I've had a long standing love/hate relationship with toilets.  I grew up in a series of old beautiful houses most of which were built before 1930.  When you buy an old house, you are also buying old plumbing.  You can't get away from it--it's a part of bargain.  What does this mean?

Well it means that I've plunged a lot toilets, I've taken the lid of the back of more toilets that I can name to check out their inner workings, I've flushed dozens of times with my fingers crossed that nothing bad will happen and I've had to cut the water to the toilet at the wall before as well.

What does this kind of training and up-bringing do to a girl? For starters, I always look to see if there's a plunger near by--you truly never know when you are going to need it.  I think that it's folly to carpet a bathroom and I will never ever do this.  But it also means that when the handle to one of our toilets broke in DC on a Friday night of a long weekend, I was able to fix the problem with some dental floss and duct tape until the plumber could come on Tuesday.

So that's it: I am hyper-aware of toilets, plumbing and construction but I also live in constant fear of toilets.  They are one of those things that you need and you need to have working but there are so many things that can and do go wrong with them.  When something goes wrong you have to be ready and prepared and at some point, they will misbehave. And the rest of my post is about this: toilets and preparation. <!--more-->

Before I left DC, my old roommate told me a horror story of going to visit his grandmother this past summer and her incorrigible toilet.  The short story is that it turns out that the grandmother's toilet was acting up but she didn't own a plunger.  When I heard this I could only thing to myself: what kind of person doesn't own a plunger?

Well, she had more people using her toilet than normal--a sure fire way to make a finicky toilet act up.  Of course, a toilet will always back up at the worst possible time.  In this case, when there are guests visiting.  My roommate offered to go and buy a plunger.  His grandmother declined, apparently she didn't think she needed to own one, and instead knocked on all of her neighbors doors until she found someone who would loan his plunger to her.

I have a hunch he did so to get the crazy woman off of his front steps not because he actually wanted to loan her his plunger and they fixed the toilet.  Still I can't help but wonder: what kind of a person would prefer to broadcast the fact that her toilet is backed up to her entire neighborhood than spend the $10 necessary for a plunger of her own?  It's not like it's a bad investment (and it's her grandson's money).

So here I am living in Sofia in a great centerally located aparatment.  The bathroom is completely tiled--the floor and all four walls--my landlord said something to me on the first day about my bathroom being one big shower. Heck, there is even a drain in the middle of my bathroom floor as well as in my shower to support this idea.  The toilet though is older but up until this post we seem to have an understanding and it has yet to act up.

For this I am thankful.  I am thankful because I don't really know what I would do if there is a problem.  Rather than having a handle to flush my toilet and being able to look in to the back of the tank by removing the lid there is only a single button that sticks out of the wall behind the toilet.  I push this to flush the toilet.  Early on I was told not to push the button for too long and I try to abide by this. I try not to imagine what might happen if I pressed the button for too long.

Luckily, I know where the water cut off is but still I worry about the night I get up to go the bathroom and something happens.  This will be the night I have to cut the water and call my landlord, wake him up and try to explain to him in BULGARIAN that there is something seriously wrong with my toilet.  This said, in the beginning I used the bathroom with trepidation and now it's just a nagging worry that most of the time I can push to the back of my mind.

This brings me to toilets in Europe.  There are so many different kinds and styles.  It strikes me as kind of strange.  I've traveled widely in the United States and it seems to me that really we only have two different kinds of toilets.  The first is the kind that everyone has his their homes--usually porcelain with a tank and a small handle--and then there is the kind that you see in schools or in public rest stops on the highway--usually procelain without a tank and a big leaver that you can flush with your foot.  However here in Europe, there seems to me many, many different styles of toilets.

There is the toilet with the tank on the wall and you pull a string or chain to flush the toilet.  There is the toilet with the 1/2 flush and full flush button.  Note: I've always tried to use the 1/2 flush and then compare it to the full flush but frankly, I can't tell the difference.  Some bathrooms you can flush the toilet paper down the toilet others, like my bathroom you have to throw it out in the waste bin next to the toilet.

Then there are public toilets.  In Bulgaria, like most of Europe, you must pay to use these bathrooms.  After you've paid you are usually entitled to a square or two of toilet paper and use of something resembling a western toilet--if you are lucky. If you are unlucky (or I guess lucky depending on how you look at it), you will find a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet" target="_blank">squatting toilet</a>.

I knew about the squatting toilet before I came to Bulgaria.  I had read about it in travel guides and heard about it from friends who had lived in Bulgaria and Turkey but for me it wasn't until I saw one that I really began to think about how it works and how as the user I fit into the equation.  Also the first time you see a squatting toilet and you realize that you've just paid money to use it, I think your heart kind of sinks or at least mine did.

It seems to me one thing to squat and pee outside when you are camping and a whole other thing to do so inside.  It's the logistics I think.  First the bathroom seems dirtier.  In part because the bathroom floor is always wet given the way flushing the toilet works.  This makes it hard to tell what's what.  Then comes the question of where you're supposed to stand and the best way to turn around in the bathroom stall to stand there.  The toilets do have "markings" for where you are supposed to stand but these seem preciously close to the hole and again everything is wet. Once you're in position the fear for me is what if I do something wrong and I pee on myself?

For me, this is not an unfounded fear.  First off, I haven't done a lot of squatting in my life--either camping or elsewhere.  Second, I usually have to use these toilets when I am traveling around Bulgaria (for example in the train station, hiking on Vitosha and on a trip to Greece) so what happens if there is a judgment error on my part--then what?  Finally, I didn't grow up using these toilets and I am kind of scared of trying new things.

Luckily, to date, I haven't had any problems using one of these toilets but I do like to make sure that I have the bathroom door unlocked and ready to open before I flush the squatting toilet.  This way, if need be, I can get out of the stall <em>fast</em>. I don't want to know what could happen to my shoes if something went wrong with one of these toilets.  So I try to make my get away after flushing as quick as possible.

In conclusion, I think it should be noted here that it is always wise to carry around travel size kleenex as it is very, very likely that you will find yourself without toilet paper in Bulgaria.  At my school for example, teachers have a separate bathroom from the students and it's kept fairly clean but the school does not provide toilet paper for the user.  Also I like to carry around a little bottle of hand sanitizer with me because most bathrooms doesn't have hot water or soap.

So my motto: be prepared.  Be prepared for anything and send a little prayer to the toilet gods now and then for good measure.