Today, I am writing about  one of my favorite topics. Toilets and toilet paper.

Okay, maybe it's not my <em>favorite</em> topic but it's one that I find myself thinking about a lot.

Where's the toilet paper?

In fact, I just searched my blog for "toilet paper" because I was sure that I must have written about it before. Nope. <em>Phew</em>. (But I did stumble on this long forgotten post about <a href="http://karolinkabulgaria.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/toilets/" target="_blank">my love/hate relationship with toilets</a> a post that I wrote my first year in Bulgaria. For the record, I am still afraid of most toilets.)

It turns out that now that I am starting my third year of blogging I can't always remember what I've written about. I was sure that I must have written about toilet paper before now but I guess not.  I am not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Well, I mean, clearly it's a good thing because it means that I can write about it now--it's the remembering thing that concerns me a little bit more than not writing about toilet paper.

Okay back to the point, toilet paper. If you're American, toilet paper is second nature. It's not something one spends a lot of time thinking about toilet paper. Unless it's no longer there.

Enter Bulgaria.<!--more-->

Toilet paper outside of the home? Ha. Not likely. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen toilet paper in a cafe or at my school.  And I generally think of my school as a civilized place. (For the record it is, there's just never any toilet paper outside of the administrative building.)

So what does this mean? Civilization = toilet paper? No I am not claiming that, yet. But in reality, it means that you've got to tote your own around.

Now toting a roll of toilet paper around would be awkward and bulky (but it would be great in case you decided you need to toilet paper someone's house). Nope there's no need to even consider the roll of toilet paper because there are  little purse packets of tissue paper/kleenex double which can toilet paper. These little packets are so effective that I've stopped thinking about them as kleenex. It's just pre-cut toilet paper squares.

I get why there's not toilet paper in public bathrooms in Bulgaria--it's a combination of the attitude "it's not my job" with "why should I pay for that?" and dose of "no toilet paper?" plus the shoulder shrug. I also suspect that the distributors of toilet paper in bathrooms like these fear that the roll or rolls will be stolen by the user of the toilet.

But really why would I do that? I don't need a roll of cheep one-ply pressed brown toilet paper in my purse. I really don't. I've got my own toilet paper at home.

Still it begs the question: why do I think that toilet paper is a right anyway?

The simple answer? Because that's what I've grown up with.

So. Question: where's the toilet paper? Answer: in my purse. I know, I know. I wish there was a better punch line too. The only thing that might make it better would be some profanity but that's not my style. And even then I am not sure that it would actually be funny.<em> Sorry</em>.

Anyhow, stay tuned for my next riveting blog post on types of toilet paper. Um, or not. That seems painfully boring and I <em>like</em> toilet paper.