confused about foreign showers...

[once_a_banana]

I know folks do thing differently over here (came in to Berlin today), but I'm just not at all sure about what one is supposed to do given that the shower isn't sunk into the floor... and the floor is continuous out to the rest of the bathroom, and the whole floor becomes a lake whenever you take a shower. Yes, there's a small rubber grid one can

Comments

[anadamous]

I wonder what things Americans do that are equally crazy. Obviously we do a lot of crazy things, like eat Doritos, but I mean, really obviously in-the-moment self-defeating.

Also: showers in Iceland, Britain, and France seemed to be self-contained. This may just be a crazy German thing.

[once_a_banana]

Ha! That makes it even more crazy that this guy thinks "all showers in the world" simply spill their contents all over an otherwise lovely clean and dry bathroom.

[easwaran]

The shower in Konstanz was the nicest thing about the hotel room, and also totally self-contained (though there was some spillage that then remained because there was no drain in the bathroom).

[once_a_banana]

Oh and yeah, I think we are chock full of things that everyone seems to do that are pretty nuts. Off the top of my head I start thinking of politics (like the lack of conflict many voters seem to have with a reasoning process that goes something like.... "I wanted these guys to fix these problems, but because their opponents did everything in their power to stop them, and they therefore didn't do as well as I wanted, I'm going to vote for those same opponents in the next election because goddammit, I'm mad at this incumbent who failed to do the job he/she was elected for!" i.e., *facepalm*....) -- but I think that probably doesn't count, since it's something that at least 40% or so of us Americans think is completely crazy too.

Maybe... continuing to drive the market toward adopting all kinds of unsustainable things based on corn corn corn?

... or our ridiculous, inflationary tipping practices?

... the fact that we still give change in pennies?

...

[lhn]

The thing that weirded me out when I was in Europe too many years ago was the lack (in some places) of shower curtains. Especially when I rented a room in a home in Budapest: how do I take a shower without soaking these people's bathroom? (I never really found a satisfactory answer, but they never complained, and they seemed to like me, so I can hope that there wasn't some trick I was missing.)

Re planes, I'm glad you had a good one. My last transoceanic flight (to China) was fourteen hours in a seat that made Southwest look positively spacious. It was bizarre: the accommodations were as high tech as they came, with personal screens with a huge variety of TV, movies, music, etc., all included. But the screen was about five inches in front of your face, and you got to know the person sitting next to you very well. (At least my row was all people from the program I was on, so it was a bonding experience

[once_a_banana]

Wow, amazing! Definitely reminds me of Chinese buses.... (my flights to and from China were on perfectly satisfactory Korean Air 747s... yummy hot pepper paste in a tube!)

[lhn]

Our previous trip on United was fine, too. Though that was back when they had "Economy Plus" available, which offered a little extra space without the luxury (or concomitant big surcharges) of business class or above.

[once_a_banana]

Oh, and I might add, the Air Berlin flight attendants were wonderfully.... uh... "perky", and wonderfully German about it too. As in, the friendly and somehow deliciously German woman at the top of their homepage is totally not false advertising! Still don't recommend them for European internal flights though. Apparently they used to barely be a step above Ryanair, and the domestic flight still seemed to cling to that heritage. We're talking, a couple steps below Southwest; seriously reminded me of the bad old days of ATA...

[robco]

We got one of the pod rooms at a long layover at LHR that had that. But the floor was somewhat sloped in the shower area. There was also a long-handled squeegee to push water toward the drain. But at least at our hotel in London, they had a proper shower.

[once_a_banana]

See, that would've been perfect! I was actually looking for a squeegee, but none was to be found. Also, the floor is virtually flat... if anything, it does drain away from the toilet a little bit, but kind of goes towards the door to the main room rather than back into the shower (d'oh!) -- at least there's a barrier there so it doesn't go out in the room. A barrier that, HMMMMM! could have served us well at the edge of the shower itself!

[robco]

You'd think the gerrys would include one, or at least make sure the water stays where it's supposed to...

[fengshui]

Yeah, usually when I've seen that the floor is slightly sloped towards the drain, and you don't just very hard water pressure. There's a little spray, but not a lot.

[once_a_banana]

Someone suggested to me that Germans use much less water, which sounded reasonable -- like, just get all wet, then turn it off, soap up and such, and turn it back on to rinse. All very reasonable, except this shower (which has actually very strong water pressure, and a lot of water volume) stays on until you step out: it has a sensor. So doing conserving water like that requires stepping out of the shower for a second right after getting all wet, kind of screwing up the whole "I don't want to get water all over the floor in front of the toilet" thing. *Sigh*...

[lucubratrix]

I haven't ever encountered this design before. But, I do know that in my house wearing shoes inside was always a big no-no, so I don't see where the mud is coming from. Just throw down a bathmat at the entrance and call it a day.

[once_a_banana]

The mud is coming from the fact that nobody is going to walk around in their socks or bare feet in a lake of water, so we take what footwear we have, and put it on our feet...

A bathmat would be a reasonable idea, though it would immediately be sopping and probably wouldn't actually stop the flow (actually it might make it take longer to dry out). You have to realize: the shower curtain billows out, half the water just goes right on the main bathroom floor -- if you pointed your shower at home out onto the bathroom floor, a bathmat just wouldn't cut it.

[lucubratrix]

I meant at the door to the room for drying off your bare feet afterwards. :)

But this sounds like a poorly executed design that should have a floor slope nad a squeegie. But, I have never seen a shower like this in Germany before.

[krasnoludek]

when I've seen bathmats in this kind of bathroom, they are rubber slats linked together, so you are a bit elevated above the water and the material doesn't sop things up.