Europe is bathroom challenged!

I have been meaning to write about this very important subject for a while but I wanted to gather enough evidence. The  thing I miss most about the good old USA is the abundance of bathrooms.   I still don't understand how the French women do it.  It seems logical to me that if you drink wine in abundance..... you need a bathroom.  Forget bathrooms in department stores, government buildings, drugstores or any areas where large numbers of people congregate.  For what I can gather, the only place to find bathrooms (one bathroom) is in the restaurants.  So the logic is you pay for a drink and then use the bathroom.  The French have a nice racket going.

The French children and dogs have it easy.  We have seen 8 year old girls relieving themselves in the public street.  Little boys play aiming games from any angle of the busy streets and of course dogs have the run of the land.

There are a few pay as you go bathrooms, but they are not abundant.  I would be happy to budget a small fortune if I could solve my bathroom logistic problems.  But alas, not to be.  Given this scenario, it is not hard to imagine that I am very pleased to go to any bathroom regardless of size and condition.  I have been to one so tiny  that every time I moved my head, I set off the automatic hand dryer.  It startled me at first but I soon learned not to move my upper body.

My favored exotic bathroom experience was at the bathroom pictured, located at the Avignon Popes Gardens.  As you can see in the picture, it might appear to be a shower but it is toilet.  It has handles in both sides, where you hold yourself to keep you from falling in the hole.  The best way to describe it is it feels like you are ready to give birth.

On the other extreme, there are the super modern bathrooms that are so minimalistic it is hard to figure out how to turn the lights on.  My friend Dianne learned this fact the hard way.  She was ready to board the TGV (fast train) and she decided to go to the bathroom.  A lady was coming out and held the door open for her.  When the door closed behind her all hell broke loose. Water started to shoot out from all directions, getting her quite wet.  After the whole place had been  disinfected, the lights went out and she was engulfed by total darkness. 

By now she is thinking she is in some candid camera joke or a twilight-zone movie and wants the host to say: "smile you are in Candid Camera."  No such luck, as her heart is racing like crazy, she felt the walls with her hands until something clicked the lights on.  Moral of the story: don't try to sneak in one of these bathrooms without paying.  I am sure Dianne would have been happy to pay if she had known.  My guess is that Europeans would never have assumed it was free.