Part I: The land of Gouda and startlingly throaty g's

As many of you who no longer read my blog because I rarely post know, I am now in Amsterdam with Ozzie as he prepares to re-enter the world of academia. I've been here now for one week and as one would expect from any new foray into a different culture, much has been taken in, and much remains to be processed. I will begin with a few observations and an accounting of some particularly odd experiences.

As anyone who is even remotely familiar with Amsterdam is aware, the city contains some of the most interesting architecture in all of Europe. If you look up at the rowhouses, you'll see that every one of them has a hook at the top, through which a long rope can be strung and furniture hoisted to any of the many-storied windows. One will also notice that the buildings all seem to be tilting outwards, the top front of each buildings jutting out noticeably more than the bottom. This is so that as furniture is being hoisted upwards, it doesn't bang against the front of the structure. Simple, yet ingenious. The Dutch are like this in just about everything they do--simple, yet ingenious. Even the hundreds of bridges that criss-cross the canals are obviously built with great care in both design and efficiency. And this attention to design does not stop when it comes to ordinary household appliances. Think Ikea only with substantially more class and substantially less chance of snapping in half after just a few months. All of this is why I am completely dumbfounded by their toilets.

Let's begin with a review of familiar toilet construction, at least as it is known in the good ole' US of A. Round (or sometimes oval) bowl, filled about half-way with water, with a hole at the bottom back of said bowl. You may not have realized this, but the water is a very important feature of the Number 2 evacuation process, decreasing the amount of unappealing vapors that escape into the air. More explicitly stated, the poop drops into the water and, depending on diet, either floats or sinks to the bottom, and then is quickly and efficiently flushed away to never neverland. Or is it the nether netherlands. Except for the occasional splash, the system works pretty well. Now contrast this will the most popular toilet in the land of smoked salmon and legal marijuana. Round bowl at the top, but look inside the bowl and you will find a flat shelf with an edge that drops down to a hole at the front bottom of the bowl. That hole has a bit of water down there, but the shelf I mentioned has barely a puddle. Now I'm all for water conservation, but think about this for a moment. In case the above description is not lucid enough, let me bring it home. Due to the design of this toilet, one poohs onto a shelf(!) The pooh then sits there, almost completely free of water, until one of several possible hidden buttons in the room are pushed so that the pooh is washed off of the shelf and down through the hole. Meanwhile, the vast pooh-to-air exposed surface area allows for the maximum degree of vapor escape, creating a sort of Chamber of Excretions (Rouling's next title), in which you must steep until finished. I won't even get into the efficiency or lack thereof with which the water is able to fully wash the undesirable, mortality-reminding, material away. Don't even get me started on that inspiring design feat. Every time I need to use a toilet, I simply cannot understand how this made it through the boardroom. If it were the US, I would speculate on the influence of air-freshener lobbyists to the toilet industry, but that would be too cynical here in "Old Europe."

Next installment: Attack of the Strung-Out Homeless Woman.