Okay so I'm posting again. I really hope I don't neglect this blog as much as I think I'm going to. Time will tell.
It's been a really long time since I've posted anything here, and come to think of it, all of the posts thus far have been academic-related. Much has happened since I stopped. I've graduated university, thereby ceasing my scholastic pursuits for the time being, and I've moved to the Czech Republic. In memoriam of my academic career, I will now begin this blog anew with various musings about Central and Eastern European toilet- and bathroom-related matters.
First of all, my flat is arranged so that the toilet (avec un bidet élégant) and shower are separate. A common Eur-ocurrence, new to me in my Western ignorance, but not even really worth analyzing. But it gets stranger.
1. On Artificially, Albeit Very, Intelligent Urinals
There are these urinals here in Prague which, upon sensing a person is finished, flush. "Well we have those in North America," you say. Shut your damn fool mouth, I'm not done; this flush is IMMEDIATE and the amount these urinals flush is RELATIVE TO THE AMOUNT OF LIQUID DEPOSITED BY THE USER.
The North American urinal sensor operates in a binary fashion. It's either '1', someone's standing here pissing, or '0', nobody's pissing, time to flush or sit idle. We were all very impressed upon its public release. "How does it know?" we all asked moronically. "How innovative!"
I had a bizarre epiphanic experience a few weeks ago while pissing in a local pizzeria. I finished, and before I could move out of the range of any typical North American sensor, the fucking thing flushed. So there I stood, in front of the urinal, flabbergasted. I had not budged. "How does it... ...goddammit." No visible sensor. I scanned the upper corners of the room for cameras, anything to explain this shit. As a force of habit, I spat into the urinal and watched in awed reverence as a quick stream of water sprinkled down the white porcelain, just enough to wash away my liquid addition. I started thinking about the Russian Mafia and how you're always hearing rumours about their immense resources and how they control everything in Central and Eastern Europe. "How do they know?"
...I don't know, but they do.
Pros:
- Easy to use
- No wasted water, down-to-the millilitre flushing technology
- Fun to spit in
Cons:
- May cause paranoid schizophrenia
- That's about it
2. The Downfall of Automatic Bathrooms
So there's an awesome restaurant by our place. Its bathroom looks like an IKEA showroom from the mid-90s when everyone was obsessed with primary colours and basic shapes. The lights in this bathroom are automatic, triggered by the same technology Vancouverites use to scare poor people away from their garages at night. Not unlike in Vancouver, the light stays on for a couple minutes once triggered. Well guess what, some people take more than a couple of minutes.
Pros:
- Ecologically and financially friendly
Cons:
- Shitting in a pitch black room with no windows and a slippery floor both degrading and hazardous to safety
3. On the Hungarian Toilet, a.k.a. Exhib-shit-tion
I had the pleasure of spending the week of my 23rd birthday in Kisvarda, Hungary with Deidre, Matt, Deidre's stepdad George and his family, which was ballin as hell. The food was unreal, and in my opinion the best part. Every minute of every single day was spent thrusting home-cooked food into our gullets. It was great until I had to shit.
(Okay so after a bit of research I've discovered that this is actually a German design, but I've never been to Germany so fuck it. It's Hungarian.)
You do what you gotta do, then flush using a manual lever, which I like because you choose how much water to use, thus preventing global
warming and saving thirsty babies the world over. Unfortunately the logic ends here.
To say the design of the toilets in Hungary is interesting would be the understatement of the fucking decade. Instead of a watery hole beneath yours, you have what can only be described as a display shelf featuring a small puddle. Water flows literally across this shelf (not down) into a hole at the front of the toilet. You can try squatting, or any number of perching positions, but it is impossible to drop it right in the hole. This would simply go against the design. For better or worse, this means once you're done, your magnificent excrement rests gloriously, like a Fabergé Egg minus the glass box, in a dirty little puddle mere centimetres from your ass.
If you're in Hungary and you've eaten a feast of lamb and cabbage rolls and are thinking about flushing your shit down the toilet, fuck you. Seriously. Forget about it. Remember when you
were a kid at the water park, and there would sometimes be that stubborn little pussy of a kid
who'd get cold feet sitting at the top of the waterslide, and he'd just lay there weeping, hanging on to the edges for dear life as torrents of water pass him by? And everyone's just waiting there like, "alright kid, fucking go down the slide already, we don't have all day." Remember that kid? Well I'm usually the last guy to anthropomorphize human waste but I actually had a case of deja vu from the water park as I stood there, a grown-ass man, experimenting with pulsating flushes in a bid to coax my shit across a watery plateau with a decline of maybe 2 degrees.
Now I know I'm not perfect, and I probably have no right to criticize things that are clearly established in European life and that just seem new and unusual to me. But come on, this is fucking stupid.
Sidenote: As I experienced while taking a bar
deuce in Budapest, there is nothing more humbling or sobering, nothing to more effectively spark your awareness that you are no different from a standard barnyard animal, than to 'make brown' and immediately notice the steamy heat and the smell (my God, the SMELL!) usually shrouded by the 'downward funnel/bowl of water' design of the typical North American toilet. So maybe just take it from me without having to experience it yourself. You're no better than anything else.
Pros:
- Manual flush, very little wasted water
- Potential for Buddhist-style enlightenment through realization of anatta or 'not-self'. You are not 'you'. There is actually no such thing as 'you' or 'I'. There is no unconditioned self within our constructed sense of self. At the end of the day, everything was meant to shit in the woods. Toilets are a source of dhukka, or suffering.
Cons:
- Potentially nauseating, depending on level of tolerance
- Running out of options when the flowing water just won't make it budge (Use your imagination. And some toilet paper unless you want to get your hands dirty.)
