We’ve done this before, but it is generally because:
-Mixer taps are comparatively new and haven’t fully caught on everywhere.
-They aren’t necessarily retro-fittable to the hole spacing of all existing basins/baths.
-You can just put the plug in, run both taps et voila! - middle ground.
In Finland I witnessed an extra showerhead beside the toilet. I still haven’t worked out if it is for showering your ass, bidet-style or for cleaning the toilet with. I left well enough alone.
That animation is wrong. You’re not supposed to pull down your pants all the way down to your ankles. You just pull it down far enough to expose the necessary bits. That way your garmets are bunched up above your knees, safely out of harm’s way.
As for where the multi-functiona toilets are, our office bathroom has two stalls, one Western style and one Japanese style. The Western style toilet just got fitted wit a “washlet” with a warm water jet and heated seat. I usually use the Japanese style stall - I still find heated toilet seats a little creepy.
Hot water for showers in Ireland. Apparently the device is built that way for on-demand heating and for adjusting the water pressure to match that of cold. I think. In any event, every Irish B&B we stayed in had this Frankensteinian contraption for heating water that had three controls. None of them were labeled and it wasn’t clear exactly what they did, but they all had to be adjusted exactly right in order to get the proper temperature of water. We never did get the hang of it. And the units seemed to be different in every B&B.
The part I never figured out was how, in the complete absence of any towels, paper or otherwise, are you supposed to dry yourself off afterwards?!
In Germany, we stayed in a tiny hotel where the shower was inside the room. I was traveling with a male friend with whom I was not interested in romantic entanglement, despite his interest. It was awkward getting in and out of it while still maintaining the boundaries I wanted.
In Paris we had a toilet that was similar to an airline toilet. I guess it’s what you install in an ancient apartment when you add on an extra bathroom. Everything sank to a dry trap-door bottom, which was then flushed with high-powered spray when you pushed a button on the top of the tank. However, the spray wasn’t enough to really clean off the plastic or porcelain at times. Ugh and argh.
Towel warmers in Italy. Basically a hot water radiator stuck to the wall. Great idea, if a little over the top. Wish I had one of these.
Also, not quite a fixture, but another weird European bathroom thing is the emergency cords in all the hotel showers. I guess the idea is that if you fall down, you pull the cord and someone comes to help. Don’t know if I would use it even if I did fall down.
My very American college has those emergency cords in the showers. I think the idea (at my school, at least) is to use them in the event of someone unsavory getting into the bathroom and trying to hurt you. You pull the cord, it sets off the alarm, and everyone in the vicinity either goes “Jeez, not another alarm” or goes bravely to your rescue. One of those safety things.
Were these hotels, by chance, in perhaps a not-so-great section of town?
On two separate occasions I have stayed in cheap french hotel rooms where the entire en-suite rest room is also the shower. So to take a shower you have to remove the toilet paper into the bedroom, and the towels, and anything else that would be damaged if it gets wet. Then you can shower standing in the middle of the room. There was a drain in the middle of the floor, but in both locations it did not work very well and water flowed under the door and soaked some of the bedroom carpeting.
Emergency chords in the showers are quite common in europe, especially where the very old are likely to stay. I am sure if I wer old and broke a hip falling in the shower I would find such a thing very useful.
I just want to say that I love bidets. I don’t know why they haven’t caught on here. A quick jet of water is a far more enjoyable method for cleanin’ up than the usual system.
They have these in Russia too. I remember when I first went to Russia and of course the water doesn’t do much good for you the first couple of days. That made for a very interesting experience.
I will never understand though how people in both Germany and Russia have no shower curtains. How the hell do you take a shower? No matter what I tried I got water everywhere. I felt like an idiot after taking a shower.
These heated towel rails are quite common in the UK. As you said they are realy a modified radiator so that you can hang towels on them . Not much more expensive than an ordinary rad and you end up with nice warm towels.
This company sells a whole range :-
http://www.victoriaplumb.com/victoriaplumb_com_Heated_Towel_Rails_98.html
This was the case in southern Italy and parts of Greece. I slept through (read: was too hungover to wake up for) my drop off in Corfu, so I was forced to take a ferry from the mainland. It wasn’t a nice tourist ferry like I had been in the night before, it was strictly for the locals. Being hungover as I was, I was appalled to see that the bathroom on the ferry was of the hole in the floor variety, but I overcame the stench and proceeded in due to the questionable Italian meats of the day before mixed explosively with the Ferry beer of the night before; which pinned the needle of my sphincters pressure gauge to the wall.
The size of the wave that hit the ferry was dwarfed by the wave of nausea that hit me as I realized that this particular ferry had been long overdue in it’s responsibility in clearing the holding tanks’ contents. I moved faster than any hungover tourist in recorded history, barely having a moments time to yank my underwear up before flying out of the door. I watched in horror as hundreds of gallons of raw sewage spewed out from the holes, stopped only feet from me by the door well. The hot stench of fecal mist washed over me more effectively than the hot shower I jumped in thirty seconds after I checked into my room. I spent the rest of the voyage, curled up in a fetal position, as far up wind from that evil room as I could. The sweat from my brow twas but a trickle as compared to the sweat that was forming on the full length of my spine, all the way down to my tail bone. My sphincter muscles were tested to the breaking point. I’m sure the locals wondered why the pale, sweaty Yankee was walking so strangely down the gang plank. The resturant closest to the port required purchase for bathroom use. The gyro sat on the sink next to me, untouched, for I knew that my hands had touched it, so then therfore too, had the mist of a thousand Greeks. Little did they know, they could have charged me one thousand dollars for their untouched pita bread delight.
I didn’t touch their fare, but it will go down in history as one of my favorite resturants. Simply for it’s 4’ x 5’, unkempt, hot, dirty, tile-missing, trash can overflowing, mildew party of a bathroom with a modern sit down toilet.
I think a tear came to my eye.
I can’t match NurseCarmen’s extremely vivid story, but…
Key West is only theoretically part of the US. During the 8 years I lived there, 2 - count - 'em - two toilets in two different houses fell through the floor. The landlords were both somewhat lacadasical about repairs. Oh, and after the repairs, (a week or so later, on tropical time) the rents went up - after all, they’d made improvements!
minor7flat5, that electric-heated shower head is only used in bathrooms of, hmmm, “less fortunate” families (because they are dirt cheap), so I think you can’t say that the “typical Brazilian home” has them. The more upscale residences all have hot water systems, and the majority of these systems are of the “flash heaters” variety so well depicted by Chefguy.
Hmm, my parent’s apartment has the flash heater thing as well, but I find them to be less reliable than the electric shower head.
I think it depends on how old the house is. My grandparents house is pretty old and they still have some electic shower heads. I don’t think they get used much, but they still have them.
It appears that this is a regional thing: I showed your response to my wife, a carioca da gema, and she laughed.
She told me that the only place she ever found a hot water system was in her cousin’s home, a mansion even in comparison to those $500,000 monsters that are all the rage for US builders. In addition, she refered to some “upscale” homes in the Rio area, as well as Recife and Brazilia that she visited that also sported electric showers.
She did mention that some older buildings in Rio de Janeiro have something like the “flash heater” and that they were considered dangerous.
Nonetheless, she has a friend from Minas who, while not “upscale”, has a “boiler”.
Sadly, even going by the concept of “‘less fortunate’ families”, the devices would still vastly outnumber other systems, due to the sheer numbers of poor and lower-middle-class families.
minor7flat5, let’s file this under regional differences then. Here, in the southern states, almost every building made in the last 10 years (except for the most, hmmm, “popular” ones) has a “flash heater” installed as standard equipment. All my family members’, friends’ and colleagues’ apartments/houses have them.
And, as almost every piece of machinery, they are dangerous only if installed and/or operated incorrectly.
As an aside, the last generation of “flash heaters” doesn’t even need to have a “pilot flame” continuously burning. They turn themselves on and off automatically as required.
Ahhh, the German shelf toilet. Lets you see what a pile of crap really looks like. Their toilet paper leaves much to be desired too.
But, what always cracked me up is that in England *there are no electrical outlets or light fixture switches in the bathrooms * IE, you cannot blow dry your hair in the bathroom, youhave to do it in another room.
Logic behind it: You might be stupid enough to stand barefoot in a puddle of water and blow dry your tresses.
Actually, if you think about it, there’s at least one pratical reason for the “shelf” to be present in German toilets: no splash!