Flushing
My Way Through Europe
1993
One
of my first orders of business once I got to England was to investigate
the toilet situation, and I discovered something that for me was incredibly
exciting: British toilets look and work just like American ones! This
may not sound exciting to you, but let me explain.
European
toilets are mostly all variations on the standard kind of sit-down bowl-type.
The few that are not consist primarily of a modern version of the two-bricks-to-stand-on-and-a-hole-in-the-floor
model made popular by constipated Turks.
Actually,
I have no idea if the Turks have anything to do with "Turkish toilets,"
but if they do they have gained my undying enmity.
The
modern, European/Turkish toilet is found primarily in train stations.
This makes it vitally important that you pee, or heaven forbid, perform
one of the more involved bodily functions, on the train before you pull
into the station. These range from the traditional two bricks flanking
a dark and unthinkably horrible hole to shiny ceramic cubicles with two
molded, foot-sized platforms. These are made to look like the bottoms
of the sneakers of some poor individual jutting up out of the floor.
But
getting back to bowl-type toilets, to understand the joyous rapture I
felt upon my first, uh, interaction with the British toilets you must
follow me on a voyage of discovery in ceramic shrines scattered throughout
the major cities as I flushed my way through Europe.
In Italian
toilets, the hole in the bottom of the toilet bowl is small and situated
in the middle, with just the tiniest little bit of water in it. The water
tank is perched on the wall, way way up near the ceiling. It hovers there
over you and makes menacing gurgle noises every now and then, as if to
let you know that it could fall and crush you any time it wished. The
flush is usually a metal push button located somewhere on a wall.
Notice
I say "a" wall. This is because there does not seem to be any real effort
to include it on the same wall as the toilet. In my apartment at Medaglie
D'Oro, for example, it was located on the same wall as the shower. As
a matter of fact, it was located inside the shower stall itself. In Frances'
apartment, which was directly above mine and therefore virtually identical,
the flush was right next to the toilet. But could they have made it that
simple and easy in my room? Oh, no! They had to make me climb into the
bathtub every time I wanted to flush.
In Austria,
the hole in the bowl is right up near the front, again with very little
water, but the rest of the "bowl," rather than bowl-shaped, is a large
platform, slightly depressed in the middle, forming a ceramic plateau
a good six inches above the hole.
The
sole function of this plateau, I gathered, was to hold and display your
waste. This is important because you need something to contemplate while
you search for the flushing mechanism. This is sometimes a very difficult,
sometimes impossible, task because the flushes are designed to blend in
with the rest of the toilet unit, which itself is very aerodynamic, although
the reason why escapes my logic. Why in the world would you need an aerodynamic
toilet? Hey, if I ever find myself airborne and sitting on the
john at the same time, I am going to be worried about a heck of a lot
more important things than whether I am getting good airspeed due to the
toilet's design.
One
time, after a good half a minute of searching, I discovered that I had
to push the whole cover of the tank down to flush. Once I actually had
to give up, dumbfounded, and leave my pee on display for the next guy
to deal with. I hope he met with better success than I did.
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