Feeling flush in France
Even when travelling in other western countries, subtle differences in everyday appliances and widgets can sometimes leave you feeling as flummoxed as a 5-year-old.
I’ve been feeling like an idiot a lot lately. When you reach my age, you’re pretty confident that you know how things work. Coffee makers, toilets, grocery checkout counters, fridges, faucets, etc. Then you go to a foreign country and you start feeling like a 5-year-old who needs an explanation of how to work the toilet.
Yes! That’s me! I spent about 10 minutes the other day trying to figure out how to flush the john in my Airbnb. I kept pushing the button but it wouldn’t budge. I looked for another level or something, but none was at hand. Fortunately, the host lives here as well. So I sheepishly closed the door behind me and went out to the living room.
“Um. This may sound like a dumb question. But how do you flush the toilet?”
He knew I was from Canada, but the look on Christophe’s face said he thought I’d just landed from Betelgeuse V. “Bien, on le tire!”
Pull it? You pull it??? I hadn’t thought of that. All the flush toilets I had heretofore encountered in the world required some kind of pushing, levering, hosing or, in some cases, nothing more than standing back and letting it flush itself.
French toilets, to that point in my life, had mostly consisted of a circular button divided into two ying-and-yangish spheres, one for a wee flush and the larger one for major movements. But you PUSH the buttons, you don’t pull them. What French plumbing genius had decided that gripping the lever between two or more fingers and pulling UP was better than using one finger (or elbow) and pressing DOWN?
Anyway, armed with this important information, I returned to the WC, proudly pulled the lever and heard the satisfying whoosh of a royal flush.
WC, did I say? Yes, in most places in France (and many other countries) it’s common to have separate facilities for the toilet (WC) and the place where you wash up. WC is short for Water Closet and the term is as commonly used and recognized in Europe as the Euro. Although I can see the logic behind keeping cleaning and crapping in separate rooms—not the least of which is that it lets once person shave while another … shifts—it takes some adjustment for us poor North Americans who historically have responded to the demand for household bathroom time by simply increasing the number of household bathrooms.
And don’t say bathrooms! Especially not in French. They will laugh you out of the room. “No, messieur. I am afraid our restaurant does not supply baths to our clients, but we will be ’appy to let use use our toilettes.”
One public washroom—sorry, toilet—that I went to use in a rural French town had two stalls, one for men, the other for women. It wasn’t until I closed the men’s stall door that I realized there actually was no toilet, just a concave porcelain-lined hole in the ground with a safety bar on the wall that allowed you to hold yourself steady over the hole. There was also a hose whose purpose I really didn’t want to contemplate. Fortunately, the lack of toilet paper gave me the moral authorization, I thought, to reverse course and use the empty women’s stall, with proper toilet, next door.
In general, tho, the French are much more progressive than we are about public facilities. There are toilets for the general public available in many popular sites, with signs pointing you to the nearest. (No doubt there’s an app for that, too. The CrapApp??) I’ve even seen alleys that are designated for public urination, but my nose alarm discouraged further investigation. But let’s get off the pot now, shall we?
In another Airbnb, I was arranging my fresh groceries in the fridge when I realized there was no place to store my frozen microwave meal. The fridge was 100% fridge! No freezer compartment. How bizarre, I thought. So once more I asked the hostess one of the dumb questions I feel I am becoming famous for across France.
“Don’t you have a congélateur?” Again, she gave me a look like I just got off a flying saucer. “Of course we have a freezer. It’s right over there!” In the opposite corner of the kitchen in a box that looked like just another cabinet unit, covered in the host’s extensive collection of concert stickers, she opened up a six-foot tall freezer full of miscellaneous meats and mishegoss.
Okay, that was admittedly a stupid question. Of course they have freezers in France, I just didn’t know that they sometimes aren’t in the fridge.
Speaking of which, don’t look for the dryer, most people here don’t have one. There are some varieties of washers which also have a drying function, but I haven’t seen many. And even then, it’s only used in emergencies when you can’t wait six hours for mom’s favourite blouse to dry before the big party. The machines here will do it damp dry in two hours. Nope, the French hang you out to dry, for the most part. You’ll see evidence of this across the home, from the bathroom to the kitchen to the balcony where the first ill wind could drop your Calvin Kleins three floors down onto some poor cyclist’s head. This works out pretty well here in the south, when you’ve got enough clothespins and the wind doesn’t pick up too much, but I wonder how cold your culottes get at your cabin in the French Alps.
It’s these simple and sometimes subtle differences in the way everyday items work, from electrical switches to window shutters to traffic signals that can leave you feeling like, well, a stranger in a strange land.
But don’t worry about it. We’ll get them back when they come to Canada and they can’t figure out why no one told them that faucets with a “C” on them deliver cold water rather that “eau chaud,” or why so few dépanneurs have tow trucks. Or why our stop signs say “Arrêt” instead of “stop.”
À bientôt.