Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Italians rarely ask to use the bathroom when visiting friends. But, being foreigners, it took
us a long time to notice this, so we had ample opportunity to conduct our field research.
It's fair to say that bathrooms in Italy in private homes are always immaculate. From what
we've seen, they approach a standard of almost Germanic cleanliness. Bathrooms in pub-
lic places, however, are an entirely different matter. With rare exceptions they range from
wholly inadequate to thoroughly disgusting. It's a strange form of cultural schizophrenia.
To entertain ourselves inexpensively when we travel around Italy, we sometimes rate the
bathrooms using a very simple star-award system. The facilities get one star for each of
the following: a door that latches shut; a toilet seat; toilet paper; soap and water to wash
your hands; a towel or blower to dry your hands. It's sad to say but five-star toilets are still
rarer than hen's teeth in much of Italy, and one-star toilets abound. In the States these days
you'd have to frequent an off-brand gas station in a desolate area to find a two or three-star
toilet. In Italy, you'll find them in elegant cafes, restaurants, museums, and theaters. It's a
shocker when you leave the wall-to-wall mirrors and polished wood counters of an elegant
bar, descend the marble staircase, and find a bathroom with no toilet seat, no soap, and a
broken hand dryer. The elegant clientele ascend the marble staircase drying their hands on
their slacks…
We asked Italian friends about the frequent absence of toilet seats, and they helped to fill in
the blanks. Apparently, the toilet seats are there originally but, then, they break. The seats
break, you see, because people stand on them. People stand on them because they are not
kept clean enough to sit on. Eventually, after being broken repeatedly, they are no longer
replaced for one of two reasons. Either the proprietors decide there's no point in continuing
the cycle, so they consign their toilet to the ranks of the seatless. Or, they try without luck
to find a replacement seat and eventually abandon the quest.
Referring to his native France, Charles de Gaulle once asked: “How would you propose to
governanationwith246varieties ofcheeses?” OnemightequallyaskaboutItalyhowany-
one can propose to maintain a bathroom in a land with 246 varieties of toilet seats. Home
Depot in the States, as best as I can recall, had two sizes of seats to choose from: regular
and extended. The same type of do-it-yourself supply store in Siena, Mr. Brico, although
one-tenththesizeofHomeDepot,offersatleast50differentsizesandshapesarrayedalong
the length of a store wall. The seats differ in length, in width, in the sweep of the curves, in
the distance between the bolt holes…
When it came time for us to replace our toilet seat, I walked boldly into the store, made an
educated guess at the size we needed, brought it home, and saw immediately that I wasn't
even close. As I contemplated my return trip, I considered bringing in the original toilet
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