OK, I accept that the title of this blog post - on the face of it - seems unappealing. Of course, it could be a metaphor but, sadly, it isn't. Go to my archive if you want some political rants.
This is a post about public toilets around Europe. Stick with it...you might learn something.
This is a post about public toilets around Europe. Stick with it...you might learn something.
I don't get statistics from "Blogger' about my readership apart from where their servers might be. This is spurious information anyway. Just ask one of the 'ECHC Five' about to be extradited to the US for alleged terrorism, whom the Americans believe should be tried there on the basis that the server through which he peddled his supposed terror rants was based in Wisconsin even though he'd never been there.
Around eight per cent of my readers' servers have been on mainland Europe. And let's be clear about this...Europe is the bit that is bordered to the south by the Med, the north by the Arctic, and the west by the Atlantic Ocean. The western border is slightly disputable but Europe doesn't include Ukraine and certainly not Turkey. I don't care what the technocrats in Brussels and Strasbourg would have us believe or which nations they court. Europe to me is the Europe I learned about at school in the sixties (although I accept things like Unified Germany, especially as that means that West Germany can never beat us in a football World Cup).
So...what does a public toilet say about a country?
Let's take the UK to begin with. Regrettably, the majority of public toilets in Britain stink. The British are, by nature, reticent about toilets and the things that happen in them - the bodily function things, not the other stuff. Pissing and shitting are usually (but not literally) swept under the carpet in Britain. There are some people that cannot bring themselves to believe that the Queen needs to take a dump. On the other hand, everyone will happily acknowledge that Prime Minister Cameron shits, but mostly on the basis that he does it every day, and upon every citizen, one way or another, except on those that he wishes to take out of higher-rate taxation. It has to be our reticence here in Britain over the whole toilet thing that means that we don't pay enough attention to our public toilets and we certainly don't invest sufficiently in them or in the people to whom we give the responsibility to maintain them. It's a sad fact that a public toilet attendant is so far down the employment food chain that he or she might even rank below a BNP councillor. But does this mean that Brits are 'dirty'? No, not really. What it means is that whilst we complain about just about everything, it is less likely that we'll complain about stinking public toilets because that would necessitate talking about "number ones" and "number twos". And that just wouldn't do, would it? It puts a whole new meaning on the phrase 'anally retentive'.
In Paris, the supposed home of metropolitan sophistication, you can take a piss into a hole in the ground in a restaurant (if you're a bloke) about a swung cat's length from the kitchen. Paris is also the city where the pissoir was invented, largely to stop the male population pissing up against public buildings. This wasn't a penal - or maybe that should be 'penile' - offence (like it is in Britain). They were more worried about the simple offensiveness of the pee streams in the city. Instead, you can wander up to a pissoir and in almost full view of passersby, take the appropriate relief. There are no facilities integral to the pissoir for hand-washing. Sophistication, my arse!
German toilets are, as one would imagine, brilliant. Clean, odourless, efficient, expensive and humourless, thus mirroring German society almost exactly. Germans take most things very seriously, especially work. In contrast to most other European nations where things are taken seriously, such as Norway, their approach also extends to toilets. One German company even invented a personal mobile toilet for women called the "Ladybag' (Das Taschen WC fur Frauen) that turns urine into a gel for easy disposal. I must point out that the personal toilet itself wasn't 'mobile' - it was for 'women on the move'. Important distinction. The idea that there was the remotest possibility of a broken public toilet in Germany or a snarl-up on an autobahn leaving a lady short of facilities led to this invention. Germans are big on insurance...even to the extent of buying a Ladybag for ten euros...just in case of this one in a million chance occurring. German men always carry a bottle for these circumstances. Strangely enough, Ladybag exports were disappointing.
Never, ever, go to a public toilet in St Petersburg thinking it'll be easy. (OK, I know that the former Leningrad is no longer officially in Europe but it was quite a bit, and for quite a while, and is very close to Europe culturally, whereas Moscow isn't). Mind you, the last time I was there I saw a woman walking past the Winter Palace facade with a bear on a lead. Public toilets in St Petersburg are manned. Well, no, they're 'womanned'. Each and every one has a squat, rotund babushka sitting on a small, rickety chair with a smaller, more rickety table by her side at the entrance to the facility. On the table is a bowl into which you must place some coins. It doesn't seem to matter how much or which currency you use although I'm guessing that these days Euros might be frowned upon. And that's what the babushka does best - frown. Well, it's more of a scowl. And she wears black - top to toe. And she shouts and points, as if the internationally-recognised symbols for male and female toilets had suddenly been erased from our memories and we didn't know which door to go through. That said, once inside the cleanliness and general ambience is superb (provided that there are no lardy American tourists defecating - they should pay more).
The Italians are a complex people. Contrary to popular opinion, the Romans didn't 'invent' toilets. They did improve on the idea of latrines with ease and were keen on dealing with the waste as hygienically as possible at the time (well before the Ladybag). I'd expected Italian public toilets to be reflective of the general attitude of the people which, if that could be described in a gesture, would be a demonstrative 'shrug'. Italians get excited about a lot of things. Fashion, cars, three-hour lunches and having elections every six months in order to watch Berlusconi campaign. Sadly, those bizarre political days appear to be over for a while. So it came as a very pleasant surprise that the Italians (especially in the north) take public toilets very seriously indeed. It was probably the Germans or the Americans or whichever power that Italy capitulated to at the time that insisted on this regime of public cleanliness. It doesn't matter, the end result is refreshingly satisfactory.
As we go north, the story gets better and, as expected, more expensive. Public toilets I have visited (that could be a book title) in Scandinavia are almost as good as public toilets can get. In Tromso, they have an enterprising range of chemical toilets designed to deal with plunging temperatures in the winter. Some German tourists that happened to be using the toilet at the time I was there were singularly impressed and, I suspect, just a little jealous. All around Norway, at Alesund, Stavanger, Lofoten and even up at Honningsvag, the public toilets were excellent. Sweden's are the same and it could be argued, at least as far as Helsinki is concerned, Finland's are better still.
But the prizes for the best European toilets go to the following...in reverse order:
Bronze Award: I haven't been to this public toilet for twenty years but I suspect it'll still be the same: Osmotherley, North Yorkshire. Centre of the village. The road signs should have said "This Way to the Best Public Toilet in Britain - The Number One in Number Twos" or something like that. Whomsoever it was that tended the facilities at the time did so with care, attention and humour, along with everything you needed to know about the toilet's history, the village and the surrounding attractions. That sort of thing is welcomed by Brits.
Silver Award: Hanuschplatz, Salzburg. Again, it's many years since my visit but the cleanliness was unsurpassable and the Austrian equivalent of the St Petersburg babushka was polite, friendly, spoke English and took "donations' only.
Gold Award: The Perlan, Reykjavik. Just go there and find out for yourself...
Around eight per cent of my readers' servers have been on mainland Europe. And let's be clear about this...Europe is the bit that is bordered to the south by the Med, the north by the Arctic, and the west by the Atlantic Ocean. The western border is slightly disputable but Europe doesn't include Ukraine and certainly not Turkey. I don't care what the technocrats in Brussels and Strasbourg would have us believe or which nations they court. Europe to me is the Europe I learned about at school in the sixties (although I accept things like Unified Germany, especially as that means that West Germany can never beat us in a football World Cup).
So...what does a public toilet say about a country?
Let's take the UK to begin with. Regrettably, the majority of public toilets in Britain stink. The British are, by nature, reticent about toilets and the things that happen in them - the bodily function things, not the other stuff. Pissing and shitting are usually (but not literally) swept under the carpet in Britain. There are some people that cannot bring themselves to believe that the Queen needs to take a dump. On the other hand, everyone will happily acknowledge that Prime Minister Cameron shits, but mostly on the basis that he does it every day, and upon every citizen, one way or another, except on those that he wishes to take out of higher-rate taxation. It has to be our reticence here in Britain over the whole toilet thing that means that we don't pay enough attention to our public toilets and we certainly don't invest sufficiently in them or in the people to whom we give the responsibility to maintain them. It's a sad fact that a public toilet attendant is so far down the employment food chain that he or she might even rank below a BNP councillor. But does this mean that Brits are 'dirty'? No, not really. What it means is that whilst we complain about just about everything, it is less likely that we'll complain about stinking public toilets because that would necessitate talking about "number ones" and "number twos". And that just wouldn't do, would it? It puts a whole new meaning on the phrase 'anally retentive'.
In Paris, the supposed home of metropolitan sophistication, you can take a piss into a hole in the ground in a restaurant (if you're a bloke) about a swung cat's length from the kitchen. Paris is also the city where the pissoir was invented, largely to stop the male population pissing up against public buildings. This wasn't a penal - or maybe that should be 'penile' - offence (like it is in Britain). They were more worried about the simple offensiveness of the pee streams in the city. Instead, you can wander up to a pissoir and in almost full view of passersby, take the appropriate relief. There are no facilities integral to the pissoir for hand-washing. Sophistication, my arse!
German toilets are, as one would imagine, brilliant. Clean, odourless, efficient, expensive and humourless, thus mirroring German society almost exactly. Germans take most things very seriously, especially work. In contrast to most other European nations where things are taken seriously, such as Norway, their approach also extends to toilets. One German company even invented a personal mobile toilet for women called the "Ladybag' (Das Taschen WC fur Frauen) that turns urine into a gel for easy disposal. I must point out that the personal toilet itself wasn't 'mobile' - it was for 'women on the move'. Important distinction. The idea that there was the remotest possibility of a broken public toilet in Germany or a snarl-up on an autobahn leaving a lady short of facilities led to this invention. Germans are big on insurance...even to the extent of buying a Ladybag for ten euros...just in case of this one in a million chance occurring. German men always carry a bottle for these circumstances. Strangely enough, Ladybag exports were disappointing.
Never, ever, go to a public toilet in St Petersburg thinking it'll be easy. (OK, I know that the former Leningrad is no longer officially in Europe but it was quite a bit, and for quite a while, and is very close to Europe culturally, whereas Moscow isn't). Mind you, the last time I was there I saw a woman walking past the Winter Palace facade with a bear on a lead. Public toilets in St Petersburg are manned. Well, no, they're 'womanned'. Each and every one has a squat, rotund babushka sitting on a small, rickety chair with a smaller, more rickety table by her side at the entrance to the facility. On the table is a bowl into which you must place some coins. It doesn't seem to matter how much or which currency you use although I'm guessing that these days Euros might be frowned upon. And that's what the babushka does best - frown. Well, it's more of a scowl. And she wears black - top to toe. And she shouts and points, as if the internationally-recognised symbols for male and female toilets had suddenly been erased from our memories and we didn't know which door to go through. That said, once inside the cleanliness and general ambience is superb (provided that there are no lardy American tourists defecating - they should pay more).
The Italians are a complex people. Contrary to popular opinion, the Romans didn't 'invent' toilets. They did improve on the idea of latrines with ease and were keen on dealing with the waste as hygienically as possible at the time (well before the Ladybag). I'd expected Italian public toilets to be reflective of the general attitude of the people which, if that could be described in a gesture, would be a demonstrative 'shrug'. Italians get excited about a lot of things. Fashion, cars, three-hour lunches and having elections every six months in order to watch Berlusconi campaign. Sadly, those bizarre political days appear to be over for a while. So it came as a very pleasant surprise that the Italians (especially in the north) take public toilets very seriously indeed. It was probably the Germans or the Americans or whichever power that Italy capitulated to at the time that insisted on this regime of public cleanliness. It doesn't matter, the end result is refreshingly satisfactory.
As we go north, the story gets better and, as expected, more expensive. Public toilets I have visited (that could be a book title) in Scandinavia are almost as good as public toilets can get. In Tromso, they have an enterprising range of chemical toilets designed to deal with plunging temperatures in the winter. Some German tourists that happened to be using the toilet at the time I was there were singularly impressed and, I suspect, just a little jealous. All around Norway, at Alesund, Stavanger, Lofoten and even up at Honningsvag, the public toilets were excellent. Sweden's are the same and it could be argued, at least as far as Helsinki is concerned, Finland's are better still.
But the prizes for the best European toilets go to the following...in reverse order:
Bronze Award: I haven't been to this public toilet for twenty years but I suspect it'll still be the same: Osmotherley, North Yorkshire. Centre of the village. The road signs should have said "This Way to the Best Public Toilet in Britain - The Number One in Number Twos" or something like that. Whomsoever it was that tended the facilities at the time did so with care, attention and humour, along with everything you needed to know about the toilet's history, the village and the surrounding attractions. That sort of thing is welcomed by Brits.
Silver Award: Hanuschplatz, Salzburg. Again, it's many years since my visit but the cleanliness was unsurpassable and the Austrian equivalent of the St Petersburg babushka was polite, friendly, spoke English and took "donations' only.
Gold Award: The Perlan, Reykjavik. Just go there and find out for yourself...
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