Urine Trouble

My wife Jarmila has a number of stories that she enjoys telling about me, but I believe her favorite is this one: An international academic project she was involved with was winding down and we were at a party celebrating its successful completion. The mood of the party was jovial and I was introduced to many people, among them the director of a prominent research institute in Prague. As he and I spoke, it came out that I had lived in Prague for a few years, and he wanted to know my overall impression of his hometown from a foreigner’s point of view. The way Jarmila tells it, I looked off in a concentrated way for some moments before turning back to the director and saying: “In all my life, I’ve never seen as many people urinate in public as I did in Prague.”

The director coughed up half his drink and both he and Jarmila looked at me slackjawed as I explained that I had spent a great deal of time walking through Prague – often up to three hours a day – and that along the route I had walked, I would normally see at least five people urinating in the bushes or down alleyways. And that wasn’t counting the small children, who are routinely pointed business end into the gutter by their parents no matter where the urge may strike.

Jarmila tried her best to change the subject, but I continued on because as an American, seeing people urinate in public is just a trifle scandalous - seeing 5 people per DAY was downright licentious. Funnily enough, the director was keen on the topic and we happily discussed scatological issues over two or three drinks.

The punch line to the story is this: two years later at a World Agricultural Economics Conference held in some chi-chi hotel in some faraway country, Jarmila happened to overhear the Prague director repeating this urine story to a group of like 10 people, most of whom – to her surprise – took up the subject. My impressions of Prague and its toilets had apparently struck a nerve.

In the intervening years, I have been privileged enough to visit some of Europe’s great cities, and in so doing have come to think that public toilets are among the most obviously necessary issues out there, but they are also paradoxically taboo in polite discussion. Yet the fact of the matter is that one’s impression – especially a tourist’s impression – of a country is based, to no small degree, on that host country’s toilets.

Take Copenhagen for example. A lovely Scandinavian city in every sense of the word, in the city proper you will find some public toilets – for men only – but these tend to be trough affairs where, if it’s crowded, you basically have to jostle your way in. But in such close quarters, if you’ve got stage fright or that nicely-worded but very likely unpleasant condition called shy-bladder – you’ll have to wait until the coast is clear and then move in for a strategic strike.

To remain in northern Europe for the moment, in my experience the Dutch are an endearingly quirky, amazingly accommodating and – related to that – a strikingly liberal sort of people. But as an exchange student in the city of Eindhoven a few years ago, this liberalism pushed me into uncharted territory when, for the first time, a group of us went out to the pubs in Stratumseind, Eindhoven’s nightlife area. After having a few beers at one of the popular pubs, nature summoned me and I headed toward the back of the bar in search of a loo. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find one, so I asked Ralf, one of the nearby Dutch students, where the toilets were. To my dismay, Ralf told me – though it seems both sadistic and perhaps even illegal – that most of the pubs in Stratumseind do not, in fact, provide such facilities.

Briefly dumbstruck, my growing urgency helped me recover and I asked him in an alarmed voice what I was going to do with all of the beer I had been swallowing. Ralf just smiled and led me out of the pub and into the street. He looked left and right – and here I must confess that I briefly thought he was going to tell me to do my thing right there. Instead, he pointed to a grey, plastic structure standing off to the side of the street but nonetheless in plain view. There was a line of men leading to it, and after pointing me in this thing’s direction, Ralf returned to the pub.

Thinking that a joke was obviously being played, that pissing in plain sight of passersby was simply not done, I stood there for a few skeptical moments until I saw a man step away from the structure and zip up his pants. I tentatively walked closer, and in so doing, began to grasp the system - it was a men’s urinal all right. Incredulity slowly gave way to necessity, and I joined in the line and took stock of the thing’s construction: shaped like an upwards-pointing Philips head screwdriver, for each patron there was an open, v-shaped platform with tapered partitions on both sides and a receptacle between the legs; it was in this sort of exposed privacy that the user was expected to take a squirt.

When my turn eventually came I nervously stepped onto the thing, and as I unzipped I took a look around me, which was a silly miscalculation. I had been anxious enough, but the sight of people surrounding me – some of them even watching me – was simply too much to bear. I knew that I just wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I stood there and squeezed for an awful long time but to no avail - three or four people had relieved themselves on either side of me before I was forced to give up and rejoin the line, hoping for a better outcome at my next go. Which didn’t happen. Instead, after the second fruitless attempt, I loitered around the urinal – drawing many disapproving looks – until the whole deal was vacant, and then I moved in for the kill, which I’m happy to report was relieving. Overall, however, it was an embarrassingly silly first encounter with the Stratumseind urinals, and though each subsequent use became somewhat easier, by no means did I ever become accustomed to those exposed Dutch contraptions.

But northern Europe is by no means the only region to provide inadequate toilet systems. For example, in two of the world’s most cosmopolitan of cities – New York City and Rome - it’s ridiculously difficult to find any toilet, let alone one that the maître d’ or concierge or cashier will permit you to access.

On the other hand, both Paris and Berlin employ a sensible system, though it’s perhaps not as widespread as it might be. Scattered around those cities’ sidewalks are a smallish sort of structure that might be mistaken for a telephone booth were it not for the lack of windows. These coin-operated public bathrooms are both secure (the door locks during use) and clean (they go through an automated cleaning cycle after each use) and if you aren’t too concerned about who you do your thing in front of, you can easily fit in two or three friends…

So urban toilets don’t have to be all bad; indeed, one might follow the lead of the Japanese, who have developed a technologically-superior version of our western-style latrines; their versions are outfitted with built-in seat-warmers, bidets, (ahem) wipers, and even air-dryers… all of which, to me, seems to take away the fun.

Interestingly, however, the Japanese aren’t the only Asian country developing better and better commodes. According to the Associated Press, the Chinese capital of Beijing has, in recent years, spent some $29 million on building or renovating roughly 750 bathrooms at tourist spots around the city. It seems that the Chinese have come to grasp the idea that being a developed country also means providing proper bathrooms.

Now, all of this potty talk might seem a bit too much for the average John, but some people consider commode issues to be serious indeed. Take, for example, the World Toilet Organization, or WTO, which was founded in 2001. According to the WTO website, anyone interested in studying scatology need look no farther than the World Toilet College in Singapore. Jack Sim, president of the WTO, was quoted by news provider Agence Française de Presse as saying the World Toilet College “…aims to train toilet cleaners to upgrade themselves to a level where he or she can take care of the whole toilet, including changing bulbs, repairing leaky taps… technical cleaning, taking away urine salt inside the toilet, etc.”.

The WTO’s website says the Restroom Specialist Training Course will help address the 2.6 billion people worldwide that do not have a toilet, which seems like a fine aim. WTO’s website goes on to claim that “at present, there are no toilet educational institutions that address both urban and rural toilets’ needs in a continuous manner.” Hence, ladies and gentlemen, the World Toilet College, located within Singapore’s Republic Polytechnic, which seeks to fill this gap. A full-time residential program, World Toilet College is by no means cheap. But not to worry: for those who are interested but cannot afford the $2,300 tuition fee – plus living expenses – there are options:

First, you might visit the World Toilet Summit and Expo, to be held in Moscow, from September 6-9th, 2006. This event will be hosted by the Russian Toilet Association and the Moscow City Council, with event highlights being city toilets, toilets for social integration, and non-plumbing technologies.

Then there is the Annual World Toilet Expo & Forum in Bangkok, from November 16 to 18, 2006. The theme of this year’s Expo will be “Happy Toilet, Healthy Life,” and will, according to the website, “facilitate Thailand towards the progressive development and standardisation of public toilet service.”

Lastly, if you aren’t in a position to travel to Bankgok, you might try your hand at the surprisingly educational 3D video game titled Urgent!, featured on the WTO website. What follows is Urgent’s description: Imagine the possibilities of your personal toilet layout. You design the way it looks, ensuring customers enjoy the ambience setting you provide for them. Imagine strategically positioning toilets and utilities in the toilet to be used by customers even if they are normal users, elderly or handicapped. Unlike reality, it does not take much to amend a mistake, just sell anything you don’t like off, and start to build again! Learn from your mistakes and reap the profits! So what are you waiting for? Start playing!”

So I did just that, and amused myself with toilet planning issues when I should have been working. Among other challenging tasks, I was forced to choose toilet models with which to decorate my space, and in the end, as it were, my toilet featured the following products, accompanied by their original description.

1. The Ultimate Poop Sucker Toilet. Your customers will definitely be empty when they come out new. Just as their wallets will be.

2. The Standing Coffin Urinal: Fire at will and never mind that you can’t aim. Everything will fall into place.

3. The Box Cup urinal: let its bigger ceramic build shield away sinful eyes.

Alas, even with such colorfully-depicted choices at my fingertips, bathroom design was more difficult than I had bargained for. Three of my virtual customers became infected by herpes, and as the game’s instructions tell you, herpes can only be transmitted when toilet conditions are “really horrible”.

So perhaps I should cut all those toilet planners some slack and instead of complaining about lousy urban toilets, I should spearhead a campaign to send them to the World Toilet College in order… to freshen up.