Warning: The following entry is not for the faint of heart or weak stomach—or for those offended by things which might disturb those of faint heart or weak stomach. You know who you are. It is strongly advised that you not read this entry while eating. Merci pour votre attention.
When you travel the world you expect to see some strange things. You also expect to learn a few lessons along the way. For instance, you might see a giant industrial pink metronome slowly ticking on the spot where a statue of Stalin once stood. Or you might learn that no food is served in restaurants in New Zealand between the hours of two and five o’clock in the afternoon. You just never know what you might learn or experience while you’re abroad.
Sometimes you learn about things that no one talks about. Like toilets.
The toilet as we have come to know and love it was invented by a Thomas J. Crapper, if the popular story has any credence. (Even if it doesn’t, can you really resist passing that one along?) It has a porcelain bowl that holds a certain measure of water whose purpose is both to subdue the noxious odours emanating from human effluence and to resist the rise of similar odours issuing from the sewer below. I trust that you are familiar with the various designs and accoutrements of the standard toilet. I know that if you have spent any length of time around college freshmen you will be more than familiar.
While staying in Salzburg I discovered a variation on the design of the toilet bowl that charity drives me to describe as . . . interesting. Indeed, some people visit Salzburg to see the salt mines; some visit to see where Mozart grew up; some visit to tour the prominent spectacle of the fortress on a hill. We did all those things, but I discovered something more.
The toilets in our hostel were designed with a poop shelf. No, there wasn’t any engraving telling me that’s what it was, but the purpose became clear upon first use. The water hole (apologies to those plumbers out there who cringe at my ignorance of toilet vocabulary) was pushed forward in the bottom of the toilet and the rear half of the bowl elevated to produce a shelf with a lip. Thus the steady-state condition of the toilet was to have the usual pool of water in the hole and a thin puddle (maybe one quarter of an inch deep) on the shelf. Enter user. When the toilet user makes his or her, um, deposit, said deposit lands squarely on the shelf and stays there.
Most of us have been camping at some time in our lives, and we are therefore familiar with the result of making a deposit without the benefit of water to subdue the essential aroma of our efforts. The Austrian Poop Shelf, like the side of a tree or a grassy knoll, makes it impossible for the water to do its job. Mr. Crapper would be, I think, sorely disappointed.
The flush, rather than issuing from all sides of the bowl, comes in a wide stream from the back of the bowl. I surmise the intent of this design to be the movement of the deposit forward and down into the water hole. The effluence is then carried by gravity into the hungry sewer system. Right now you’ll be wondering, as I did: can one’s deposit be of such magnitude that the flush-stream cannot move it off the shelf? The answer, I discovered all too soon, is yes. So the Austrian Poop Shelf presents hazards both for the present user and the next victim, whose only crime is the call of nature.
There is one relative advantage to the Austrian Poop Shelf design. It overcomes the problem presented by a toilet bowl so deep and with so little water that any deposit becomes a bomb. But I shall save my analysis of the Czech Wet-Bottom design for another day.
~ emrys
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