I am a bit late in getting out my blog today. Our younger son is sick with a bad cough and fever, and I am feeling a bit of a sore throat. I don't feel sick yet, but we both slept in to make sure we get back to top form as soon as possible.
I asked yesterday about flushing the toilet. I know this seems so obvious, but if you aren't told in advance before arriving, it really can be a confusing issue. I thought of it because I still catch myself reaching for the handle on the toilet to flush. So you must be asking yourself, "There is no handle? Then how would you flush it?" Here in Germany (and Austria, at least - I'm not sure about the rest of Europe), there is no handle on the toilet. Instead, they have a large push pad on the wall behind the toilet. Now it is really hard to approach this subject tastefully, but I will do my best. The pad serves one very nice feature that our toilets do not have. Depending on what you need to flush, you can hold the pad for as little or as long as it takes to wash things down appropriately. I think overall this is a very nice feature to help save water on the planet. Older toilets in the US use around 3.5 gallons of water. Newer ones in use since 1992 use only 1.6 gallons of water. Here in Germany, that amount can be varied depending on the contents left therein, ranging from about 2.5 cups to a lengthy pouring in of water.
Fortunately for us, we have a modern German toilet. Many of the older toilets actually have a shelf that used to be used for the purpose of inspection of anything that needed to be inspected. In olden days, the concerns of parasites and such from undercooked pork was a real problem, and in its day, it did serve a very valuable purpose, but for the modern day person, with modern day food practices, well, let's just say I am VERY glad this is not a needed device any longer. However, if you rent an apartment that has not been updated in this feature, this could still be an issue for you today.
Upon looking up a little about toilet technology, I was surprised to find the dates for flushable toilets extending back to 26th century BC! (From Wikipedia) Flush toilets were first used in the Indus Valley Civilization. The cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro had a flush toilet in almost every house, attached to a sophisticated sewage system. By the 1st century AD, flush toilets were used extensively throughout the Roman Empire. Our modern American toilet was designed and in use by 1819. And yes, Thomas Crapper was in the toilet business, but he was not it's inventor.
Here in Germany, the toilet room in public places is noted by the letters WC, which stands for Water Closet, a common term for a room that had a toilet in it. In the United Kingdom, many toilets of old had a chain to pull, hence the term "pull the chain" in relation to bathroom practices. I used to hear that as a child from older people. I can't say that any children today, though, would have heard that phrase. And one last bit of trivia, the direction the water turns (with assurances from our Australian friends) is entirely dependent on the shape of the toilet, not the hemisphere in which the toilet is located.
The word for today is bathroom: das Badezimmer (bah deh tsim mer). Sometimes it is also referred to as the Klo.
The question for the day is "Who was Charlemagne?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
