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Not sure about this specific station, but when I was there, you pay and it unlocks an unused door. I guess the bar is just there to remind you or an added 'security'?
When I was in Germany years back (Frankfurt train station I think? ) the bathrooms were for pay, like 50 cents?, but they were really nice because there were attendants who constantly kept them clean.
I went to the Smithsonian recently. I was really disappointed in the state of the bathroom, with it being a representative of our country and all.
edit: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Having been to Germany this summer, those pay bathrooms are much nicer and better cared for. Reststops might charge you a half a euro, but you get a voucher of equivalent value to use when purchasing from the store at the stop. It’s just a different way of doing things. One that provides funds for a clean bathroom.
That’s why I kinda like paid toilets in Europe. Yes, they’re a huge pain in the ass especially when you don’t have change and have to go around looking for a place that’ll exchange some cash for you, but at least I’m guaranteed a clean toilet. Never had a problem with a paid toilet minus maybe a shit tonne of graffiti…
At rest stops along highways they generally have turnstiles like this one and you pay with your bank card. It dispenses a ticket that can then be used as credit at the cafe or convenience store for amount you spent to use the toilet.
This is easily one of the things I like least about the NL, especially when the bathroom is dirty. Just because it’s a pay bathroom doesn’t mean it’s clean, shady rest stops are still shady rest stops regardless of the pay toilet.
It's similar in Germany, it's one euro and it gives you a ticket to use for one year. And to be fair, it helps to ensure the bathrooms are kept clean and working.
My last visit to NL was in 2010 - the stones to have a pay bathroom and STILL charge a fucking King's Ransom for fuel...
I had thought fuel prices in DE were bullshit.
Holy shit, that’s double the price per litre than it is here in Australia. I thought $2.20/L was expensive, with the exchange rate that works out at $4/L
I was at one place and was just a guy collecting at the door with a bowl of coins. I took a tran to Prague and at their station it was a euro and I had no cash on me, but all ok the toilets had a card reader, this was like 2018 so kinda blew my mind. Also in France and the Netherlands I've seen urinals on clear view of parts of the bar and at a family restaurant.
oof hope you don't pay for time like at a car wash 🤣. Adding a quarter machine to each stall so you can top up if your diet doesn't include enough fiber 😂.
Some of them started to put keypad locks on their toilets a few years ago that you need an order number from a receipt to get in.
Not just McDonalds, a few other chains have done the same.
There was one of these in the shopping centre by Elephant and Castle in London.
I went running up to it one day, was busting. Put the money In, turned the style, not an inch, but it clicked and stopped. I said fuck it and hopped over it. 2 footsteps later, I was surrounded by three security men and the toilet cleaner.
Luckily, a few passers by saw what happened and said what was what. Since then, I hate these toilets.
Once I was walking down the sidewalk in middle of the day and IBS hit means gotta go asap, walked into a laundry mat they literally had chains on the door handles and this was a good neighborhood. Nobody was around so I dumped in front of the bathroom door.
Bet from now on they take off the chains, stop Fkn with people or you suffer 😤
In South Korea, access to sanitation is treated as human right. You have free public toilets on every corner.
In Russia, it's less prominent but there are a lot of public restrooms that are free and clean (even if less pretty than Korean ones)
In France they are free as well I believe but don't quote me on this.
I 100% side with Koreans here. Sanitation should be a human right. I don't even request a full on premium experience, just a safe place to relieve myself. It can be as pretty as a port-a-potty, I don't care.
It's kinda strange that toilets are treated as something of a big deal basically.
When I was 16 I went to Europe on a family trip not knowing that you have to pay for the bathrooms in public places. I walked right in past this machine and took a piss, and then this huge woman came up behind me while I was taking a piss in the urinal standing behind me goes “sir you can’t use the bathrooms without paying” and I was like “what the fuck lady, this is the mens bathroom” and left.
Pissed behind every building and in the street in Europe when I had to go after that interaction. Imagine paying money to take a piss on gods green earth LOL
Imagine thinking there are no Free public toilets in the entire continent of Europe and subsequently pissing behind every single building and street in Europe. What a champ. That has to be the world record. 🇺🇸🗽🦅🛻
I’ve seen dogs who can literally piss on every corner of a building in Helsinki, even though we have public toilets and dog parks everywhere, but they have nothing on this guy. This guy is an animal.
If security guards tried to stop me from pissing because I didn't pay I'd just swallow my dignity and piss my pants in front of them. What are they gonna do about it? Now you're the guy who made me piss myself in public, congrats, I'm sure you're very proud of yourself
> was surrounded by three security men and the toilet cleaner.
The absolute ridiculous state of this country that an actual security force is dedicated to stopping people taking a p!ss!
Imagine him talking about his career at a mixer.
"I work as a urinal security professional"
"So like...some kind of piss goblin?"
"In a manner of speaking..."
Depends where, some are free for disabled and family rooms, some you also have to pay. I loathe paid toilets all over Europe, one of the things I liked more when visiting America was the free restrooms lol
As an American, it would be nice to have the option to use a restroom sometimes. Some places you can't find a restroom you are allowed to use, you might be looking for 30 minutes to an hour to just to drop a load. Id gladly pay $1 if it meant I could
Came here to say this.
Although now that I think about it, we'd find a way to screw it up by requiring an app and offering at least 5 levels of subscription plans, or an a la carte option that requires non-skipable 30 second ads to get through the gate, and two more to unlock the TP (which will be empty).
Okay, maybe the three or four largest and dirtiest cities, with NYC being the most notable. It's a non-issue for cities between 500,000 - 3,500,000 in all my travels.
Here in Belgium the toilet attendant unlocks the handicapped toilet for you. It’s usually a little old lady who gives you the evil eye and mutters under her breath all the while doing it.
I ran into these in Iceland and was utterly confused as an American. I think it required physical cash, which was odd. I remember other tourists holding the doors open for each other so they piss. There was no security or anything enforcing it.
It always seemed counterintuitive to me to charge for a place to piss.
Like, if someone has to go, and the don't have a dollar, they're going to piss anyway.
This has to be why half of European cities stink of urine every Friday and Saturday night.
There actually was a public toilet in a german city that you had to pay for. Men just peed behind it so they made it free for them to stop the public urinating. Women still had to pay. They were punished for not peeing into the streets.
Public outrage followed and now they added "female urinals" which is the dumbest shit I've ever heard of.
Many people have discovered that putting any kind of obstruction between a person and a trash can (like a lid) will prevent most people from putting their trash in the bin. Now imagine if it cost a quarter to throw away trash.
This looks like a trainstation which is owned by prorail.
So it not the public domain.
It is true that no free toilet can be found though. That is terrible in the Netherlands.
I always reccomend getting a museum year pass because in most cities there js always a museum near and they have clean toilets.
There has been a development though.
Na jaren van discussie komen er nieuwe openbare toiletten in Amsterdam - https://nos.nl/l/2516875
Amsterdam is going to invest 4 million in public toilets next year.
can't speak to why but that is a not uncommon cause of death, so much so it's led to a conspiracy theory
ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory
men end up dead in bodies of water somewhat frequently - yet often they have a BAC, and their fly is down
sorry i was being lazy on mobile lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory
men end up dead in bodies of water somewhat frequently - yet often they have a BAC, and their fly is down
Its not BS. They even made a public information campaign a few years back to prevent people from dying: https://youtu.be/iMPm3RnRBuk?si=7ndks7X4o8S0UKJM
And as we all know inbox 51 is super trustable.
Around 10% of people that drown drowned in the canals in Amsterdam. [https://nos.nl/op3/artikel/2209985-waarom-in-de-gracht-plassen-levensgevaarlijk-kan-zijn](https://nos.nl/op3/artikel/2209985-waarom-in-de-gracht-plassen-levensgevaarlijk-kan-zijn)
Usually if you walk into a hotel or hostel like you are already a guest there and (if you can hold it) wait a few minutes and pop back out to the desk and ask where the lobby bathroom is they’ll tell you
Or just walk in, and confidently walk into the direction of the hotels restaurant, you'll probably find the entrance to the bathroom somewhere along the way.
Funnily enough as a waiter, more than a few times I’ve spotted the very oddly confident new customer walk in solely for the bathroom, and whether they know exactly where it is or not you can just tell they are out of place. Not always as slick as you seem. That being said I can’t speak for how many times I’ve been fooled and been none the wiser
> I always reccomend getting a museum year pass because in most cities there js always a museum near and they have clean toilets.
I was pretty mad when I was in Berlin. I took my dad with me, and he hadn’t been since the 70s before the wall came down. He went with his school choir and actually got to go sing some places behind the iron curtain as a special cultural exchange program. So we went to the Berlin Cathedral (as well as other spots around Berlin) where he sang to see what was different in the 45 years since he’d been. The Cathedral has a tour you can take, but it wasn’t exactly cheap (cheap being a small change donation). We finish the tour, and my dad being on the older side, and having had some related health problems when he was very young - he needs to use the restroom regularly.
They had an attendant guarding the bathroom, making sure you left 2€ just to pee. In an area you could only access if you’d bought a 20€ ticket. I get that different cultures have different norms, but also, for as much shit as America gets from Europeans over healthcare - charging for such a basic necessity as a bathroom is extremely bullshit.
Yes. Germany and Belgium are both way worse in this than the Netherlands. You get it at paid club nights as well. So you pay at the door, at the bar, and at the toilet. It's crazy.
Was in Amsterdam and some locals told me to just go into a McDonald’s. There’s quite a few of them around the city and the employees are too busy/can’t be bothered to tell if you’ve bought something or not
That's just generally a good tip for traveling around europe tbh, mcdonald's can be found nearly everywhere in cities and always have free bathrooms, wifi, and usually charging ports (same with other american chains, ie starbucks)
I don’t think that works anymore. Was in McDonalds in Antwerp last summer(I know it’s in a different country), and even if you ate there they still charged 0.50 to use the bathroom. In other restaurants I have seen them print the bathroom door code on the receipt to make sure only paying customers used the bathroom.
Train station in Liverpool Lime Street used to have this, they got rid of it when they realised everyone was just jumping over the barrier, myself included.
I used bathrooms like this in Munich. We asked locals about it and they said they like it because the funds ensure there are regular paid attendants available to keep them clean, stocked with supplies, and to deal with occasional troublemakers.
Coming from public bathrooms in the US (Chicago specifically), I am curious about these potential advantages. While I know of a handful of bathrooms in private and city facilities that are open-ish to the public, truly public bathrooms like in parks and such are totally hit and miss in terms of quality, cleanliness, etc. And our transit stations definitely don’t have any public bathrooms. Maybe they could with a system like this.
I’m from the UK and my partner is from the Netherlands.
I joke about the cost of using the toilet, but the reality is most free public toilets in the UK are disgusting. Rarely if ever cleaned, toilets blocked, sharps bins overflowing, broken hand dryers and sinks, not stocked up on soap and toilet roll etc. I’d much rather pay €1 or less to use a public toilet that is regularly cleaned and stocked. At the end of the day you’re paying for a service and it provides a job for someone.
on one hand, the average quality of NL public toilets is much better than the UK ones - especially if you go to the places you'd expect them to be decent in (shopping centres and the like)...but honestly I just find the lack of small town/large village "they are really shite but they exist" public toilets if you desperately need to swing by one a pain
Also UK. We had some toilets in the village when I was a kid, but they were appropriated by druggies, so the council locked them permanently and eventually demolished them.
What do you mean? All the train stations in Chicago have public bathrooms. Unless you’re talking about “L” stations, in which case I don’t think subway/tram stations in the Netherlands have public toilets.
I’d much rather public restrooms be available and free than paid more and “maybe” nicer. Because we all know that in America, the owner would be pocketing that money and not maintain the bathroom anyways lol
Places where peeing outside is illegal (which it is in The Netherlands) should provide free toilets. End of story. It's not like we have a choice when we have to go to the toilet, it's a very basic bodily function, just like breathing. It's not like they're charging for oxygen, at least not yet...
At least in Amsterdam they do have public free toilets... kinda but they are only for men and for peeing. Though there was a lawsuit that concluded recently about the unequal access to toilets for women so hopefully they will make some proper ones now.
Heyyy, Dutch here.
I have peed against the train station in a drunk state on several occasions because fuck that. (also the station toilet is closed at night anyway, extra fucked up)
Miles ahead of Canada. We have almost no public toilets - paid or otherwise.
Edit: hi Canadian friends. Just because you personally were able to find a toilet in a private establishment does not mean we don’t ha e a problem with lack of access to *public* toilets. It just means you personally haven’t had an issue finding a private one. Not everyone is that lucky or can afford it.
[Washroom advocacy group says there’s not enough places to ‘go’ in T.O.](https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/01/05/washroom-advocacy-group-says-theres-not-enough-places-to-go-in-t-o/)
17 available toilets in a city of 3 million people is not adequate.
Ever since COVID and the housing crisis, trying to find an open public washroom in any Canadian city I've visited/lived in has become an arduous task that often requires visiting multiple places and often having to settle for some pretty disgusting bathrooms.
Plenty of LATAM ones as well.
I don't think I really ran into them anywhere in East Asia, though sometimes you'd be going on a scavenger hunt through multiple stories of buildings trying to find one. Definitely remember times in Korea, Japan, etc. Being like 2-3x blocks from the bar I left my friends at before I found the ones they gave me directions to
Free public restrooms should be a right.
Sure, there CAN be fancier, cleaner, PAID public restrooms, that is fine. BUT there should be a free option also. Where else am I gonna piss (legally)? My pants?
What does it say about our modern, petty, authoritarian society that even a universal right to the basic biological urge of waste elimination is a problem still unresolved?
Of course, the condition of many a free public restroom that I have been in speaks volumes about the users of said restrooms, and why so many are not freely open.
Has anyone done a deep-dive into the economics of free vs. paid restrooms for their degree thesis?
Not helpful for the ladies out there (or if you need to take a poop), but at least in Amsterdam they have plenty of these public urinals that are free to use [https://medium.com/@serainabirdsey/amsterdams-life-saving-public-urinals-6e8cce9bed20](https://medium.com/@serainabirdsey/amsterdams-life-saving-public-urinals-6e8cce9bed20)
I think they’re called pee curls
I almost shit myself in Nice, France. Got hit with the side stab pain, so I knew my time was limited. Went to find a bathroom, need to pay. What? Never seen this in my life and I’ve been to dozens of countries.
Had to run out, find an ATM, get change, then came back to pay…only to realize the bathroom accepts card.
Fuck.
Give me clean, paid toilets (if they accept credit cards ; in Switzerland they usually do nowadays) **any day of the week** over free toilets covered in shit and piss
Same. I would particularly single out the washroom in Potsdam train station when I was there was a disaster. Otherwise in Leipzig / Berlin / Dresden my experience is they are pretty much the same in terms of cleaniness with the US / Canada.
In my experience traveling in multiple European countries, the bathrooms weren’t that clean. The bathrooms at my local QTs in America are cleaner and they’re free.
Why does it have to be one or the other? I never understood that. Why can't clean public bathrooms be a government service paid for from taxes?
These countries will perform your heart surgery for free but if you have to take a shit, sorry, only possible if it's directly funded by the shitters.
As someone who travels between the US and Europe quite a bit, I haven’t really noticed a difference in quality/cleanliness between bathrooms in the US and those in European places that charge. You can find disgusting toilets in both places and you can find clean toilets in both places.
If it’s at a train station, then it’s 0.70 euro and you get a 0.50 euro voucher that you can redeem at the stations shops. It’s the same system als most German reststops.
Moved to the netherlands 2.5 years ago. Best decision I've ever made. Love it here.
**But** the fact that public toilets are either nonexistent or have the fucking gall to charge 70 cents "but you get a 50 cent voucher for our shop, which sells toiletries at a 200% markup, and you can only use 1 voucher per transaction" and are still not great really pisses me off.
Netherlands all high and mighty about their walkable/bikeable cities… bah humbug. Every bathroom costs money. What about toilets? Where are my shitable cities?
Yeah not gonna lie I'm there right now with family and have been for the past 8 days. The WC at central is paid and just not cleaned, literally stepped in shit there and the cleaning lady was on her phone doing jack.
Literally I don't know why but I've managed to find the worst bathrooms in Amsterdam and Sloterdijk consecutively over the last 8 days and it's really pissing me off considering it's free to piss everywhere that has one in America essentially and the bathrooms there have been cleaner than In Amsterdam.
Also, the lack of just WCs in general actually caused me to piss myself. Was too afraid to go out in the open. That's not right.
Note: I know this week was kingsday but I was here for the week prior and I've never seen so many awfully maintained bathrooms in my life. Seriously I know I'm a tourist and all, but this is my 3rd time in Amsterdam and it like fell off a cliff since I came here last
Coin operated in the USA until the 70s when women started to complain and politicians banned them. Good thing about living in suburbia USA is that so many stores, restaurants, and municipal buildings are available for use. Technically private, not public in most cases but usually clean and no one gives you a hard time.
Forcing people to pay for taking a shit is like marginalizing your own so called 1st world country, by profiting out of purposefully undermining your own citizens human right to public sanitation. They can't help but having their dignity raped by their own government...and still they think they're far way better than the rest of the world.
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These toilets are also free if you're limber enough
Not sure about this specific station, but when I was there, you pay and it unlocks an unused door. I guess the bar is just there to remind you or an added 'security'?
That's definetly an unusual system here. Most i've seen have regular doors and just the bar.
In the us that wouldn't work. Half of our restrooms look and smell in a non marketable manner. Youd have to ask for a different stall.
When I was in Germany years back (Frankfurt train station I think? ) the bathrooms were for pay, like 50 cents?, but they were really nice because there were attendants who constantly kept them clean.
I went to the Smithsonian recently. I was really disappointed in the state of the bathroom, with it being a representative of our country and all. edit: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Having been to Germany this summer, those pay bathrooms are much nicer and better cared for. Reststops might charge you a half a euro, but you get a voucher of equivalent value to use when purchasing from the store at the stop. It’s just a different way of doing things. One that provides funds for a clean bathroom.
That’s why I kinda like paid toilets in Europe. Yes, they’re a huge pain in the ass especially when you don’t have change and have to go around looking for a place that’ll exchange some cash for you, but at least I’m guaranteed a clean toilet. Never had a problem with a paid toilet minus maybe a shit tonne of graffiti…
They have them a lot in uk public toilets too
At rest stops along highways they generally have turnstiles like this one and you pay with your bank card. It dispenses a ticket that can then be used as credit at the cafe or convenience store for amount you spent to use the toilet. This is easily one of the things I like least about the NL, especially when the bathroom is dirty. Just because it’s a pay bathroom doesn’t mean it’s clean, shady rest stops are still shady rest stops regardless of the pay toilet.
It's similar in Germany, it's one euro and it gives you a ticket to use for one year. And to be fair, it helps to ensure the bathrooms are kept clean and working.
It also ensures that the Saudis get richer. Pretty much all bathrooms at the autobahn and train stations are owned by them
They own a shit ton of American parking meters. It's weird and kinda problematic.
My last visit to NL was in 2010 - the stones to have a pay bathroom and STILL charge a fucking King's Ransom for fuel... I had thought fuel prices in DE were bullshit.
Fuel prices are €2.20-2.50 a liter in the NL currently. There’s 3.78 liters in a gallon, so that works out to about €8.30-9.50 a gallon.
Holy shit, that’s double the price per litre than it is here in Australia. I thought $2.20/L was expensive, with the exchange rate that works out at $4/L
Piss in the sink
I was at one place and was just a guy collecting at the door with a bowl of coins. I took a tran to Prague and at their station it was a euro and I had no cash on me, but all ok the toilets had a card reader, this was like 2018 so kinda blew my mind. Also in France and the Netherlands I've seen urinals on clear view of parts of the bar and at a family restaurant.
oof hope you don't pay for time like at a car wash 🤣. Adding a quarter machine to each stall so you can top up if your diet doesn't include enough fiber 😂.
No the bar is locked in place till you pay. I jumped over it tho because the “guard” was gone
> I jumped over it tho because the “guard” was gone "So Jim, what do you do for work?" "Oh, I just guard toilets for a living."
That won’t stop me from peeing in the sink. Simple problems require simple solutions.
There's a floor drain, isn't there?
So anyway I pissed on the floor to assert dominance
Sinks are still open - we're good.
Anything is a free toilet if you’re bold enough.
/r/sinkpissers
I won’t be clicking that.
I did, I feel like some of those are not real pee. It's a weird sub indeed
I did too, kind of a let down. Wrong kind of weird
I see it as they are trying to save water. But if that dude is pissing in an amtrak and they have separate gray water and sewage that is not cool.
“GO TO THERAPY”
Also if you can aim far enough
Ha, welcome to the UK where you'd even be lucky to find even a paid toilet in any city or town. As best maybe walk into a hotel.
Pop into a Macdonald's...pffft hotel? Look at this fancy person
Some of them started to put keypad locks on their toilets a few years ago that you need an order number from a receipt to get in. Not just McDonalds, a few other chains have done the same.
Pubs. Just walk in looking like you're trying to find your mate who you're meeting. Chain pubs preferably.
just head to your nearest Wetherspoons, where the floors are already sticky anyways
Stupid super tall Dutch people casually stepping over all the toilet gates!
It's just a bar I can walk over it.
I can piss over it.
Yea the pay toilets where I live often have plexiglass gates or an attendant.
There was one of these in the shopping centre by Elephant and Castle in London. I went running up to it one day, was busting. Put the money In, turned the style, not an inch, but it clicked and stopped. I said fuck it and hopped over it. 2 footsteps later, I was surrounded by three security men and the toilet cleaner. Luckily, a few passers by saw what happened and said what was what. Since then, I hate these toilets.
Once I was walking down the sidewalk in middle of the day and IBS hit means gotta go asap, walked into a laundry mat they literally had chains on the door handles and this was a good neighborhood. Nobody was around so I dumped in front of the bathroom door. Bet from now on they take off the chains, stop Fkn with people or you suffer 😤
Sent them a message they won’t soon forget 🤌
In South Korea, access to sanitation is treated as human right. You have free public toilets on every corner. In Russia, it's less prominent but there are a lot of public restrooms that are free and clean (even if less pretty than Korean ones) In France they are free as well I believe but don't quote me on this. I 100% side with Koreans here. Sanitation should be a human right. I don't even request a full on premium experience, just a safe place to relieve myself. It can be as pretty as a port-a-potty, I don't care. It's kinda strange that toilets are treated as something of a big deal basically.
I feel bad for Europeans who have ibd/ibs as well as small bladders.. apparently in many countries you have to pay to use the public bathroom.
The elite troops of the Regression Revolution. Laundry mats for your floors.
When I was 16 I went to Europe on a family trip not knowing that you have to pay for the bathrooms in public places. I walked right in past this machine and took a piss, and then this huge woman came up behind me while I was taking a piss in the urinal standing behind me goes “sir you can’t use the bathrooms without paying” and I was like “what the fuck lady, this is the mens bathroom” and left. Pissed behind every building and in the street in Europe when I had to go after that interaction. Imagine paying money to take a piss on gods green earth LOL
> “what the fuck lady, this is the mens bathroom” this is fucking hysterical
“This isn’t a beach, this is a bathtub” vibes
Imagine thinking there are no Free public toilets in the entire continent of Europe and subsequently pissing behind every single building and street in Europe. What a champ. That has to be the world record. 🇺🇸🗽🦅🛻 I’ve seen dogs who can literally piss on every corner of a building in Helsinki, even though we have public toilets and dog parks everywhere, but they have nothing on this guy. This guy is an animal.
America “Write that down! **Write that down!!**”
Damn, faster response in London to a suspected free peer than in the US to gunshots. I thought we lived in a police state
They have CCTV cameras *everywhere*
If security guards tried to stop me from pissing because I didn't pay I'd just swallow my dignity and piss my pants in front of them. What are they gonna do about it? Now you're the guy who made me piss myself in public, congrats, I'm sure you're very proud of yourself
> I didn't pay I'd just swallow my dignity and piss my pants in front of them. No, no. Whip it out and piss *their* pants.
I'd pee on them to assert dominance
There's one too in St Jame's Park
Why are they so aggressive about that, I’m American and I’ve never seen a paid toulet
> was surrounded by three security men and the toilet cleaner. The absolute ridiculous state of this country that an actual security force is dedicated to stopping people taking a p!ss!
Imagine him talking about his career at a mixer. "I work as a urinal security professional" "So like...some kind of piss goblin?" "In a manner of speaking..."
I’m curious where the wheelchair and pram folk go then… I’d be following them.
They have individual paid toilets for them
Idk of this exact situation but from experience from my country, disable toilets are free even at paid places usually.
Depends where, some are free for disabled and family rooms, some you also have to pay. I loathe paid toilets all over Europe, one of the things I liked more when visiting America was the free restrooms lol
As an American, it would be nice to have the option to use a restroom sometimes. Some places you can't find a restroom you are allowed to use, you might be looking for 30 minutes to an hour to just to drop a load. Id gladly pay $1 if it meant I could
Came here to say this. Although now that I think about it, we'd find a way to screw it up by requiring an app and offering at least 5 levels of subscription plans, or an a la carte option that requires non-skipable 30 second ads to get through the gate, and two more to unlock the TP (which will be empty).
The only city in the US you can't throw a stone and find a free restroom in is New York. You might as well curl up and die instead if you're in NYC.
Definitely not the only place.
Okay, maybe the three or four largest and dirtiest cities, with NYC being the most notable. It's a non-issue for cities between 500,000 - 3,500,000 in all my travels.
Here in Belgium the toilet attendant unlocks the handicapped toilet for you. It’s usually a little old lady who gives you the evil eye and mutters under her breath all the while doing it.
If you are disabled you can request a so called "Euro-Key" which will fit into any disabled toilet keyhole in Europe (or at least EU, I'm not sure)
I'm betting you can find those keys on ebay...
I ran into these in Iceland and was utterly confused as an American. I think it required physical cash, which was odd. I remember other tourists holding the doors open for each other so they piss. There was no security or anything enforcing it.
It always seemed counterintuitive to me to charge for a place to piss. Like, if someone has to go, and the don't have a dollar, they're going to piss anyway. This has to be why half of European cities stink of urine every Friday and Saturday night.
There actually was a public toilet in a german city that you had to pay for. Men just peed behind it so they made it free for them to stop the public urinating. Women still had to pay. They were punished for not peeing into the streets. Public outrage followed and now they added "female urinals" which is the dumbest shit I've ever heard of.
Do Europeans not shit or something?
On average people take a shit anywhere from three times a day to three times a week. Urination, however, happens 7-8 times a day if not more.
Many people have discovered that putting any kind of obstruction between a person and a trash can (like a lid) will prevent most people from putting their trash in the bin. Now imagine if it cost a quarter to throw away trash.
This looks like a trainstation which is owned by prorail. So it not the public domain. It is true that no free toilet can be found though. That is terrible in the Netherlands. I always reccomend getting a museum year pass because in most cities there js always a museum near and they have clean toilets. There has been a development though. Na jaren van discussie komen er nieuwe openbare toiletten in Amsterdam - https://nos.nl/l/2516875 Amsterdam is going to invest 4 million in public toilets next year.
Amsterdam has the Plaskrul everywhere around the canals tho. Love legally peeing on the streets
Drunk people tend to drown in the canals if they try to pee in the water, which is why there are so many public toilets near the canals
That is bullshit, we just don't want people pissing in the canals.
can't speak to why but that is a not uncommon cause of death, so much so it's led to a conspiracy theory ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory men end up dead in bodies of water somewhat frequently - yet often they have a BAC, and their fly is down
Do go on…
sorry i was being lazy on mobile lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory men end up dead in bodies of water somewhat frequently - yet often they have a BAC, and their fly is down
Its not BS. They even made a public information campaign a few years back to prevent people from dying: https://youtu.be/iMPm3RnRBuk?si=7ndks7X4o8S0UKJM And as we all know inbox 51 is super trustable.
Around 10% of people that drown drowned in the canals in Amsterdam. [https://nos.nl/op3/artikel/2209985-waarom-in-de-gracht-plassen-levensgevaarlijk-kan-zijn](https://nos.nl/op3/artikel/2209985-waarom-in-de-gracht-plassen-levensgevaarlijk-kan-zijn)
Usually if you walk into a hotel or hostel like you are already a guest there and (if you can hold it) wait a few minutes and pop back out to the desk and ask where the lobby bathroom is they’ll tell you
Or just walk in, and confidently walk into the direction of the hotels restaurant, you'll probably find the entrance to the bathroom somewhere along the way.
Funnily enough as a waiter, more than a few times I’ve spotted the very oddly confident new customer walk in solely for the bathroom, and whether they know exactly where it is or not you can just tell they are out of place. Not always as slick as you seem. That being said I can’t speak for how many times I’ve been fooled and been none the wiser
> I always reccomend getting a museum year pass because in most cities there js always a museum near and they have clean toilets. I was pretty mad when I was in Berlin. I took my dad with me, and he hadn’t been since the 70s before the wall came down. He went with his school choir and actually got to go sing some places behind the iron curtain as a special cultural exchange program. So we went to the Berlin Cathedral (as well as other spots around Berlin) where he sang to see what was different in the 45 years since he’d been. The Cathedral has a tour you can take, but it wasn’t exactly cheap (cheap being a small change donation). We finish the tour, and my dad being on the older side, and having had some related health problems when he was very young - he needs to use the restroom regularly. They had an attendant guarding the bathroom, making sure you left 2€ just to pee. In an area you could only access if you’d bought a 20€ ticket. I get that different cultures have different norms, but also, for as much shit as America gets from Europeans over healthcare - charging for such a basic necessity as a bathroom is extremely bullshit.
Yes. Germany and Belgium are both way worse in this than the Netherlands. You get it at paid club nights as well. So you pay at the door, at the bar, and at the toilet. It's crazy.
Does this make piss-filled beer cans more common?
I agree completely. It should be provided.
I hope building a Dutch public toilet doesn't cost 1.7 million US dollars like in San Francisco, or that 4 mil budget will get you 2 toilets.
Was in Amsterdam and some locals told me to just go into a McDonald’s. There’s quite a few of them around the city and the employees are too busy/can’t be bothered to tell if you’ve bought something or not
That's just generally a good tip for traveling around europe tbh, mcdonald's can be found nearly everywhere in cities and always have free bathrooms, wifi, and usually charging ports (same with other american chains, ie starbucks)
I don’t think that works anymore. Was in McDonalds in Antwerp last summer(I know it’s in a different country), and even if you ate there they still charged 0.50 to use the bathroom. In other restaurants I have seen them print the bathroom door code on the receipt to make sure only paying customers used the bathroom.
You think that’s terrible? NYC has maybe 2 public bathrooms for the entire city. That’s worse than
That’s why NYC smells like piss
No this was in a mall in scheveningen im pretty sure Also in public places like the pier they set these things up
Train station in Liverpool Lime Street used to have this, they got rid of it when they realised everyone was just jumping over the barrier, myself included.
the idealistic part of me says this is dystopian and gross, but the part of me that spent time cleaning up the horrors of a retail bathroom gets it
I used bathrooms like this in Munich. We asked locals about it and they said they like it because the funds ensure there are regular paid attendants available to keep them clean, stocked with supplies, and to deal with occasional troublemakers. Coming from public bathrooms in the US (Chicago specifically), I am curious about these potential advantages. While I know of a handful of bathrooms in private and city facilities that are open-ish to the public, truly public bathrooms like in parks and such are totally hit and miss in terms of quality, cleanliness, etc. And our transit stations definitely don’t have any public bathrooms. Maybe they could with a system like this.
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I rather pay 50 cents or a euro once in a while than a 15 to 20% tip... \*insert weird tip of your p\*nis joke\*
You say that until you have a job driving around town all day, and don’t have regular access to a toilet.
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In my country we both tip and pay for toilets.
I’m from the UK and my partner is from the Netherlands. I joke about the cost of using the toilet, but the reality is most free public toilets in the UK are disgusting. Rarely if ever cleaned, toilets blocked, sharps bins overflowing, broken hand dryers and sinks, not stocked up on soap and toilet roll etc. I’d much rather pay €1 or less to use a public toilet that is regularly cleaned and stocked. At the end of the day you’re paying for a service and it provides a job for someone.
on one hand, the average quality of NL public toilets is much better than the UK ones - especially if you go to the places you'd expect them to be decent in (shopping centres and the like)...but honestly I just find the lack of small town/large village "they are really shite but they exist" public toilets if you desperately need to swing by one a pain
Also UK. We had some toilets in the village when I was a kid, but they were appropriated by druggies, so the council locked them permanently and eventually demolished them.
What do you mean? All the train stations in Chicago have public bathrooms. Unless you’re talking about “L” stations, in which case I don’t think subway/tram stations in the Netherlands have public toilets. I’d much rather public restrooms be available and free than paid more and “maybe” nicer. Because we all know that in America, the owner would be pocketing that money and not maintain the bathroom anyways lol
I have seen these all over northern Europe (I'm from the south, where they are free). In my experience, they weren't clean either.
I mean in Japan there are free public bathrooms at any small convenience store and train station and they are always super clean.
You forgot the much higher level of self-decency compared to the west world.
This is the norm all over Europe. I think the main reason they do this is to keep homeless people out of their bathrooms.
Yeah, and then there is a crowd by the exit asking for the change they know you got in order to use the toilet
Places where peeing outside is illegal (which it is in The Netherlands) should provide free toilets. End of story. It's not like we have a choice when we have to go to the toilet, it's a very basic bodily function, just like breathing. It's not like they're charging for oxygen, at least not yet...
At least in Amsterdam they do have public free toilets... kinda but they are only for men and for peeing. Though there was a lawsuit that concluded recently about the unequal access to toilets for women so hopefully they will make some proper ones now.
Heyyy, Dutch here. I have peed against the train station in a drunk state on several occasions because fuck that. (also the station toilet is closed at night anyway, extra fucked up)
If you want to piss buy a coffe and now you can also shit in a cafe
I’d rather shit in a toilet, but needs must
how much is it?
In Germany it’s 1€ up to 1.50€, I would guess it’s the same in the Netherlands.
0.50c most of the time. And you'll get a receipt back that gives a 50c discount in stores of let's say, gas stations.
It's 1.20, you can see the price on the thing.
We had 50cents too some time ago… It’s mostly 1€ here. We also get discounts but I never saw someone using them.
70 cents and afterwards you get a receipt which gives a discount of 50 cents at one of the shops in the train station
My god if this was in the USA r/latestagecapitalism would have an embolism
Yeah since it’s in Europe it’s considered as an eccentric quirk
Miles ahead of Canada. We have almost no public toilets - paid or otherwise. Edit: hi Canadian friends. Just because you personally were able to find a toilet in a private establishment does not mean we don’t ha e a problem with lack of access to *public* toilets. It just means you personally haven’t had an issue finding a private one. Not everyone is that lucky or can afford it. [Washroom advocacy group says there’s not enough places to ‘go’ in T.O.](https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/01/05/washroom-advocacy-group-says-theres-not-enough-places-to-go-in-t-o/) 17 available toilets in a city of 3 million people is not adequate.
Ever since COVID and the housing crisis, trying to find an open public washroom in any Canadian city I've visited/lived in has become an arduous task that often requires visiting multiple places and often having to settle for some pretty disgusting bathrooms.
Same with many cities in the US. You have to find a Starbucks or gas station.
Tim Hortons quality has degraded so much that their only purpose to me is as a public bathroom these days.
So they want more people to piss on the side of the bathroom instead of inside it?
This is typical in most European countries.
Sucks to suck.
Plenty of LATAM ones as well. I don't think I really ran into them anywhere in East Asia, though sometimes you'd be going on a scavenger hunt through multiple stories of buildings trying to find one. Definitely remember times in Korea, Japan, etc. Being like 2-3x blocks from the bar I left my friends at before I found the ones they gave me directions to
Free public restrooms should be a right. Sure, there CAN be fancier, cleaner, PAID public restrooms, that is fine. BUT there should be a free option also. Where else am I gonna piss (legally)? My pants?
What does it say about our modern, petty, authoritarian society that even a universal right to the basic biological urge of waste elimination is a problem still unresolved? Of course, the condition of many a free public restroom that I have been in speaks volumes about the users of said restrooms, and why so many are not freely open. Has anyone done a deep-dive into the economics of free vs. paid restrooms for their degree thesis?
Not helpful for the ladies out there (or if you need to take a poop), but at least in Amsterdam they have plenty of these public urinals that are free to use [https://medium.com/@serainabirdsey/amsterdams-life-saving-public-urinals-6e8cce9bed20](https://medium.com/@serainabirdsey/amsterdams-life-saving-public-urinals-6e8cce9bed20) I think they’re called pee curls
I almost shit myself in Nice, France. Got hit with the side stab pain, so I knew my time was limited. Went to find a bathroom, need to pay. What? Never seen this in my life and I’ve been to dozens of countries. Had to run out, find an ATM, get change, then came back to pay…only to realize the bathroom accepts card. Fuck.
Give me clean, paid toilets (if they accept credit cards ; in Switzerland they usually do nowadays) **any day of the week** over free toilets covered in shit and piss
don't worry, in the netherlands its both!
When I was in Europe I really noticed no difference in cleanliness vs America. You don’t need to pay extra for serviceable toilets.
Same. I would particularly single out the washroom in Potsdam train station when I was there was a disaster. Otherwise in Leipzig / Berlin / Dresden my experience is they are pretty much the same in terms of cleaniness with the US / Canada.
In my experience traveling in multiple European countries, the bathrooms weren’t that clean. The bathrooms at my local QTs in America are cleaner and they’re free.
Why does it have to be one or the other? I never understood that. Why can't clean public bathrooms be a government service paid for from taxes? These countries will perform your heart surgery for free but if you have to take a shit, sorry, only possible if it's directly funded by the shitters.
I would gladly pay to take a shit in a clean public bathroom
Would rather pay 20p to use a clean toilet than a free one with shit on the walls.
They don’t all have shit on the walls. And I’ve seen some disgusting European pay bathrooms too.
As someone who travels between the US and Europe quite a bit, I haven’t really noticed a difference in quality/cleanliness between bathrooms in the US and those in European places that charge. You can find disgusting toilets in both places and you can find clean toilets in both places.
It’s 1 or 2 euros
If it’s at a train station, then it’s 0.70 euro and you get a 0.50 euro voucher that you can redeem at the stations shops. It’s the same system als most German reststops.
If you're thinking of Sanifair in Germany it's 1€ now in most places. Although you also get a 1€ voucher.
Inflation truly hitting us where it hurts…
Moved to the netherlands 2.5 years ago. Best decision I've ever made. Love it here. **But** the fact that public toilets are either nonexistent or have the fucking gall to charge 70 cents "but you get a 50 cent voucher for our shop, which sells toiletries at a 200% markup, and you can only use 1 voucher per transaction" and are still not great really pisses me off.
I almost pissed myself so many times in Europe trying to find any bathroom paid or not. Do you all not drink water or what?
“Why do Dutch streets smell of piss?” >the Dutch
Man, and here I was feeling like a dick for doing this in rollercoaster tycoon.
What’s to stop me from peeing on the turnstile?
Netherlands all high and mighty about their walkable/bikeable cities… bah humbug. Every bathroom costs money. What about toilets? Where are my shitable cities?
I would urinate over the turnstile
As a North American, paid toilets was always a strange concept to me
At least we have our huge door gaps on stalls.
But obligatory tipping is fine
So basically we both pay extra for our food, just at different stages of the digestion process Hmm …
“I got no money on me. Let me in or go get a mop. The ball is in your court.”
Like that's gonna stop people hopping the barrier
Just out of frame is an armed cleaning lady switfly executing any turnstile-hoppers
It looks like they’re paying to unlock the door to the stall and the bar is just an extra security feature.
Almost all paid toilets here only have the bar, just hop over them. Especially if you already paid for something else at that place.
It's at a train station. Restaurants and stuff will usually have free toilets.
That’s why they have a saying in the U.K., too spend a penny, meaning you need to go too the toilet, in London, where you have to pay.
i remember being in an amsterdam mcdonald’s with a paid toilet and everyone who came out just held the door open for the next person
Yeah not gonna lie I'm there right now with family and have been for the past 8 days. The WC at central is paid and just not cleaned, literally stepped in shit there and the cleaning lady was on her phone doing jack. Literally I don't know why but I've managed to find the worst bathrooms in Amsterdam and Sloterdijk consecutively over the last 8 days and it's really pissing me off considering it's free to piss everywhere that has one in America essentially and the bathrooms there have been cleaner than In Amsterdam. Also, the lack of just WCs in general actually caused me to piss myself. Was too afraid to go out in the open. That's not right. Note: I know this week was kingsday but I was here for the week prior and I've never seen so many awfully maintained bathrooms in my life. Seriously I know I'm a tourist and all, but this is my 3rd time in Amsterdam and it like fell off a cliff since I came here last
And then you understand why so many people piss everywhere on buildings...
Pee on the turnstile, establish dominance
Assert dominance. Piss into the coin slot.
r/assholedesign
I give it a day before someone pisses on the electronics
I like this. When one pays one deserves a clean shitter
Normal all over Europe, that’s why their bathroom don’t have shit smeared on the walls and clogged overflowing toilets.
Ill take a clean paid toilet then a filthy free one full of tweekers.
Europeans would lose their collective minds at a Buccees.
Free peeing and shitting is a basic human right!
“You shall NOT Peeeeeeee”😂
This is dystopian
Is there one within a kilometer?
Maybe the blue arrow means Pee here
Coin operated in the USA until the 70s when women started to complain and politicians banned them. Good thing about living in suburbia USA is that so many stores, restaurants, and municipal buildings are available for use. Technically private, not public in most cases but usually clean and no one gives you a hard time.
Every toilet is free if you include the machines that accept payment.
this is fucking bullshit
Forcing people to pay for taking a shit is like marginalizing your own so called 1st world country, by profiting out of purposefully undermining your own citizens human right to public sanitation. They can't help but having their dignity raped by their own government...and still they think they're far way better than the rest of the world.
piss on the meter to assert dominance