Travels: Toilets

This is a restroom at Warsaw.  Circle = female. Triangle = male.  Yes, I was puzzled when I first heard about these signs on a travel forum and then I saw one with my own eyes at the National Museum in Warsaw.

Every country I got to seems to have slightly different restrooms.
First, there's the matter of what we even call them. European non-native English speakers call it toilet. It's also the word written on signs for public restrooms. This sounded vulgar to me at first but then I too started to call restrooms toilets.

Then there are the stalls. But all European restrooms "stalls" aren't stalls because the toilets are separated from the adjacent toilet by solid walls -- yes that go all the way up to the ceiling and down to the floor.That "foot-tapping" scandal involving some politician (or was it an evangelical preacher?) wouldn't happen in Europe.

Danish restrooms are unique for having er ... feminine hygiene product disposal bins that are just plastic bags suspended by a piece of metal attached to the wall. I didn't see these anywhere else except, I think, Norway.  Like so:

It's also very common in public restrooms and bathrooms at home to have two water levels for flushing, indicated by the bigger and smaller buttons. Oh I almost forgot! The fact that the flush is operated by a button ABOVE the toilet is different from the States too.

I'll also never forget a discussion among members of bidet using cultures (two Italian and Turkish friends) and non-bidet using cultures (me).

I could detail the restrooms I've seen all over Europe but I'm flying out to SoCal very early tomorrow morning. This also means no new blog posts for about another week.

Finding American Food in Århus

I've been mulling for some time about how to write about Bazar Vest, food, America, identity for a while now. This isn't all I have to say about the subject, that's for sure. But for now this is a post I wrote up quickly before I left for Amsterdam.

During my second week in Århus, the novelty of being in a new place was wearing off somewhat. I craved familiar things. At the top of the list was hummus and pita bread. In the States, I always have these two things on hand. This lead to me searching for hummus and pita in Århus, which I finally found in Bazar Vest, a market with stores by North Africa, Turkish, and Middle Eastern immigrants.

While at Bazar Vest,  I also had coffee with cardamom and it was as good as or even better than any I had in the States. A bakery sold baklava too! After I bought pita and hummus, my friend and I went to a mutual friends house where we sampled them. Even though the hummus tasted a little different, the pita was perfect. I thought the baklava lacked the fragrance of rose water, but it was really a minor quibble compared to finding baklava at all.

My friend summarized my quest for pita and hummus: a Chinese-American girl and a Polish boy go to the immigrant neighborhood in Denmark to find Middle Eastern food that reminded the girl of America. And the box from had the Chinese character 福 and a bamboo motif printed on the side.

I was very very happy that day because I got to eat food I really missed. But I also treasure that trip to Bazar Vest because it represents all the things I love about my life in America and in my life here: the intersecting identities of people in America and the cosmopolitan community of exchange students here in Århus.

 Pita. The label says it's Lebanese

Baklava in bamboo motif box

Baklava with 福 box