That Time in a Bathroom in Europe

When Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

When I arrived in a foreign land, I found out quickly that bathrooms are a completely different kettle of fish.

The skeleton key and the window

For some reason, many bathrooms at restaurants and homes alike are locked up with a skeleton key. So when you try to get back out, you break out into a cold sweat as you turn and turn the key and it just wiggles in the lock but doesn’t open back up.

The good news is that at least there is almost always a patterned glass window in the door. So if you couldn’t get out, you could stand really close to the door and wave until someone helped you. I have my pride, though. I was only helped out of a bathroom once.

I’m not sure why there is a window in the door actually. I guess it would be too embarrassing to walk in on someone and make eye contact with them, so you just see their frosted outline through the door and know to wait.

The 5-star sexy bathroom

The first 5-star hotel I went to was in Europe. In this hotel, there was a “sexy bathroom.” It was a bathroom entirely made of glass and when you turned the light on the frosted glass became clear. I guess this could be fun, except that I was sharing the room, not with my spouse, but with 3 other people I didn’t know very well.

Anyone sitting on a bed was forced to look at the spotlit bathroom. This made getting to know the others a little awkward. Especially when the comment is, “I see you wear black underwear.” And why aren’t you reading a book?

The road stop bathroom

Then there are the bathrooms you meet on road stops on bus trips. For some reason, all the bathrooms on the route you have to pay to enter. My thought is that the bus drivers must have bought stock in these specific restrooms. On the way to the Black Sea for my first time, I got off the bus to stand in line to use the restroom.

I paid for the use, got 2 squares of toilet paper and a receipt, and noticed that (besides the awful stench) there was no toilet. I am willing to learn how to pee without a toilet, just not when there are still 6 hours to a destination, I’m wearing pants, and I am riding on a bus full of people.

I thanked them and handed my squares to the next person in line, and got back on the bus.

The train stop bathroom

But the craziest bathroom experience I had in Europe was at a train station in Romania. You’d think that somewhere in this turn of the (20th) century train station that by the 21st century you would find a bathroom there.

But, no. You would be wrong.

I asked at the train station for a bathroom using my broken language skills and was waved in a general direction that was not in the train station. So I finally landed on a sign that pictured a woman on it. It had a staircase going down under the ground.

At the bottom, the smell would send a weaker person back up the long stairs. But it wasn’t the smell that sent me back up, it was the gate-keeper man down at the bottom cheerfully munching on a sandwich.

He waved a greeting and I’m not sure that I waved back, but I did head back up the stairs to daylight and fresh air and wondered why he was sitting in a chair down there guarding the toilets and how could he possibly have the appetite for that sandwich.

I should have given up then and there. But, I’ve never been a quitter and I had a 2-hour ride ahead of me and it was an emergency.

The sketch bar bathroom

I entered this sketchy bar and thought surely there would be a bathroom there. There was but you had to pay. No problem. The lady points to the door. I ask where the light is and she just shakes her head.

My phone’s flashlight didn’t work, but the phone’s face lit up enough to see that there was this long hallway. At the end of the hallway, on the left, was a shared men’s and women’s restroom and the doors didn’t lock…but it didn’t really matter because it was not like you could see anyone (or they, you).

I wondered what they did with the toilet seat and then later noticed it was leaning against the wall. I felt like it wasn't very clean, but what you can’t see can’t hurt you. (Or something like that).

I made it out, considered kissing the ground, and got to my ride on time.

No place like home (or your rented European flat.)

If you have to use the bathroom on the go in Europe, you may end up getting locked in, finding that the toilet seat is stolen, or using a hole in the floor with two squares of toilet paper.

Instead of taking your chances, experience has taught me to just use the bathroom BEFORE leaving home.