Not long ago, I visited a friend in the UK.
I stayed at his place, and everything seemed pretty similar to where I live.
But then I went to the bathroom – I mean bawthroom, and…
“Um, Andy?
Where’s the light switch?”
He came in, pulled a cord I didn’t notice, and also showed me how to use the two taps
in the sink.
Later, he told me of many more homes in different countries he’d been to.
Answering the first questions: pull strings are used instead of regular switches only
in British bathrooms.
This has to do with the risk of electrocution: when you’re taking a bath or a shower, you’re
completely wet, and you’re much less resistant to electricity.
So, the risk of getting shocked is considered to be much higher when you reach out from
the shower and turn the lights on or off — I won’t ask why you would do that.
Since you don’t touch the light switch, though, a pull string is okay.
Also, there are really two separate taps in many homes in the UK, one for cold water and
the other for guess what -- hot.
Back in the 19th century, cold water was supplied from the main source and was clean enough
for drinking.
Hot water, on the contrary, was supplied from a special storage cistern in the loft, and
since it stayed there for a long time, it could become contaminated.
The government prohibited mixing the two sources because one mistake could lead to really serious
health issues.
As for today, well, the British are really traditionalist, aren’t they?
At this point, I broke in and added a thing I found peculiar about the US private homes:
the kitchen sink is almost always under a window.
Andy made a crooked grin at that and led me to his kitchen — yeah, the sink had a straight
view out the window.
He said this was mostly because such a layout allowed the shortest possible waste pipe to
be installed.
Apart from being cheap, this also saves you the trouble of digging up the floor if something’s
wrong with the piping.
And the view is quite nice, isn’t it?
Being in the kitchen, Andy offered me some tea, we sat down, and he continued his story.
In Australia, there’s no central heating — which comes as no surprise, really.
But the thing is that in winter, the outside temperature might well be higher than that
inside your home.
You know the famous Ugg shoes everyone was so obsessed with some time ago?
Well, they were not originally designed to be used as outerwear.
They’re basically very warm slippers to be worn when it’s cold at home.
In Cuba, not many houses have glass panes in their windows.
They mostly have wooden frames and wooden or metal shutters.
There, the temperature during the day is almost never too low for comfort, and it can grow
quite stuffy if there’s no air supply, so Cubans keep their windows open, and only close
the shutters for when they’re away, or for the night.
Shutters also help keep out the noise from outside better than glass.
In Sweden, people mostly live in large apartment buildings.
The building is governed collectively by all who live there, so they cut the maintenance
costs by leasing the first floor to businesses, such as shops and service providers.
The basement is also used for collective needs: there’s a pretty big empty space, and people
are free to transform it any way they like.
Some make a bike parking lot there, others install a ping pong table, while others still
arrange a sauna or even a gym.
Every apartment also has its own designated locker room in the basement where people store
their spare tires, bulky tools, and other rarely used stuff.
Another distinctive feature of Swedish homes is a lack of curtains or drapes over the windows.
Some say there was even a law at some point of Swedish history that prohibited no-see
drapes, but basically, Swedes don’t use them because they don’t see the need.
It’s warm enough without curtains, and they welcome any additional light inside their
homes.
In Japan, traditional homes are very minimalistic.
In the past, they used to have mud or clay walls with paper sliding doors that allowed
to make one big room out of two smaller ones for special occasions.
Today, Japanese mostly live in small apartments, but many prefer to stick to traditions, sleeping
on the floor on a futon — a simple bed that can be rolled and tucked away when not needed.
There’s also a great Japanese invention to make you warm and never want to leave home:
kotatsu.
It’s basically a big and wide blanket covering a low table frame, and the table top is laid
over it.
There’s a heat source in the middle, usually electric and built into the table.
This way, you could lie cozily under the blanket and have your tea right in front of you.
In South Korea, upon entering a home, you might ask where the hallway is and be met
with perplexed expressions.
Koreans don’t even have such a term — there’s just a small space where you take off your
shoes, and doors to the rooms and the kitchen.
Bathroom, though, seems to be the place where imagination flies.
Koreans typically have neither bathtub nor conventional shower — water just flows from
the showerhead onto the floor.
The same applies to China, only they went even further: water not only washes the floor
of the bathroom, but the drain also connects to the toilet and is used to flush.
The washing machine drain goes there too, so there’s always spare water for flushing.
But there’s no commode in the average Chinese home: instead, there’s a floor pan.
People there believe it’s better for digestion.
I dunno.
Normally by the time the stuff hits the pan, digestion is all done.
But maybe it’s just me.
Speaking of bathrooms —and we were -- in the Netherlands, visiting one is a unique
experience.
The toilet room is small and separated from everything else, there’s only the toilet
and a tiny sink.
The room can be found in the most unlikely places, for example, right next to the dining
table in the living room, or near the kitchen.
The only type of water you get from the tap there is cold.
And I mean ice cold.
In winter, it’s particularly a problem, but for some reason, the Dutch refuse to install
a hot water setting even in new buildings.
And finally, there’s a thing called “inspection shelf” located right in the commode.
And the name is telling: it’s there so that you could inspect what you just left.
What?
It’s hiding or something?
Eh, maybe it’s just so you can say goodbye.
Um, no.
It turned out that Andy saved the most unbelievable part for dessert.
He went to Chile once and was really surprised to see “half-houses” there.
It was a social program by Alejandro Aravena called incremental housing.
The government paid for construction of only half a house, which was really well-built
and could already be dwelled in.
The family that made it their home then constructed the second half when they were financially
ready.
So it’s not uncommon to see houses literally divided into two completely different parts:
one typical, built on the country’s budget, and the other made of different materials
and having a different design, constructed by the residents themselves.
With that, Andy got up and said something I didn’t exactly understand.
It went like this: Hey, if you learned something new today, then
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