After my last post about <a href="http://karolinkabulgaria.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/toilets/" target="_blank">toilets</a>, I think, I promised my MoM that I wouldn't blog about toilets again.  Seemed like a pretty easy promise to keep.  Until this week.

My blog tracks how people come to my blog (mostly from google RSS feeds and facebook) but it also show me what terms people search to find my blog.  Well, this week my post on <a href="http://karolinkabulgaria.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/toilets/" target="_blank">toilets</a> from more than a month ago started getting almost as many hits as my posts on the natural gas crisis.  I thought this was strange and then when this search showed up today: "bulgaria the toilet of europe" (along with "bulgaria and squat toilet" and "bulgaria + turkish toilet") I knew I had to write another post on toilets.

Here's the thing, it turns out that Czech artist David Cerny created the concept a huge installation sculpture called "Entropa" which is a map of sorts of the 27 EU countries.  It was unveiled on Monday (January 12th)  in Brussels in "honor" of the Czech EU presidency.  The sculpture is described  by the<a href="http://praguemonitor.com/2009/01/13/czechs-unveil-controversial-map-europe-brussels" target="_blank"> Prague Daily Monitor</a> as being made up of puzzle pieces representing the stereotypes and cliches of each country.   Each individual country-puzzle-piece was made by an artist of the country.  <!--more-->

Bulgaria makes it's debut on the map as a big Turkish toilet.  And this is why my blog all of a sudden has lot of new traffic.

I figure I'd better look into the installation piece and found footage on youtube. You can check out the whole piece all 4+ minutes of it but it's kind of painful.  The resolution is pretty bad and the camera just tapes each country for a while.  Also, there's no sound only static.  So I watched the first 2:55 minutes of the clip so you don't have to--unless you're into that kind of thing.  At minute 2:57 or so, Bulgaria makes an appearance on the video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2SKLSM1cw4&amp;feature=channel]

Maybe you wish you could see a better picture of Bulgaria.  I found one on <a href="http://dancull.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/entropa-fake-artists-and-offense-brilliant/" target="_blank">this blog</a> and another interesting take on the piece.  This blog suggests that the same artist David  Cerny did the whole piece.  Interesting.  I don't know if it's true or not.

So as you can see from the video, the good thing about one of these toilets is that on the porcelain on either side of the whole there are feet marks indicating where you should put your feet while you pee.  (Hint, Hint: covering the hole which a foot while you go is not a good plan.)

If you pause and study the clip, you will see that the whole surface area of Bulgaria is cover with squatting toilets all linked together.  I just want to clarify and reassure anyone thinking about coming to visit me (hint, hint) that the country is not actually covered in squatting toilets.  This piece is supposed to point out prejudices and stereotypes that Europeans hold about various country in the EU.  Just so you know, I've only run into squatting toilets on Vitosha Mt, in the train station, in convenience stores/roadside stores while traveling and apparently they are still in the bathrooms students in my high school use.  Oh and most of these places you have to pay to use the squatting toilet and you're lucky if you get two squares of toilet paper.

I guess squatting toilets are just a lot funnier than the rampant corruption our country is also know for (and it's pretty clear that no one in Brussels is laughing about that).   But is Bulgaria the toilet of Europe? No way.  There's a lot of great stuff happening here.