A toilet without a proper seat is no toilet at all
Word had come down prior to arrival in Côte d'Ivoire that the seat on the toilet in the house that #1 Fan had rented was less than optimal. Replacement was not going to be easy as the only seats you can get in the smallish town of Abengourou are all the same thin, cheap, plastic seats that stick to you when you're hot and don't support you when you're sitting. This was not going to do for my half a year stay.
So, given that I had 46kgs of space that I wasn't really sure what to do with, I decided to pick up a $15 toilet seat at Home Depot and actually bring it with me. Preposterous sounding, perhaps, but if you've never dealt with one of these skinny pieces of junk, then you don't know just how bad it could be. Oh yeah, on top of the construction of the seat, it was an oval seat for a round toilet. I think in the US, there would have been a lawsuit over this.
On my first night of arrival, out of the suitcase I produced a proper round seat. In removing the old seat and thoroughly cleaning everything, I saw that yes, this was going to be a perfect fit. Ah, but there is just one thing as it appears in the US, 14cm bolt centers on the seat are used whereas here, it's 16cm. Now, I could have just tried to smash it in to place and hope for the best. Well, actually I did try that initially, but it was pretty bad. Ultimately, I ended up unscrewing the hinges and moving them 1cm out on each side. The result of which you see below and while it isn't pretty, it makes for a proper seat, as well as 2kg of extra space in my bag for the trip back at the end of June.
01 02 2010 1 comment
Tags: in to africa, praving, toilets
Return of the Shelf Toilet. Hello Advertising Urinal!
I wrote previously about an encounter with the shelf toilet and how I was quite disturbed by the matter and the realization of how this toilet worked. There's no need to go back in to it, but if you're curious, read the link. I give the goods in there.
Needless to say, I knew that that wasn't the last I'd see of Mister Shelf, so naturally, when making a quick stop to a restroom at a cafe in Budapest, I ran in to my old friend again. I was perturbed. I was confused. I was scared. I took a photo of course. Countries should really put down a mandate to get rid of these things. They weird me out even more than the restroom in the N'Djili Airport in Kinshasa, Congo, which has to be the most sordid room I've ever made the mistake of entering.
But while the Shelf is getting to be a somewhat common encounter throughout my Eastern European journeys, one item I ran in to was even stranger still, which was the Advertising Urinal. I encountered this new bastion of marketing in the restroom in a mall near Moscow Square in Budapest. At first, it doesn't seem all that strange, but once it detects your presence, it lights up a message on top of the urinal. It's a wee bit unnerving. If an establishment must, putting advertising on the wall above the urinal is one thing. Putting said advertising with back lighting on top of the urinal is something altogether different and unholy. I have no idea how this came about and I hope that it stops where it is lest fleets of illuminated urinals spread forth across the Western World. Watch out ladies, or the backlit toilet dispenser will be next.
16 07 2008 1 comment
Tags: budapest, hungary, the europe, toilets
All the Toilets are Free!
I saw them on my first visit in 2003, but the fact that the public toilets in France are free didn't really sink in until this trip. Yes, to all of those living in the pay-me land of San Francisco's non-free public toilets, you heard me right. The toilets that they put out cost nothing to use in Paris.
This makes a lot of sense because it greatly cuts down on the amount of filth that humans may leave in the street. San Francisco has to learn from this because some guy down on his luck is going to use any change he has to buy another bottle of booze and not put his hard-begged money in to a thing he can do for free in Capp Alley. Of course, San Francisco makes you pay something because they're worried about guys sleeping in there or doing drugs in there. I don't know what the French think about this angle, but it seems not having human poo on city streets is a higher priority.
I have to admit that I didn't actually get around to using one of these Love Johns, but I did witness a great many people going in and out of them. Maybe they were doing drugs deals? On a quick glance, I have to say that they looked pretty good inside. In fact, they were a great deal cleaner than many I restaurant's bathroom that I had used.
So, it seems like it's a pretty good idea overall. Now if only they could figure out something to do with all the dog crap for those who suffer Paris Syndrome.
11 09 2007 0 comments
Tags: france, paris, the europe, toilets
I Have Seen the Shelf Toilet and Am Not Amused
Okay, I admit it, I've written a bit about toilets here and there. Some would say that I might have a fixation with them, but if that's true, then so do some friends and other friends as well as most of Catalonia.
Regardless of this, I must write about the "shelf toilet". I have heard it talked about and even seen diagrams of its operations, but I never thought I would be confronted with one in person, but did at Hotel Park. When looking down at this new porcelain friend I thought, "To say that this is 'not right' is to say that the war in Iraq was a boo-boo." These are evil and if you don't believe me, take a glance down at the photo below and come back for more.
You see, how this works (and really, I wish I didn't know) is that whatever you do sits on that little shelf you see there. There is a little bit of water from the last flush there, but really, it's quite dry and thus, your leavings are just left out to breath until you flush. Yes, it's not healthy. Yes, it's really the last thing most of us want to be confronted with when doing basic bodily functions.
But, then there is the next mechanism in this whole thing and that is the flush. When you pull the handle, a delightful splash of water comes down the shelf and gleefully whisks your leavings off the shelf with a fun sliding action, taking them down in to the part of the toilet where they should have been in the first place. But, because of the water action, things don't always completely flush, requiring more gentle dousing of the shelf by the ineffectual water. Joy. Joy.
Perhaps for those who are fascinated by their own leavings, this is a dream come true. In which case, these people should form a society and have all of these contraptions left in the world sent to them. They are foul and whomever came up with this (I suspect Germans) should be put in a forced labor camp with nothing but a trench latrine and no, there would be no gleeful whisk of water to take away the leavings.
28 08 2007 0 comments
Tags: ljubljana, slovenia, the europe, toilets
Lovely Toilets
My friend, Zagreb Dinko wrote on his blog recently about his frustrations with American toilets. I have to say that while I've not written about this here, he is right on all points. We have a real sense of denial about bodily things here. That's not a water fountain in your bathroom, Kohler. Build it accordingly.
On a similar note, I'm sorta happy to say that they've installed automatic flushers on the toilets at the office I sometimes work at. At first I was thrilled, since anything that brings a toilet to the level of airport toilet (simply the best on the planet and a bar by which to measure all others), but I have to say that these kinda disappoint. They're too fast, made of plastic, and robbed me of a great deal of control I once enjoyed. But more importantly, is nobody freakin' potty trained anymore?!! You know, the only reason they install these is because people don't flush anymore. It's not for cleanliness, oh no. I remember another office that I worked at sometimes where people would just run out like these naughty little children when they were done in there, a grin on their face as they, "got away with it". And I'm not talking about Jackass-esque guys being idiots. I'm talking about 55 year old sales women.
I guess that people in the US always think that there is someone from Mexico or the Phillipines, or Eastern Europe who will literally deal with their poo. Wake up folks because I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but I think all our problems in this country today are starting in the bathroom. Ergh. Peace out and remember to flush... if you are still allowed control of that action.
29 01 2007 2 comments
Tags: the sometimes office, toilets
The Shath
It never ceases to amaze me how different countries decide to present their light switches/toilets/power outlets/showers. The one piece of bathing equipment that has taken the cake so far is the one that I had to use in Venice for two nights when I was there a day ago. The best way to equate it to anything that anyone else knows would be to combine the worst parts of a SHowerbATH together into this one whacked out thing called a Shath.
Essentially, you have a tiny little tub you can only sit in, but it won't fill up with water. To bathe, there is this flexible shower head thing that you have to move around you to wash up. There is no shower curtain, so you get water everywhere and you can't stand up, or you'll certainly die by slipping.
I'd have to say it's one of the dumbest things to be invented for bathing ever. But that seems to be the way the Italians like it. They really like a bathroom to get wet and I'm not talking a little drops of water on the floor from stepping out of the shower. I'm talking gondola riding, canal flooding wet because unlike the Croatians who put a drain in the floor, there's no where for the water to go. I'm mystified by the whole damn thing, but Venice was pretty mind blowing as well, so I guess it's all a 48 hour's journey. Nuts...
