Travel With Betsy

I have not told a “pooh” story on this trip yet, as I usually do. Truth be told, we haven’t actually had a really good “pooh” story to tell yet. But, we HAVE had some tales to tell that definitely skirt around the issue. I have been storing them up, waiting for an opportunity to slide them into one of the posts. Sadly, there hasn’t been a great opportunity, so I decided to dedicate a post to the “pooh related experiences” (or “PRE” for short). Fun times!

Our first encounter was on our very first ride from Berlin to Hamburg. We were on one of the best trains we have had so far on our trip (not the Rail Jet, but a very acceptable second). As this was our first ride together on this trip, we were all still fresh and were excitedly chatting about what we would see next, what we would have for dinner, etc.

As we chatted on, a slight breeze wafted into the car where we were sitting. It was followed a very pungent, sulfur-like smell. Carrie’s young nose was the first to notice. She looked at me and then I caught wind of the odor. I looked at Mike and then Gene, and then they caught on as well. Clearly someone had let a “fluffy” go!….and, it wasn’t one of us! Who was it?!

We all started to laugh and began to look around. There were only 2 other people in the car with us….2 larger women who were perusing the cafe car menu. Had to be one of them! There was no one else. And…..it was a cloying type. 10 minutes later, we could still smell this and were hoping it wouldn’t stick to our clothing!

After awhile, the women and the smell left us and we were glad. But, it did give us a group signal to use for other things to come! Group signals are very important when traveling in numbers. We have smelled some interesting things…mostly on the trains…and each time, we now perk our heads up, looking for the 2 women from the train. We never see them, but the memory lingers. HA!!

This is a traveling group that makes good use of the bathrooms as we travel. Carrie and I are avid water drinkers, so you know what that means. Mike, Gene and I are just aging and you probably know what that means as well. The 4 of us have probably visited just about every bathroom in the 4 country area that we have visited on this trip. We can tell you about all of them. But, here are some of the best ones that we saw:

In Bratislava, the bathroom in the restaurant where we ate was just fine. It was very clean and provided good facilities. And, it was free because we had lunch there. We always like this part, as you might guess. Gene was the first one to go. When he came back, he told us that we all needed to go back and take a look. We all did….

Because of the language barrier in the different countries (Bratislava was particularly difficult…buy a vowel….remember?!), it is sometimes difficult to know which bathroom is for men and which for women. This restaurant decided to remove all doubt by posting a picture on each door. The men’s room had a cartoon-like picture of a man turned facing away from the viewer. His pants were at half-mast and his substantial butt and “crack” were showing. He was slyly looking back at the viewer with a grin on his face. You could see the arc of a steady stream of “pee” heading right into the toilet.

The woman’s room had something similar, albeit not quite as graphic. It’s harder to get the point across with women, if you know what I mean. In this case, the woman was sitting on the commode and facing the wall. Her equally substantial butt cheeks were pointing out to the viewer. She wasn’t looking out at the viewer, but at the wall, with a strained look on her face. Wonder what was going on there?!

In any case, we found this depiction of the men’s and women’s bathrooms to be pretty amusing. It made me wonder about the size and countenance of people in this country. The butt cheeks on these pictures were quite ample and both had some interesting facial expressions as they were doing their business. But (or butt…tee hee!), we did get to the right bathroom. No questions asked and had a good laugh in the meantime!

The other picture we saw that was highly entertaining and gave us pause for thought was one that we saw as we were exiting a restaurant where we ate dinner in Castelrotto. It was one of those red circle with a line through it signs (you know the ones…indicating that you shouldn’t do something or another right there). This one had a picture in the circle with a line through that reminded me of the Mannekin Pis in Brussels, the little boy with the arc of pee. I guess they didn’t want you to go to take a pee right there. You don’t need to tell us twice. Although, it wouldn’t have been our spot of choice anyway…right there in the doorway of the restaurant. HMMMMM…..

The next encounter was on the train to Bratislava. We thought we were getting on the Rail Jet train. I talked about this one on the last post…..really nice, first class, leather seats, great service…….Sadly, we were not on this train, but on a Slovakian train that had no first class. It’s OK, there was lots of room and it seemed clean enough.

About a half hour in, Carrie announced that she would use the bathroom. A few minutes later, she came back with a pale face. She sat down and crossed her legs. After a time, she looked up and said that she would never need to go to the bathroom badly enough to use the bathroom on this train. She had checked out 2 of them, and they were the same. Gene didn’t believe her and went to check it out himself. He came back and confirmed that they were the dirtiest bathrooms he had ever seen and he would not be using them, either. Apparently, they had ring around the collar that ever a good dose of Clorox wouldn’t remove….a brown, thick scum, really. Nice…..

Lastly, yesterday, when wine tasting in Eppiano, near Bolzano, we all saw and made use of a Unisex type bathroom. There were 2 stalls, one was for men and the other for women. In between there was a urinal……no door! These Italians are not a very modest group! Oh well…..I was grateful that I was the only one in there at the time. I get those horrible laughing fits from time to time. Watching a strange man using a urinal as I exit my bathroom stall would surely have triggered one of these. I don’t really need this, as I have picked up a cold and am having some difficulty breathing. No reason to expire.

I’m sure we will have a few more of these “PRE” sightings, and I’ll try to keep you posted we do. I know you will be “relieved” to hear about them!

Cheers!

This entry was posted on October 20, 2013 at 8:13 am and is filed under Europe, Group Travel, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.