When you really have to go...

When travelling, toilets become an important topic - the good, the bad, the disgusting. These are some Kodak Moments I've collected over the years.

 

This is a public toilet somewhere in Lagos, a restaurant, I think. It's actually quite clean. Lagos tap water carries a considerable amount of sand and rust. Sometimes it flows clear, sometimes it's thick brown, and it always leaves a stain.

 

A public toilet on Bar Beach in Lagos; a real find considering there's still a seat.

 

This was in a Zulu village on a hilltop in Eshowe, South Africa. It wasn't really a proper toilet, just a porcelain bowl dropped on the ground. I doubt the locals actually used it, as the bowl was half-full of sand.

 

A hotel in Ankara, Turkey, summer of 1995. My first experience with a "Turkish Toilet".

Also Turkey, 1995, in the Ephesus ruins. Ephesus was a flourishing cultural center during the Greek Empire, and a provincial capital during Roman times.

The room was square with toilets lining three of the walls. In the center was a large fountain where numerous feather brushes hung. In the morning, the city elite spent hours here, conducting business and sharing gossip. Individuals would enter, grab a feather brush, and be seated according to social status. Running water flowed beneath the holes, right to left. Those with higher status sat upstream. When business was finished, the feather brush was dipped into the flowing water and used as toilet paper.

 

Seems to be a theme here. The ancient underground city of Derinkuyu, in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey.

The remains of over forty underground settlements have been discovered in Cappadocia, some accomodating up to thirty thousand people. The Hittites and early Christians, escaping Arab marauders, carved these communities from the soft volcanic sediment. Derinkuyu consists of eight floors reaching a depth of 170 feet, including stables, wine presses, dining halls, schools, living quarters, churches, armouries, and a dungeon. This communal toilet is a perfect cylindrical pit about 6 feet deep.

 

Twin outhouses at the entrance gate to the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It's not really as bad as it looks; the brown stain is from the sand used in the concrete.

  

A public toilet in Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania. In these toilets there's never paper but always a water bucket. Left is the hand of choice.

 

 

 

An outhouse in a Masai village on the slopes of the Ngorongoro Crater. The branch is helpful for those who like to linger.

 

First Class on a Romanian train. Fortunately, we didn't see 2nd Class.

Second Class on a Slovenian train.

A student dormitory in Krakow, Poland, 1995. The small door next to the sink gives the roaches equal access to every bathroom.

A haunting photo from the past; outside Krakow, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

 

 

 

Kizimkazi, on the southern end of Zanzibar Island, Tanzania. The sign outside reads, "For Help 200/SHS Each". I'm not sure what kind of help is for sale.

 

Again, no paper but the water-bucket is full.

 

 

 

 

A public urinal in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Not really a toilet, but an interesting bathtub/shower in a Zanzibar hotel.

In 1882, the Sultan Barghash of Zanzibar built the Maruhhubi Palace for one of his harems. An entire wing was dedicated to individual bath/toilets for each harem member. The baths are gone but the long line of toilets remain.

 

 

Last, but not least, mankind's most expensive toilet: the space station outhouse.

NASA brags that Pampers are a successful technology transfer from manned spaceflight's early days. With women in the corp and longer intervals between diaper changes, a re-design was in order. This was the design mockup at the time I worked in NASA-Houston in 1989. Today, I'm sure the working version has more (expensive) bells and whistles.

In zero gravity, everyone sits; there are no urinals. The specially designed seat provides a vacuum-tight seal and it's more of a suck than a flush. The hose on the lower right leads to a device where the man puts his, uh, you get the picture. The black circle at the top is actually the sink.