When You've Gotta Go

There used to be a Pepto Bismol commercial that started with a nervous man saying, "I'm here to talk to you about... diarrhea. Don't change the channel!" That's kind of how I feel right now. I'm going to talk about public restrooms. Please don't leave.

I'm going to let you know, too, right up front, that I'm going to be talking about how other countries do this better than we do.

On the one hand, I tend to dislike and dismiss people who whine that this or that place is better than here - wherever here is. It's pretentious, and begs the question, "Then why aren't you there?"

On the other hand, something that's far more annoying, and damaging, is clinging to an idea or practice that doesn't work, just because it's "ours," and "this is how we do things here." The inability to assess, learn from, and implement new ideas is crippling, personally and societally.

So let's talk about how other countries handle public restrooms better than we do.

Let's start with the name. We call these rooms "restrooms," but there's no resting being done in them. It's a ridiculous, inaccurate euphemism, because we're apparently too embarrassed to discuss the fact that we have bodily functions. It makes us, collectively, look like we're children.

I remember the first time I heard the term "restroom." I was a child, and I was in a restaurant with my family. We didn't eat out often, so this was not an ordinary occurrence; I wasn't used to the way things worked. My mother got up and left the table, which puzzled me, especially when she didn't come right back.

"Where's Mom?" I asked Dad.

"She's in the restroom."

A whole room for resting? That sounded great. As a kid I didn't take naps (I make up for that now), but I've always been easily exhausted by crowds, noise, excessive human interaction (even when it's positive and fun), so it was easy for me to imagine that Mom had just reached the point that she needed a room in soothing blues and greens, with soft music, chaises and cold compresses. I mean, who doesn't? But at a restaurant? In the middle of lunch?

"Could I go, too?"

"Do you have to?"

"Well, I don't have to, but I could."

I was so disappointed. The "restroom" was a tiny room with two toilet stalls and a sink, in faded white paint. No potted plants, no gentle flower fragrance, no resting. Just cramped toilet stalls in gunmetal gray.

We make fun of other countries' euphemisms - oh, those silly British and their "water closets." Hey, it's a tiny room with plumbing - "water closet" is a far more accurate description than "restroom."

Most other countries get it right - if you need to tend to your bodily elimination functions, you ask for the toilets, or look for the sign that says "toilet." Straightforward, no childish snickering, the way humans should act.

The other obvious way in which other countries get it right is their stall doors and walls. Last year, we took a trip that took us across 8 countries, and do you know what every non-US nation had? Actual doors and walls in their stalls, as in up to the ceiling, down to the floor, doors that close fully. Genius!

The most obvious advantage is that they didn't have to close the facilities for cleaning, no matter what sex the janitor was. My children mock my bladder, and tell me that I have the bladder of a two year old, because I need toilet facilities frequently. I tell them that they can talk to me after their bladder has been squashed by repeated pregnancies, as well as fibroids up to the size of a cantaloupe. But the thing is, I have been deeply inconvenienced on numerous occasions by really needing a restroom, and having it closed for cleaning. AUGH! The first time I was in a public restroom while a man was cleaning it, I was surprised and then delighted. It was fantastic! He didn't have to wait for me, and I didn't have to wait for him! Woo hoo!

Another plus is the added privacy. I remember being seriously stressed when I was in a fast food restaurant during a road trip, in one of those towns that is two hours or more from the next town, so the facilities are packed. We were in year 5 of an extensive drought, with reservoirs and rivers dry, and serious water rationing in place. A woman using the toilet insisted that those of us waiting run the faucets in the sink, so that we couldn't hear what she was doing. I wanted to scream, "We KNOW what you're doing! Especially if the sound of water will muffle it! We're all here to do the exact same thing! There's only two real purposes for this room! If you're doing something not intended, please find somewhere else to do it!" But I didn't. I just watched the water run down the drain as my blood pressure rose. There is no reason to waste finite resources because you are embarrassed by ordinary bodily functions. Solid walls and doors will let those people avoid the waste.

That leads me to a third advantage - it's not soundproof, but it's a whole lot harder to hear or smell what your neighbor is doing, which should make both of you more comfortable. And no more worrying about how awkward the open row of urinals is.

Yet another advantage, in my opinion, is that it should also end the need for sex segregated facilities. If I, and everyone else, are in our own room, there's no reason for us to worry about who's in the next room. No more worrying about the fact that the line in the ladies' room is always longer than the line in the men's room. No more stressing about which restroom transgender people should use. (Having spent their lives with enclosed facilities, Europeans probably think that Americans sound silly arguing about that.)

I really have little patience for the reasons people have given me to not like full doors and walls.

One is, "But I also want to arrange my clothes, and fix my hair and makeup." Fix your clothes behind the door, and quit worrying that fixing your hair and makeup are acts that you must hide from others. Seriously.

"You don't want things totally enclosed like that, because child molestation and sexual assaults will go up!" Wow; if you seriously believe that the only reason people are not assaulting others is the gaps in stall walls, you have a view of humanity that deeply concerns me. You are also advocating a society in which it is impossible, and inadvisable, to have any privacy in public, and I am not a fan. You're also overlooking the fact that many public restrooms, in places like parks, end up closed or with restricted hours because of frequent prostitution taking place there, with the gaps in the stalls. I'm not making this up; it happens in my area more often than I want to think about. Trashy behavior does not depend on walls.

Plus, many foreign restrooms have a small fee for usage, and with that, they often pay attendants. There will be far fewer shenanigans of any kind with watchful eyes in place. (It also means that the rooms are comparatively spotless and well stocked.)

"But the construction will cost more." I don't think that cancels out the plusses, but if you do, again, usage fees. Plus, drywall is cheap, and doesn't have to be custom manufactured.

Yes, finding coins in order to pee can be annoying, but obviously, there are advantages. And, you can install card readers, like those on parking meters.

The only thing other countries don't do better: water fountains next to the restrooms. The only time I have ever been more dehydrated on a vacation than I was this last trip, I required medical attention. Water, people! Free water! You have the plumbing already in place! Most of the restroom sinks were even too shallow for me to refill my water bottle in them.

There you have it: the recipe for perfect public toilet facilities. Listen up, America!

Have Fun Stormin' the Castle

Everyone has something in particular that they like to do when they travel. Some people get excited about the food; some get excited about the shopping. I get excited about the photographs that I can take.

When we planned a trip that would take us to Europe for a week, people asked, "What do you want to see?" At first, I just said, "Whatever is there." Then I started thinking, and we started buying things like train tickets, and I amended my answer; "I want to see a castle."

I've grown up in the American West; we get all excited if something is 100 or 150 years old. Our entire nation is just over 200. When my niece spent a year abroad in France, she lived in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary town, and her home was over 400 years old, with stone walls. The thought made me swoon.

At our first stop, Madeira, there was no castle. The island was gorgeous, and I didn't miss the opportunity to see a castle.

Our second stop was Gibralter. I was excited about the rock, the monkeys, the view across the channel to Africa. But there, sitting on the hill, was a castle.

See it? Don't worry, we got closer.

Technically, it's a medieval fortress. Still, on only my second day in Europe, I got to cross a "must do" off my list.

It became apparent that castles were not scarce the morning we arrived in Barcelona. This was the view from the deck of our ship:

Well, then!

This is Montjuic Castle, first built in 1640. We didn't go inside, but we did get a closer view.

 We saw plenty of palace-like buildings in Paris. Even if we hadn't, who cares? It's Paris!

We hit the castle jackpot in Germany.

After looking, exhaustively, at flights to take us home, we'd discovered that the least expensive flight left on a Thursday from Frankfurt, so we arranged to arrive in Frankfurt on Tuesday night. That left all of Wednesday for an adventure. We were without a car (we'd arrived by train), so we looked into tour companies, and settled on a tour that would pick us up from, and deliver us back to, our hotel. We were scheduled to go down the Rhine in a tour boat, on a stretch of river that was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has the highest concentration of castles in Europe. We all charged our camera batteries in anticipation.

Unfortunately, the Rhine was flooding. It was the highest water level in over 300 years. Virtually all river traffic was halted.

This is a staircase that goes down to the waterfront sidewalk. The water levels were, if I recall, 15 to 20 feet above normal here.

Many of the docks were themselves underwater. Some peeked out, but you wouldn't want to dock there.

The tour company had a contingency plan. We would still get many of the usual elements of the tour - lunch at a cafe, a visit to a local monument, a ride down the mountainside in a chair lift reminiscent of a ski lift - but instead of sailing past numerous castles, we'd get to tour the grounds and interior of one.

It was an absolutely picture perfect example of a castle - suits of armor, a ballroom, towers... just gorgeous.

There's me and my husband.

Here's the view from across the river.

Isn't that storybook perfect?

What was more astonishing to me, though, were the number of other castles in the area, castles not included as part of the tour. They were just sitting there, a part of the normal scenery.

I mean, they're just everyday buildings. Here's another view from across the river, showing the next castle just a bend in the river away.

Do you see that? Here's a closer look.

They're within sight of each other, some of these castles. Holy cow! I mean, even if it was centuries ago, I could easily walk or ride between them!

So, we have a new plan on the back burner. Some day, we'll go back to Germany. We'll drive the Romantic Road, we'll float down the Rhine, and we'll photograph more castles.

It's a great plan.

Vacation Photos

It has been brought to my attention that, for a photographer, I have very few photos in my blog. I'll try to fix that.

We admit it - we're spoiled. We carry the big cameras on vacation - usually two or three of them. Yes, this is us at the beach this year. The camera taking the photo is pretty much the same as the one over my shoulder. We refer to these as "the heavy artillery."

My middle daughter looked at some of the photos taken by someone else on her brother's student ambassador trip, someone who'd taken only a camera phone, and said, "If those were the only photos Alex had, he'd cry."

It takes more than a nice camera, though. We're all pretty good at this because we love it.

In the last decade or so, the average person has gotten much better at photography for two reasons - they're taking far more photos, and cameras are becoming more and more foolproof. My parents may have shot a dozen photos of me between birth and age eight, on cameras that are horribly limited by today's standards. The average parent today shoots almost daily photos, with cameras that don't even require a flash.

Still, we often surprise or puzzle people. My son was 16 when he went to Europe. When he showed people his scrapbook, they said things like, "Did you buy postcards and scan them?" They seemed amazed when he said, "No. I took these."

When his leader saw this one, she couldn't get over it. "You shot this from the bus? How did you manage that? Nobody gets good photos from inside the bus!" This is exactly as he shot it.

He's been surprising people for years. When he was about 11 - but admittedly looked younger - we went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. In the butterfly house, we handed him the good camera, the one we use for business, with the same stipulation we always gave to our kids: Put the strap around your neck, and be careful. He quickly voiced displeasure - his dad had the new zoom lens.

He marched up to his father with vocal complaint. "You gave me the crappy lens! How am I supposed to shoot anything decent with this?" He was truly outraged. The man standing next to this scene was probably in his 40s, holding a little 4 inch wide, half inch thick point and shoot camera. He looked at my son, looked at the 6 inch long "crappy" lens, raised his eyebrows up into his hairline and slunk away.

I've taken photos that I truly love on little disposable cameras, but boy, do I love my good camera.

Traveling in a group is sometimes difficult for photographers. When my son went to Washington D.C. with his Scout troop, he spent a lot of time saying, "Wait up!" and they spent a lot of time saying, "Come ON, Alex! Are you shooting more pictures?"

Of course, once they got back home, everyone wanted copies of his photos. We burned discs to share.

As you can see, people are not his favorite subjects, and he rarely thinks to get photos of himself. I insisted, for that Scout trip, that he occasionally hand the camera to someone else and get in the photo. We have two photos with him in them, including this one (my favorite of the two).

(My kid's the good looking one in the tan uniform.)

He is not an enthusiastic model, but he is usually obedient.

Frequently, my kids get asked, "Where was this?" by people who were actually along on their trips. One girl asked so often while looking through his Europe scrapbook that I finally said, "Did you go to Europe?" "Well, yeah," she said, "but I didn't see any of this."

A year ago at Christmas, my oldest daughters went to Disneyland with a group of 20-somethings. One of their friends went in another group about the same time. When they got home, they compared photos.

"Where is this?" asked a friend who traveled with the other group.

"It's right before you head down Main Street, headed away from the castle," my daughter told her.

"I've never seen that, and I've been to Disneyland before," the girl said.

She had the same questions over and over. "Where is this? Where was that?"

Finally, she said, "Oh, well, we were only there for 3 days."

"We were only there for 3 days," my daughter said. "So not fair! I'm going with you next time!" her friend replied. (In all fairness, my daughter has lived in her current home for over 2 1/2 years, and I'm sure she knows Disneyland better than she knows her own back yard.)

Yes, we carry the big cameras through amusement parks. I want shots like these.

When we went to Oahu with my brother, a scenic and wildlife photographer, he remarked on how nice it was to travel with other photographers, people who were willing to just stop on the side of the road and wander.

We spent a couple of hours one day on a single beach, just shooting the waves as they came in.

"You're not supposed to be tourists!" someone once said to me, admonishing me to put the camera down. "Experience things."

I am experiencing them. So is my camera. So, vicariously, can everyone else.