backsplash... man, I cannot believe that I'm going to talk about this and put it out
in the interwebs. hey guys! what's up? it's Kelly again welcome back to my youtube
channel and welcome to my bathroom because for this video I'm going to talk
about something that's a little strange which is the toilet differences between
Germany and the US. yes, it is a thing and yes, I'm going to put my dignity to
the side and talk to you guys about it. I'm going to divide this discussion into
two parts the first part I'll talk about like your home private bathroom and then
the second part I'll talk about public restrooms.
the first difference being that as an American, I call pretty much everything
every room that has like a toilet I call it a bathroom. so this is a bathroom.. the
shower is right behind me it's got a bath attached to it and the toilet is
over here on my left and then of course there's a sink. this is a bathroom to me
of course and it would also be a badezimmer or bathroom to a German but even
if you take like a bathroom where it's only a toilet and a sink in there so
there is no shower or bath I would still call that a bathroom whereas Germans
would probably refer to that as the toilet. so let me show you my toilet. so
here's my toilet in my US apartment and this is my toilet from my apartment back
in German. in the US we have a substantially more
amount of water in our toilet bowls compared to Germany and this one
actually is pretty low. I've seen some American toilets that have far more
water sitting in the bowl than this one. with a German toilet you'll rarely see
the water go above like that small little opening leading to the pipes. the
downside to having less water sitting in the toilet bowl is that when you poop
your excrement on a German toilet will actually hit the toilet itself whereas
with an American toilet it'll go right into the water and not really touch the
toilet bowl so as you can imagine it can get a little messy with German toilet.
honestly when I first moved to Germany and started noticing this I thought
there was something wrong with me I was like what is happening? why am I suddenly
having to clean the toilet every time I use it? this is like not right. and then I
finally looked it up by googled it, god only knows what I actually wrote in the
Google search box, and found out that this is not just me this is like a
normal thing. Germans will pretty much have to clean the toilet after
themselves every time they take a dump whereas in the US, I really had to do
that only on my worst and most embarrassing days. now, this doesn't mean
that we don't have toilet brushes and that we don't clean our toilets. I'm
always seeing toilet brushes next to people's like home toilets right. like
here's mine it's really ugly let's just move on from that. but you're not
having to clean the toilet every time you take a dump. you're just doing it as
part of your regular cleaning of the bathroom. so if you're coming into the
bathroom like once or twice a week to clean the sink and clean the shower and
clean the outside of the toilet you'll also clean the toilet bowl itself with
the toilet brush. you're not having to do it every single
time. now the bad part about having so much water in the toilet bowl like with
an American toilet is I've heard a lot of people complain about backsplash.
man I cannot believe that I'm going to talk about this and put it out in the
interwebs. I personally have never had a problem with this but I'm sure everybody
has some different experiences when they're on the toilet. and I really found
out about this problem when I started like researching the toilet differences
and there were a lot of Europeans commenting on like forum discussions and
stuff saying that they hate American toilets because they have way too much
water in them, it's insane and you get a lot of backsplash. and you'll see that my
toilet is flushed with a handle which is pretty much the only way that I've seen
it in the US and Germans have these toilets too but oftentimes there is also
like this two button flush system where the bigger the button the bigger the
flush and it just really goes along with this whole idea of using less water when
you can. now there is also a very very different style of toilet in Germany and
I've heard it be called by a few different names I don't know like what
the true like name of it is called but I've heard it be called the shelf toilet
and the lay and display and it's pretty much exactly what you can picture. so the
back part of the toilet will actually come out far more and it will create
like a shelf. the reasoning behind having a toilet shaped like this from what I
understand is that so you can then examine your fecal matter for health
reasons. I mean I get it, I understand that there are a lot of connections
between your fecal matter and any health issues but it doesn't really make it any
less disgusting. the first time I ever saw one of these was in my friend's
house his like bathroom on the ground floor and again I'm calling it a
bathroom but it and have like a shower or a bath or
anything it just had a toilet and a sink and it had one of these like shelf
toilets and he was very upfront about telling me about it when I got there hey
just so you know we have a really strange toilet that you probably have
never seen before and I recommend if you feel like you need to go do the number
two just use our bathroom upstairs because it'll be a lot more comfortable
for you. thankfully these toilets aren't that
common in Germany but you'll definitely come across them. one last thing that
doesn't have to deal with like the toilet differences per se but I learned
when I was in Germany that most German men if not all German men will sit to
pee at home. this was news to me and obviously I'm not a guy so I can't speak
from experience and I'm a little bit limited on my knowledge of this topic
but I always understood like men, at least in the states, to stand while
peeing. actually I can think of several comments that have been made or
jokes about men standing to pee... how it's like a masculine act, it separates men
from women, apparently women are weaker because we have to sit down to pee. all
of this is ridiculous but when I went to Germany and I found out that the men
there sit to pee I was like huh wow that's um that's different and something
so strange that I don't know if people are really even aware of this. and I've
been told by some German guys that the reason why German men will sit to pee is
because it is considerably cleaner. you're not getting any backsplash and
anyone that's cleaned a toilet, hi I used to be a hotel maid, I would probably
really appreciate the idea of not having to clean up all that disgusting
backsplash that gets all over the toilet because of men standing to pee. alrright
on to public restrooms. so probably the most obvious difference between German
restrooms and American restrooms are the stalls
and there's different stalls in both countries but we'll just go with the
most common ones. so in the US you will always see these like metal stalls the
walls and the doors and there's always this really big gap in between the stall
wall and the stall door to where you can literally see out and like watch people
washing their hands while you're sitting on the toilet. it's a little disturbing.
like there is a serious serious lack of privacy in American public restrooms. in
Germany you would never see something like this. they have actual doors that
close into usually like your own little room like you don't even have these like
half doors where you can see the people's feet or anything it's usually a
full-on private little toilet area for you to use. I will say that that's
something I really appreciated was having so much privacy and coming back
to the US, I'm like why why do we have these horribly constructed stalls?? like
this is ridiculous. we're a first world country. why??
German public toilets will also always be accompanied by a toilet brush again
because of the reasons that I talked about earlier. in fact I have a friend in
Germany who's been to multiple meetings where at the end when they're giving out
admin notes they'll mention like hey make sure you guys are cleaning up after
yourself and the toilet because we're having some issues. like of course in the
US you're expected to clean up after yourself but it's seriously just not
like a big issue. it's not like a consistent thing that would ever be
brought up like that. and the last thing I'll point out is that at gas stations
in Germany they'll have this whole like turnstile entrance leading to the
restroom and you will have to pay in euro coins to be able to get through the
turnstile to use the bathroom whereas in the US, you just have to be a paying
customer but the gas station will probably only have like one toilet where
in Germany it'll be like a series of toilets and the difference in
cleanliness is considerable. the German toilets are far far far cleaner than the
public restrooms and gas stations in the US. alright guys that's all I've got
for you today! I hope you liked this video. if you did give it a thumbs up! if
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