stricken on the way to Sweden

[krasnoludek]

Flight to Stockholm. We got up at 5:30 in the morning to plan a little extra time for getting to the airport. You see, today transportation strikes were planned in France and the metro and busses would not be running as frequently. Well, we got to Lyon's central train station no problem, and from there you hop on the brand new train that heads out

Comments

European toilets

[krasnoludek]

I'm really surprised you didn't encounter any of the two-button toilets in Europe. It's at least 70% of the toilets I encounter here, including both apartments we've stayed in and, for example, both hotels, the modern art museum and the university in Stockholm. The only exceptions I can readily think of are the toilets in my math department in Lyon and the occasional older style toilets with the water tank way above the toilet on the wall. I have encountered the toilets you talked about -- the toilet in our new apartment had that mechanism before it was replaced with the modern one because it was faulty -- but they're really not that common. Maybe more so in Poland, but I would not have guess it in most of the other places you visited on your trip.

I have to say, I rather do admire the two-water volume system here. The toilets use so much less water than in the US, which has the big basin of standing water and needs so much water to flush it all. On the other hand, the water not coming down in a vortex is so bad. It causes the exact problems you described. It seems like a minor change in positioning of the jets of water would fix things greatly. I also dislike the shape of the bowls -- several designs cause your poo to land on the porcelain instead of the water and then the poor flushing mechanism doesn't rinse it all off. This leads to the convention of having a toilet brush next to every toilet and you being expected to scrub the bowl after using in case something's left. It's a gross process in a public toilet because those toilet brushes aren't so clean themselves, and it could all be fixed with a slight reshaping of the basin. But, in slight defense of the European design, you at least don't risk any splashback, which is an awful aspect of US design, with its huge basin of water.