Musings on bathrooms, restaurants and other odds and ends

I figure that if you want to know what we've done as tourists, you're better off reading Ricardo's blog. I don't do very well describing those kinds of things and I just end up writing some sort of litany. I feel that complaining and making fun of things is really my milieu. So I am here to do just that.

When we were in Venice, we were treated to a lot of squat toilets. I took this as being a part of the fact that when you are a sinking city and you have water issues that antiquated plumbing comes with the territory.

Here is what I did not expect: Spain has a lot of toilets simply missing toilet seats. This is not, strictly speaking, a squat toilet clearly, but it necessitates squatting. In addition, Spain, like much of Latin America, has a thing where you throw the paper that you've used into a trash can instead of into the commode. I can live with these two things. They are not uncommon when traveling, (although unexpected in the first world), but I can let that pass.

Here is what I don't care for one bit. About half of all bathrooms lack soap. It's not that they are out of soap. They don't have any. And they never have had. In one café/bar we were in, I went to use the restroom (and actually this one did have soap) and a guy came out of the men's room with his cigarette in his hand (the men and women frequently share a sink) and made no attempt whatsoever to even rinse his hands. Just moved on. Sometimes, people use toilet paper to dry their hands which just makes the whole thing worse (and it's not like they used soap to begin with).

So basically, it seems that hygiene is not of concern here.

Now I get that we are overly concerned with hygiene in the US and I know as a teacher I am really fastidious about it. But I can't help wondering if this is a problem, the fact that people here so infrequently wash their hands carefully or well. It seems like it would be.

Another thing that is kind of odd here in Spain is the café/bar/restaurant. This is a place where you can go for a cup of coffee or for a rum and coke while your friend has a coffee. Or you can sit down and eat a meal. Or you can stand and eat a tapas. At 10am you can have a beer. At 1am you can have a coffee. There is always food, drink, smoking (which I think is obligatory) and all of it is in the same place. Imagine a Starbucks where you can sit down to a steak and a glass of wine with a full bar. It's kind of like that. Also the prices are different if you're sitting, standing or perching. If you sit at a table, it's more than if you stand. If you perch on a stool it's more than if you stand, but less than if you sit. Weird huh?

Finally, some thoughts about driving in Spain. There are some truly bizarre road signs in Spain. The Spanish are much more creative when making traffic signs than we are. Of course this means that the signs are also much more open to interpretation than ours. Here are my two favorites.

I think this one means that speed is checked by radar. Or it means that the aliens will be sterilizing all of us as we enter town.

This one is also great. This one either means that the motorcycles that follow too closely to cars will be in trouble if they hit the seams in the bridge or that they cannot successfully mate with cars because they are another species.