The porcelin throne

Culture shock can make it hard to appreciate the good things in a new culture. When you're missing home, it can seem like everything in your new country is backwards and terrible and everything in your home country is wonderful and easy. To help combat these thoughts, I'm going to write about some of the things I like about Vienna. Hopefully, this will give you a little insight into life in Austria and will help me to appreciate my new home. I won't promise a post on this topic every week, but I hope to do at least a couple each month. Click on the "I heart Vienna" label on the sidebar to see all of the "I heart" posts.

I haven't done of these in a while. And I thought I would write a couple each month. Oh well.

Today's topic -- the bathroom. Only in Austria, it's not called the bathroom. It's called a toilet or WC (water closet). Why not call it the bathroom? I guess it's because there's not usually a bath in the room. Of course there are not baths in public restrooms (another word not used here), but often in apartments the toilet and the bath are in separate rooms.

See, here's the WC and the bathroom in my apartment. Sometimes the WC has a small sink for hand-washing, but often it's just a toilet. Fortunately, in our apartment the WC and the bathroom (where the sink is located) are side-by-side. But this isn't always the case.

I can't believe you looked at a photo of my WC and toilet.

But really, I wanted to share why I like the public WC. The WC sometimes has a bad rep in Europe because you often have to pay to use it. Coming from a land of free toilets, it seems very strange to have to pay to use the facilities. But that's not really a problem in Vienna. In fact, I've only had to pay to use the toilet twice -- at the train station and at the Opera Toilet. (The going rate, in case you're wondering was 27 cents at the train station and 60 cents at the Opera Toilet.)

So, why do I like the public WC? First, they're generally clean. Take the train station for example. Normally I would expect to find pretty dirty bathrooms at a train station. But this one (and almost all of the places where you have to pay) has an attendant that cleans the stall after every customer. She mops and everything. However, the one bad side to this is that the attendant is not always the same gender as the person using the bathroom. This is more of a problem for the guys because they don't always have a stall and the attendants are generally women. I've only run across one male attendant in the woman's bathroom.

The other two reasons would best be described by a clip from Seinfeld, but, alas, I cannot find the clip online. If you have Season 7 on DVD, pop in the first disc, and find the second scene in the second episode. Or not. That sounds like a lot of work. Basically, George complains to Susan that he doesn't understand why the door on the bathroom stall doesn't go to the ground. Susan suggests that it's a backup system in case the lock is broken -- so you can tell the stall is occupied.

So this brings me to my two favorite features of the public WC. First, most stalls are like little rooms. Walls from floor to ceiling, not just metal separators. And real doors. Like the WC at home. And the second feature is the lock. You know how the bathrooms on airplanes have a little sign that says "occupied" or "vacant" based on whether the door is locked? Well, the locks here have the same type of thing. So it's really easy to tell if the WC is occupied without having to peer under the door -- that is, if peering is even an option.

So there you have it. Most of the WCs I have visited in Europe (and believe me, I've visited a lot of them) have been pretty much the same as the ones in Vienna. So if you're ever traveling about in Europe and find yourself in need of the facilities, you know what to expect.