Do you remember discovering that some portion of your bathroom routine was starkly different from the routine followed by your peers?  Most likely, you came across some detail in college, when discussing personal hygeine habits with your friends.  Maybe you wad the toilet paper, but your friends fold? 

The only one I feel comfortable sharing here is the weird scatalogical nomenclature that I learned from my parents.  #2 was called a BM, short for “bowel movement.”  Now that is embarassing.  Everyone calls it poop.  “BM” sounds like something a scientist would say while observing a guinea pig.

Greta has a strange habit of using her toothbrush to flick water into her mouth after she brushes.  Personally, I put the toothbrush down and form a cup with my palms, like a civilized person.

I read somewhere that some design company ran a study of shower habits, and determined that most people spend the majority of their time in the shower trying to avoid the water, presumably so they can shampoo or soap up.

What I’d like to know is: what the F do Europeans DO in the bathroom?  There routines must be totally different!  For starters, their equipment is baffling.  We’ve stayed in about 10 hotels so far, and 1 had a shower curtain.  The shower head is attached to a long flexible metal tube.  It looks like fun at first: oh cool, I can spray myself anywhere I want!  But it quickly becomes tedious when you realize that there’s no way to shampoo or soap up, unless you put the thing down, and then it sprays all over the bathroom.  Since there’s no shower curtain, it drenches the walls, the toilet paper, the toilet, and often sprays into the main room and soaks the sheets.  Who wants to hold up a F-ing shower handle??  Why can’t they just screw it into the wall above your head?

Second, there are signs in every bathroom claiming that you are not supposed to flush toilet paper down the toilet.  Instead, there are trash cans located conveniently near the bowl.  This is downright disgusting.  (For the record, I hadn’t seen this in Spain, France, Italy, or the Netherlands, so this might just be a Greek island thing)  It’s bad enough that European toilets have a bone dry shelf directly at bulls-eye, which practically screams for a few immediate courtesy flushes….now I’m supposed to dispose of dirty TP in a F-ing wastepaper basket???    I followed protocal exactly once, and then decided to time my movements before showers.

Don’t even get me started on the strange “second toilet” in many European bathrooms.  When I studied abroad in Spain, I just assumed this strange apparatus was a women’s health item, and completely ignored it.   But I was recently made aware that it is, in fact, meant to be used by both genders.  Give me a break. 

To resolve these enigmas, I have 2 proposals:

1. To my European friends: please contact me with some answers.  Feel free to use the comments feature on my blog or on Facebook, or simply email me.  Or, if you’d rather do this face-to-face, simply pull me aside at a party and let me know what your routine consists of.
2. Alternatively, we could start some kind of reality television show (Pidgeon?) to chronicle the various bathroom patterns and habits around the world.  I’m sure the Japanese have some interesting cultural traditions to contribute.  You might call me a disgusting voyeuristic pervert, but my interest is purely practical, and I think there are enough people out there with similar questions that we might just make some money.