Bathroom Adventures in Europe

RHYS BOWEN: As you know, I have recently returned from Europe and this trip has only solidified my impression that Europeans just do not GET bathrooms. In America we have showers. You go into the shower, close the door, pull out the knob, turn left or right for hot or cold and water comes out. It runs away into a drain in the middle of the shower. What could be easier?

Apparently in Europe the idea is to make bathrooms hard to negotiate. Washing should never be easy. In my youth I remember those little geyser contraptions hanging over the bathtub that lit with a terrifying roar and then spewed out scalding water. I also remember the bathroom in a friend's flat in Umbria. It had a shower in the middle of the room, surrounded by a small lip to stop the water from flooding the whole flat. You could draw a curtain around you, but when the shower was turned on the curtain was sucked inward by the force of the water so that it clung to the body making it impossible to wash. It also allowed the rest of the room to end up liberally sprayed

And what about all those bathtubs that have a hose attached so that you can shower--but no shower curtain so that as you aim for your back you accidentally spray the ceiling and walls. How hard would it be to put up a shower rail?

This year was no exception. We rented a very modern apartment just outside Nice. The kitchen was equipped with everything--ceramic cooktop, touch lighting, Keurig coffee maker. But the bathroom? The shower started with two glass doors you had to open. You stood inside then closed the doors enough so that they came together. Then you turned on the shower. There was a choice of rain shower above--not good if you didn't want to wash your hair, a wand that was so fierce that if you turned it on it jerked out of its cradle, like deranged snake, and sprayed everything before you could catch it, Or lastly three jets, positioned up a bar... all three hitting in precisely inconvenient parts of the body.
AND... the water ran onto the bathroom floor, only held in by those two doors. So the shower experience ended with having to mop all the standing water into a drain in the far corner.

This doesn't win the prize for the weirdest bathroom I have known. That was in an old farmhouse we had borrowed in the middle of France. To reach the bathroom one had to go through the cellar (with a dirt floor), down a flight of steps into a cave. Mushrooms and ferns were growing from the walls. The shower was in a trough in the middle of the room. You climbed down into it, pulled on a cord and water descended from the ceiling, between the ferns and mushrooms . Oh, and did I mention the toilet was also down there... in a corner? A dark corner with lots of ferns and mushrooms? Needless to say we never went down at night!

Can anyone beat that?

If I become very rich I'll give the European union a grant to initiate bathroom sanity!

Bathrooms of Europe--a traveler's tale

RHYS:  As I mentioned earlier this week, I’m currently on vacation in Europe. After several days in Poland, then Rome, then a cruise, I’m vegging out in the Perigord region of France, amid spectacular castles and prehistoric caves. Everything about the area is amazing, including the food (and the vin de noix—a wine made with green walnuts to which I’m becoming addicted).

 

However the one thing that always puzzles me about Europe is this:

WHY DON’T THEY GET THE HANG OF BATHROOMS IN EUROPE?

We can stay in the most modern hotel and the bathroom doesn’t quite work. I have to confess that the bathroom here in Sarlat is the closest I’ve come to being efficent in a long while. It does have a shower screen on half of a very high bath into which one needs a stepladder to climb. BUT the shower is one of those free moving ones, attached above my head, and when I turn on the tap, even though it’s supposed to be running from the bath below, the water hits me straight in the face. And of course it’s cold to start with. And the screen only covers half the bath. Wash my hair and there is water everywhere.

But this is minor compared to the bath with no shower curtain in Rome and a shower one aims at various parts of the body, completely soaking the bathroom, OR a friend’s modern flat in Italy with a shower in the center of the room in a shallow basin that overflows instantly. OR the toilet last year in our hotel in Instanbul. No paper but instead a tap that one turned, producing a jet of cold water that, if not aimed correctly, shot past us and across the room!

Of course these are civilized compared to the toilets with two places to put the feet…. I remember one in rural France once that started to overflow on me as soon as I flushed, and I couldn’t get the door unlocked.  I had visions of drowning—not the way I wanted to go.

But the most unique bathroom so far was the cellar of a very old farmhouse we rented once in rural France. It was through the wine cellar (with dirt floor) ,down a flight of steps in a dungeon with fungus and ferns growing from the ceiling and again the shower was in a pit in the middle of the floor.  Needless to say, I didn’t shower as much as usual.

And then there are those scary geysers that creak and hiss and threaten to explode, the public loos supervised by an old woman or man who accompanies you and won’t go away until you tip them….

At least they all make me appreciate Motel 6!  So Reds, any foreign bathroom horror stories to share?