom past a side room and either veer right to the urinals or left
to the separate toilet compartments. If
you do veer left, you usually have to pay.
The most uncomfortable part about the whole
system is that the old Austrian ladies who hang out in the side room,
which has a wonderful view of the urinals, have no shame.
The sound of water on water or the fact that members of the
opposite sex are relieving themselves has no bearing on their decision to
walk freely throughout the bathroom.
The urinals in
Austria
do not have the typical urinal cake to deter stench.
Instead, they place real sliced lemons in there perhaps to enhance
the illusion of homemade lemonade.
The Austrians do deserve Kudos on the urinal
splashguard. This ingenious
invention just makes life a little better.
Bulgaria
We were on holiday in
Bulgaria
in 1994, and decided to go walking in the
Thrace
Mountains
. The nearest railway station was Slevin. After a very memorable walk,
(which we won't discuss. I had to go to the loo at the station. At the
door entry there was an old local woman, who looked about 80, but was
probably 75 selling drinks for a small amount of Lev (the Bulgarian
currency).
I didn’t purchase the drink, instead I
went through the door and entered a nightmare worse then Dante or Edgar
Allan Poe could have dreamt about. On the other side of the door it was
pitch black, I searched for the light switch, but to no avail. I carried
on walking groping my way to the toilet.
The distance from the door to the toilet seemed like an
eternity, it was about 25 yards in reality. As there was no light, I had
to walk slowly down the corridor and all the while there was the pungent
smell of stale urine and feces. By the time I reached the toilets I was
simultaneously holding my breath, while attempting to breathe through my
nose and piss at the same time. Trying to all three at the same is hard,
it is even harder when you are trying not to puke up your stomach
contents.
I had never left a toilet so quickly wanting this
errand to end asap. Even today it still makes me want to vomit.
Spain
Three
of us women just returned April 30 2002 from a delightful, but a bit
exhausting, trip to
Spain
. We drove and hiked all over southern
Iberia
--
Madrid
,
Toledo
, and points south in
Andalusia
. Everywhere we went -- a
Plaza de Major terrace eatery in
Madrid
, a damascene jewelry shop in
Toledo
, the heavily tourist trafficked
Alhambra
in
Granada
, or a service station off national highway N-IV -- the bathrooms were
well stocked and well tended. And, yes, we discovered a variety of
plumbing systems; luckily no holes to squat over. The place is a boon to
middle-aged bladders!
Italy
Enjoyed the article
recently in USA Today. Would
like to add to the experience in Austria.
The same happened to us in Italy.
At every "pit stop" on our bus tour, there was a stampede
to line up for the bathrooms, many of which were unisex.
We quickly learned that the first one in and out would tell the
second in line where to look for the flush button, handle or chain.
Some were on top of the tank, some on the floor, to the
left,
to the right, above, below, etc. The
word would then be passed down the line, speeding up the process
considerably. I considered
writing a travel book called "The Bathrooms of Italy," but this
web site takes care of it all. thanks.
Paris
(1960)
Great
site!
In
1960, our first trip to Europe, we were listening to jazz in a small place
on the Left Bank. I asked about a wc and a gentleman offered to show me
where it was. I followed him out of the door into a building next door. As
we climbed the steps, the lights went out, then came on again. Finally, we
reached a door, and I went to find two footprints and a hole. Trying to
aim in the dark is tricky.
It
wasn't until we returned from Europe that I realized I was lucky and that
the gentleman was, indeed, one. My husband would never have found me.
It was a great trip, and we did it again 37 years later.
The
Long Ride to Megeve (France):
We
were returning from Cannes to Megeve, and stopped over in Lyon for a
leisurely supper. Once we were back on the road, wouldn't you know? We had
to find a bathroom.
Never fear! Along the side of the highway was a clean cement
structure, where we could prepare for the long ride up to Megeve. They're
not fancy, but nature keeps those clean --- those French know what's
important when designing highways!
Romania
I notice you don't have any entries for Romania. I was there
in 1997 on a University sponsored tour that was planned and guided by
Center for Romanian Studies at Iasi University in Iasi, Romania. The
bathroom situation there is much like Italy, including a scarcity of
facilities. A car whose job
was to scout out facilities for us preceded our bus. The toilets, when not
primitive, had bowls whose design made flushing difficult. The bowl was
long, flat, and the water was in a hole to the rear. So whatever got
deposited on the flat front stayed there. Heavy coarse toilet paper
clogged the pipes. So after 2 or 3 uses, you had a mess. And like another
correspondent, I hugged my Kohler and wrote Kohler, as I mentioned to you
in posting a new bathroom. We don't realize how fortunate we are until we
visit less developed countries.
Great web site! I hope it will grow
and grow
Ireland
No
story - only a comment about the bathrooms in Ireland.
First of all, you ask for the “toilet.”
They are not so Victorian-minded as the Americans.
And, secondly, I defy anyone to find a dirty or messy bathroom in
IRELAND! We spent 2 1/2 weeks
driving around the country in July, and every TOILET either in a
restaurant or by the wayside was immaculate and well-supplied with soap,
paper and hand dryers. That's
all folks. MB
Italy
Your
web site is a wonderful idea. We had spend two weeks vacation in Italy and
were shocked to see what poor conditions the facilities that we found were
in. With a country that attracts so many tourists one would expect the
facilities to be better maintained. We found a lot of holes in the floor,
which is not my cup of tea. The WC’s were worth the cost as most of them
were well maintained with seats and paper. It is not healthy for a female
to squat while using a facility, but many Italy's tourist areas did not
have seats. We were shocked to see the long lines at the Vatican plaza
waiting to use the facilities. Hotels are the best places to use while
traveling in Italy if they would let you use their facilities.
There
was no WC at the Tower of Pisa in Pisa.
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