The Great 'Toilette' Adventure

Some of the most interesting things I've experienced while traveling to and around Romania are the toilets. To the U.S. way of thinking, the one thing that toilets should never be is interesting. In fact, going to the bathroom should be so mindnumbingly boring that one can effectively pretend altogether it never happens in the first place, which most American television and movie writers have succeeded in turning into an art. At this very moment, thousands of television and movie characters are walking around with bursting bladders and nowhere to go. And we Americans wonder why there is so much violence on television. ("I've had to pee for sixteen years. Screw it. I'll strap a bomb to someone.")

Thankfully, trying to find toilets in Romania is no longer awkward for me. As we Americans like pretending they don't exist in the first place, I have tried in vain on various occasions to find a place to go by asking for the "bathroom" and the "restroom." You do tend to start wondering why Americans call them that since we rarely want to take either a bath or a rest when we ask for them in public places. Eventually, of course, I had to simply give up and start asking complete strangers for the "toilet" (or completely mangling the French equivalent "toilette") which is a word that a proper Southern Lady would rather give up peeing altogether than use. As I am nothing of the sort, I very quickly got down to the business of learning to pronounce "toilette" and am now able to get directions to the bathroom as opposed to bewildered looks from the locals.

The Great "Toilette" Adventure began long before I even reached Romania, however. There seems to be some sort of natural law that goes something like this: On an airplane or train, regardless of how smooth a ride you've had before deciding to find the restroom, the vehicle will invariably wait until you are perched precariously in the breadbox-sized receptacle. While you are busy trying not to touch anything nasty, the vehicle will either experience turbulence or attempt to jump the track. It really is as though the things have a sense of humor or are at the very least a bit grumpy. ("Bloody passengers walking around under their own power, enjoying drinks out of the way of the rain while I plough through the weather, without so much as a by or leave. It's a disgrace, is what it is. I'll show them.") Imagining John Cleese's Basil Fawlty as a passenger train can, however, be quite entertaining when you've been on the road 12 hours straight, so that's something.

Just as I was getting cocky about the whole thing, thinking maybe I'd actually had every strange bathroom experience one could have in a foreign country, I found myself in a train station bathroom stall staring at the ground. In the ground was one of those lovely hole-in-the-floor toilets. I stood there for several minutes puzzling the thing over. ("What in the world am I supposed to do with that?") The concept of course is easy enough, but it's such an insult to the American ego, that there is a mandatory moment when you absolutely have to haggle with your self respect on that one. We do think of our toilets as "The Throne," after all.

Once you've come to terms with the lack of either a seat or reading material, you will then most probably notice that, on either side of the hole for which you are supposed to aim, are two raised footprints. This suggests, to me, a certain lack of faith in human intelligence. If you can't figure out what to do with a hole in the ground when you've got a bladder full of processed cola, then perhaps you shouldn't be traveling in a foreign country.

At this point I have not encountered a bidet and find the entire idea much too disturbing to write about. Pay toilets are, however, quite another matter.

It generally costs about 50 of something to use a pay toilet – 50 cents in Euros in western Europe or 50 bani in Romanian train stations. Since the two are so far apart in actual exchange value, it sort of makes you wonder who decided that emptying one's bladder is worth exactly one-half of the standard monetary unit in whatever area of Europe one happens to be needing to urinate in at the time. In addition to imagining John Cleese as a passenger train, I enjoy imagining what would happen if the concept of these things were to be introduced in the United States. So far, I've come up with rebellion, unrest, looting of department stores, civil war, the secession of Texas and warnings by Southern evangelists of an impending apocalypse. In addition to that, Britney Spears may come out of retirement to sing a benefit concert and that would be a national disaster worthy of National Guard mobilization.

Ah well. "C'est la" pee.