Bathrooms – toilets, really. Everybody needs them, no one talks about them (except Kira*, but who reads him?). But the kinds, quality and upkeep can be critically important – at least for the obsessive among us.
For those who really care – for whom a clean and functional toilet is vital – Austria may be your Disneyland. In 3 months we have used toilets in apartments, restaurants, cafes, bars, train stations and subways. They all worked. They all were as functional as you could want. They all were clean & had toilet paper. Even in the subway (U-Bahn). (Well –the Swedenplatz U-Bahn station toilet had a messy floor – hardly worth mentioning but I am not sure a station manager wasn’t fined over it.) And some of the toilets on intercity trains were unpleasant – but those were the very old cars. [As a side note – intercity trains seem to be a place apart, where common European norms don’t seem to apply. For instance, I heard stories about a recent scandal on Swiss trains (fastidiously clean Switzerland!) when ALL the toilets on a long haul passenger train were broken. The conductor eventually agreed to stop at a station every time someone needed to use one, and it made headlines in all the papers. So the poor toilets on the Polish long distance trains were not such a surprise. After all, the whole damn train broke down an hour outside of Warsaw (at which point nothing worked until a spare engine showed up). But other things on that train are unusual. Like theft. We heard repeated stories about robbery on overnight trains through Eastern Europe. The conductor on ours made a special point of showing us how to use the extra lock on our cabin. A colleague told me that on a train to Serbia a few years ago he was told he was likely to be robed when he bought his ticket, and again by the conductor upon boarding, who showed him how to jam the lock with a bar of soap. And, yup, at 4 in the morning there was a flashlight shine in his eyes as burglars were trying to break in. (he was able to frighten them off). So here is Europe, safe streets, safe parks, crime rates a fraction of ours, in most parts, but the trains are open season for the sticky handed.]
But I digress - back to toilets. Forget about the fact that some toilets have levers, some buttons, some pull chains, and other foot mechanisms. The two – make that three – biggest & most obvious differences between European and American toilets are these; 1) solid walls & doors. Very rare to find a partition toilet stall there – all walls go floor to ceiling. Put a European in an American public toilet and they feel exposed to the world (we heard repeatedly this is a study of the World Bank building). These solid walls have other benefits, by the way, for saving space & money. Many restaurants have one room for their WC – with 2 stalls – one male, one female, with a shared sink. Wouldn’t happen with partitions; 2) split toilet & bathroom. You see that somewhat more in the US now – but it is the rule not exception in Europe –or at least the part we saw. Our small 1960’s apartment has this arrangement , other ones we saw – built earlier and later, did too. It makes so much sense – one person can be in the shower while the other - well, you know. When there are 4 people in that apartment it makes a big difference. It’s probably also why when you ask where the facilities are in a restaurant you ask for the toilet (“toiletten”) not “bathroom;” 3) water use. It is common in European’s to have a two flush toilet. Literally all newer ones do. One (the big round button) for a lot of water (solid) and another smaller button for less water. Again, you see it here, but rarely and then it’s a curiosity.
A few other odd toilet stories, now that you ask (you did, didn’t you?) There was the unnecessarily helpful women in the pay toilet of Wien Mitte train station (75 year old at least, maybe 4’5” in heels). I had just handed her by 50 cents and paused for a second to look over the choices. She took this, I guess, as evidence that I was pretty much an idiot and untutored in ins and outs of the biological necessities. She took me by the sleeve into the men’s area right up to the urinal. For a long moment I thought she was going to stay until I was done, but she finally retreated.
There were also two very friendly people who staffed the pay toilet at the Krakow train station (my bladder has cost me a fair penny). I just gave them my zlotys on the way in, and as I left they started talking to me. I stopped and they used a bit of English amidst waves of Polish to point to my wedding ring. They liked it. A lot. I told them my wife had the same one and it was made for us. They got excited – they REALLY liked it. They held my hand and looked it over closely. At that moment I thought to my self – its 10:45 pm, and I am the only “customer” in a big city central train station, two floors below the waiting room – taking off a gold ring to show it off to two strangers would not be a great idea. I exited quickly to a flurry of Polish compliments (I think). After that the public pay toilet at the Vienna Opera U-Bahn Station, which plays opera as background while you recycle the afternoon cappuccino seems quite ordinary.
* Kira, A. (1976 ). The bathroom. New York: Viking Press.
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