Toilet Trees

Over the weekend I went to Greece with Trevor. Upon arriving at our hostel in Athens--Hostel Zeus, named after the king of Olympus--I found myself needing to use the facilities. I made the trek down to the end of the hall and encountered a toilet with a most unsettling message: DON'T THROW PAPERS IN THE TOILET. Had the sign not depicted a hand throwing a medicine bottle--presumably empty though I'm going to assume this doesn't matter--and what appeared to be a crumpled up piece of computer paper into the gaping mouth of a toilet, I would have immediately interpreted the sign as being a warning against the disposal of your toilet paper in the actual toilet. But because to me the image seemed to warn against throwing garbage into the toilet, I thought I'd be safe flushing it all down together. After all, toilet paper is made for toilets (it's all in the name) and therefore has been designed to be flushed. If a toilet can't handle toilet paper, what else can't it handle? Other things that it, by virtue of it being a toilet, should be able to handle?

This concerned me deeply, so I promptly thrust if far from my mind and thus decided that the answer to my confusion lie in the word "papers." I do not call toilet paper "toilet papers." Rather I call it "squares of toilet paper." Perhaps they would be called "papers" if they were not all strung together in one "toilet paper roll." But they are. So I decided the "papers" to which the sign was referred were papers of a bureaucratic sort.

"Don't worry," I assured the toilet as I settled down on the seat, shifting my body weight to my right side to avoid the discomfort of the pinching that came about as a result of tiny hairline cracks in the toilet seat. "Don't worry, Toilet. I'll keep my documents to myself." I knew that I had to get home somehow and therefore had no plans to throw my passport into this Greek toilet.

The incorrectness of my interpretation of the sign rapidly became clear, though, when I attempted to flush my economical amount of toilet paper (I had still been a bit hesitant to fully trust my original interpretation). The bowl emptied, the water refilled, and there, floating, lurking in the depths was a lonely square of toilet paper.

It was then that I looked in the garbage can, searching out where my toilet square should have gone. I peeked in through the swinging lid and saw a garbage can much fuller than I usually see in bathrooms. I couldn't tell in what manner the toilet paper had been used--for all I knew, someone could have been using all those toilet "papers" to blow their nose. Swine flu, you know. Choosing not to take a whiff, however, I decided to trust my instinct and believe that this was the rightful place of my toilet paper. At that moment, I was very happy that I was not the janitor at this hostel.

I was, however, distraught over this discovery. This toilet paper goes into the trash, not down the drain into the sewage system. From the short amount of time I had spent in Athens, I had seen a great deal of garbage, though no sewage. Piecing these two together, I could only hope that this was one bit of garbage that would not end up coming back to haunt me.

On Saturday night, Trevor and I decided to go out for a "nice" meal. To us, this means going to a place where you sit down and actually have to tip. It means nothing more. But the restaurant we went to was a pretty nice restaurant--very clean, very modern, and very tasty food. When the meal was done, I decided I would go to the bathroom, just so I could experience what it was like to flush toilet paper in Greece (and actually have it disappear). So I went down to the bathroom and was pleased with everything I saw--motion detector lights, a nice basin for the sink, and a very sleek, frosted glass door to the stall. Getting into the stall, though, I discovered a sign on the toilet that said, DON'T THROW PAPER INTO TOILET. This sign featured a drawing as well, though this time the artist kindly made the paper actually look like toilet paper--rather than having it look like a crumpled up piece of notebook paper, the artist drew a banner of toilet paper, with dotted lines crossing it to indicate the perforated edges for easy separation.

I was disgruntled, being forced to not throw my "paper" into the toilet, but rather proud of myself for being able to instantly decipher the meaning of this sign. I suppose it's easier to interpret when the drawing doesn't suggest garbage and the slogan doesn't suggest documents.

That night when we got back to the hostel, I went to use the bathroom again. There was a piece of toilet paper floating at the bottom (not mine). I had to smile at the poor person who had made this mistake. Sitting on the toilet, leaning to the right, I had to say to myself about the poor confused soul who had done this, "Silly, silly. Can't you read the sign?"

Cesky Krumlov Tally

I spent last weekend in the quaint Cesky Krumlov, a town in southern Bohemia near the Austrian border. It was a school trip, which means that everything (everything) was paid for, right down to the 500 crowns they gave us for the meals they didn't have us scheduled for.

Cesky Krumlov is on the UNESCO world heritage list. This means nothing to me, but to some it means everything. I don't know how many of you are that kind of person, so I feel that it is relevant to post here. Because it is on the UNESCO list, it does not have a McDonalds. This did not stop me from getting a hamburger and milkshake (-2 culture points) our first night there.

The rest of our first night, however, was culture-filled. We went to a Baroque Music Festival (+1 culture point, +1 cool point) that also offered free food (+1 cool point) and free wine (+1 cool point, +1 culture point, +1 class point). I was feeling like a particularly classy individual until I accidentally shot a grape seed onto the castle floor (-1 class point, +1 cool point for channeling Harry Burns).

The music was harpsichord (+1 culture point), cello, and opera singers doing Handel (+1 culture point), Vivaldi (+1 culture point), and Handel again (+1 culture point). After the show I carried on a fairly extensive discussion about Water Music (+1 culture point, +1 cool point), Sophie's Choice (+1 cool point, +1 smart point), and Handel's Messiah (+1 culture point, +1 cool point).

I wish I could live in the hotel we stayed in. It is amazing, and way too good for college travellers. Tanya and I shared it. We think that it was maybe meant for Ivana, the CIEE representative on the trip, and her husband, but we didn't think we'd mention it to them. We had the biggest room (+1 cool point) with a king-size bed (+1 cool point). The bathroom had a big flush little flush toilet (+1 cool point, +1 environment point) as well as a bidet (+1 cool point, +1 culture point) that I did not use (+1 smart point).

At the bar the first night, I ordered a "Hemingway Special" (+1 cool point) that made me feel very literary and cultured (+1 culture point, +1 class). With a normal drink, it would be difficult to feel cultured when your drink is orange and has two cherries and a large piece of pineapple speared with a plastic sword, but when it's called the "Hemingway Special," the drink is dripping with culture. I have a friend (Katherine) who is an Emily Dickinson fan (like myself) who worked as a tour guide at the Emily Dickinson museum over the summer. Before I started on my Hemingway Special, she and I recited Emily Dickinson poetry (+1 culture point, -1 cool point, +1 smart point) just because we could (+1 cool point).

On the bus to Cesky Krumlov, my friend Eric and I decided that we would go to Copenhagen this coming weekend (+1 cool point, +1 spontaneous point). Unfortunately, after looking at the ticket prices, we realized that it is impossible to spontaneously go to Copenhagen on a budget (-1 spontaneous point), so I am left in Prague next weekend. Shoot. Whatever will I do?

On Saturday we toured the castle (+1 culture point) and saw a functioning Baroque Theatre (+1 culture point) and spent some time in the castle gardens.

Sunday, on the way back to Prague, we stopped in a brewery at Trebon. I don't know what the name of the beer is, but I do know that after we finished our free 0.5L samples of it, Eric and I had an extensive conversation about Mortal Kombat II on Super Nintendo and the different abilities of the characters (+2 cool points), followed closely by an intense conversation between Eric and Tanya about Super Smash Brothers (+2 cool points). Obviously we are all gamers at heart.

Final Tally:
Culture: 11 points
Cool: 17 points
Class: 1 point
Spontaneous: 0 points
Environment: 1 point
Smart: 3 points

*Disclaimer: Sorry if my math is wrong. There were a lot of points this time. I would just like to point out how cool I have gotten since coming here, though.*

Home Again

Over the weekend I got the opportunity to experience what the East Coast Experts I traveled with deemed to be the New Jersey of Europe. Take that to mean what you may. Having never been to Jersey, I can only assume from the way they said it that this is not a good nickname to have. Despite their apparent disgust with Poland, I was still able to find some good things in it because I'm just a positive person like that.
In no particular order, my favorite things about Krakow:

- Pierogi: Dumplings that can be filled with meat, potatoes or cheese. Obviously at the top of my list. Not only do they taste amazing, they are also dirt cheap (and coated in butter).

- Food in general: If there is one thing that could make me love Poland, it is the food. They eat like the Czechs, but do not have sauerkraut, from what I can see. It is also amazingly cheap.

- Cute markets: They have this cute market in their Old Town Square (though really it is not all that old because they had to rebuild it after a war, I think). I was able to find some [really cheap] hand-knit wool sock/slippers. Amazing.

- Salt Mines: I do not think I have ever come across a country where the people say to themselves, "Well, I work in a salt mine. I think I will carve five chapels out of salt," or "Hmmm...I seem to find myself with some extra time in the salt mine, after spending all day in this salt mine. I think that, instead of coming above the surface and going home, I will carve a statue of Pope John Paul II out of salt." It's very endearing how attached they are to their salt.

- Auschwitz: I can't say that I "like" it, but I can say that it is an incredibly interesting [and draining] place. Auschwitz-I is not at all like what I pictured it--it looks more like a New England college campus than what I picture a concentration camp to be, but this makes it all the more creepy. It's the facade of normalcy that makes it so unsettling. Auschwitz-II was more how I expected it to look. It was just as unsettling, though this time it is not the normalcy, but instead the great expanse of emptiness, marked by traces of what was once there, combined with the incredible amount of work the Nazis did to create this place. They built Auschwitz-II for this specific purpose, and when you look at it all, it feels as though the broken down chimneys, all that's left of the buildings they burned to try to cover their tracks, could continue on for miles. It was an interesting place, though one that I think a person could only handle once in their life.

- Swing: It's a jazz club Eric, Maddy and I found the first night in our attempts to get into the nightlife despite being deathly tired. We enjoyed it and the live music it provided us. The second night we went back and discovered we it was a hotspot for old people with no dance skills. We went back the third night. It was closed. This did not ruin our love of the club.

- Fat Boys: I am not being insensitive, I am merely calling them by name. Fat Boys are giant bean bag mattresses meant for, at most, two people. Eric, Maddy, and I, in our first ever couchsurfing experience, had to share one because a British guy was sleeping on our host's couch the first two nights we were there. The last night we shared the Fat Boy because we didn't know anything different.

- Bathroom Sign: The last night we spent in Krakow, we pooled our leftover Zloty to buy ourselves one last round of drinks. The bar we went to had the most inviting bathroom sign, and I almost felt the need to take it up on its offer. Because I didn't have any good reading material with me, however, I decided against this, and instead spent my night in the company of my friends rather than a toilet stall.


- Exchange rate: Everything was cheap cheap cheap!

Old Friend

It's a comforting thing, finding yourself in the company of an old friend while traveling. You will be going about your daily business, and suddenly find yourself staring at your old friend. Greetings arise, and you are pleasantly surprised to find yourself more at ease. Even if you're in a foreign country with a foreign language and a foreign currency and a completely foreign way of thinking, there's just something about seeing that familiarity that makes your day brighter and your trip happier.

"So there really are fortuitous events such as these," you say to yourself. "What are the odds that I would run into my old friend here, in such a place as this?"

You rarely seem to run into them when you expect to. It's always in the darkest, grungiest places where you'd least expect them to show up (and vice versa), or else it's the most elegant places, where you never thought the high and mighty would deign to allow them (or even allow yourself).

In the past year, I have traveled my fair share. I was New York in the winter, Ireland in the summer, New Zealand at the end of summer, and now Prague in the fall. There were no old friends for me in New York, though it was in Ireland where I made the friend I have been describing.

And you cannot understand the excitement I felt when I came across this old friend, big flush little flush toilets, in both New Zealand and Prague.

It's quite possible that these toilets were the highlight of my trip to Ireland. Who would have thought that using the toilet could pose so many choices (and potential problems) for said bathroom goer. No longer is it, "How many squares of toilet paper should I use?" Instead, it is, "Is this worthy of a big flush, or can I get by with a little flush?"

One of the main reasons I love the big flush little flush function is because of its potential to save the planet. We are living in a world of global warming and limited resources, and we must do everything possible to save as much fresh water as possible so that when all the glaciers melt and we are left floating on rafts thatched together (think Huck Finn), there are somehow patches in that giant ocean where salt is unable to go. Sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure scientific researchers funded by Al Gore have said something of the sort will happen and that's how we get our fresh water.

Big flush little flush, though, is a beautiful thing. It allows us to limit the amount of water that we use--when we don't need much water we choose little flush, when we need a bit more we go for the BIG flush.

Regardless of the necessity, I always use the big flush. It's the potential for their saving the world that makes me love them so much--knowing that someone, somewhere, someday will use them correctly and make a difference in the world. I, however, am not worried about making a difference in the world by regulating the size of my flushes. I probably would be if there weren't something so satisfying about hitting the big flush, slapping it like I'm on the Price is Right, and then watching it push the little flush button in along with it as toilet water rains down upon the discharge and flushes it from sight.

I'm sure many of you are now questioning my sanity--I have managed to write a good 574 words (I counted) on the topic of a style of toilet flush, calling it my "old friend" and saying it makes me "feel more at ease." But if any of you doubt that a toilet can be considered a friend, much less an old friend, I would like to say this to you:

The "squatting hole with water hose" I saw in Singapore is most definitely not my friend. It does not make me feel at ease or comfortable in a foreign place; it makes me feel panicked, anxious, and incredibly curious.

In a foreign country with a foreign language and a foreign currency and a completely foreign way of thinking, I'll take all the comfort I can get, wherever and whenever it comes.

Trevor's New Zealand-Style Big Flush Little Flush.

Kutna Hora Public Restroom-Style Big Flush Little Flush

Note: The NZ big flush is on the right-hand side, opposite from the one from the CR. In NZ people also drive on the right side, while people in the CR drive on the left side. Coincidence? I think not.