Ou Sont Les Toilettes?
I had mastered the French words for hello, goodbye, please, and thank you. But my mind clouded, and my thoughts wandered, one night during the Quelle heure est-il? exercise in my conversational French class. All I wanted to learn were the essential words and phrases for my trip to Paris—things like "I want a carafe of red wine" or "Help!" or "How much does it cost?" The professor's voice cut through my day dreaming: "You might want to know how to find a bathroom."
A few weeks
later, at Hotel des Invalides in Paris, I was able to use about 85
percent of my French vocabulary in that most essential of ways.
"Bonjour, Monsieur. Ou sont les toilettes, s'il vous plait?" I asked.
After a response that contained a number of tout droits and gauches, I
answered back, "Merci, Monsieur. Au revoir."
Trying
to remember the directions and to recall which word meant right, droit
or gauche, I wandered around until I found a small door marked WC. When
I opened it and stepped inside, I was amazed to find before me that
legendary objet, the French toilet. My enthusiasm quickly waned,
however, when I took in the extreme minimalism of the design.
Undaunted, I forged ahead and utilized said facility successfully, the
specifics of which I will leave to the imagination. However, I will
offer one important suggestion to the first-timer: before flushing—get
as far away from this device as possible.
One
day, on a street corner somewhere in the Montmartre district, I
discovered another artifact of French sanitation I thought extinct—le
pissoir. Curious and eager to extend my knowledge of French plumbing, I
entered to examine this relic. After a brief review, I concluded that
close scrutiny is inadvisable, and felt I had a much better
understanding of why so few of these facilities continue to exist in
Paris.
But there is one
public toilet, built in 1905, that I hope continues forever. At the
east end of the main entrance to La Madeleine, a spiral staircase
descends to an art nouveau room outfitted with carved wood, brass,
mirrors, and floral frescoes. In the room are a number of stalls , each
of which features a stained-glass window, a toilet, and a private sink.
When I visited, the elderly lady attendant had placed a small vase of
fresh-cut flowers alongside the dish for tips. And, oh yes, the
facilities were used by both gentlemen and ladies.
The
first recorded incident of toilets segregated for men and women
occurred at a grand ball in Paris in the 1890s. Unisex toilets,
although now in the minority, still exist in some small cafés and
museums. They are designed for single occupancy. But in La Defense
Métro station, one finds behind a glass window a large, desegregated
bathroom with a row of cubicles on one wall and a row of wash basins on
the other.
Another thing that
may seem foreign to Americans is having to pay to use a bathroom,
particularly when confronted with different fees for different needs.
At big department stores and most restaurants, you'll find free rest
rooms, but for those other times, you may be required to pay. However,
unlike free public bathrooms in the U.S., French pay toilets are
typically clean, well supplied, safe, and usually attended.
Another
day, while out sightseeing, I came upon the ultimate pay toilet—the
sanisette. On the outside it looked like a six-foot aluminum can;
inside it had a clean chemical smell and was slightly larger than an
airplane bathroom. There are approximately 420 of these kiosk-style
restrooms in Paris. A small fee, 30 euro cents (the Socialists want to
raise it to 45), entitles you to ten minutes of "rest" before the door
automatically opens—ready or not. (I was told that this time limit is
designed to dissuade hanky panky and illegal acts.) Allowing time for
you to exit, the door closes in order for the sanisette to go through
its sanitization process. And woe to the innocent who has not departed!
(Editor's note: currently all of the sanisettes in Paris are closed as
a precaution against acts of terrorism.)
In
a hotel, finding the bathroom has rarely posed a problem for me. Most
of the time the bath is attached to the room. Of course, some hotel
bathrooms are so small you can't turn around without bumping into
something; in others, the bathroom is larger than the bedroom. Ah, the
French! In hotels in which the bath is down the hall, I make it a
priority to locate the whereabouts of the bathroom and those little
timed light switches. Making a mad dash to find the toilet in the
middle of the night, uncertain where it is, is especially unnerving
when the hall goes suddenly dark.
In
conclusion, I have found that Ou sont les toilettes? is one of the most
essential phrases I learned in the French conversational class—second
only, of course, to the phrase that constitutes the remainder of my
French vocabulary: Je suis American. Parlez-vous Anglais?
Postscript:
Those familiar with my writings will note the absence of Linda—she of
one semester of Jr. College French and the self-proclaimed authority of
all that is French (indeed, of all that is). I will explain. My wife is
so perfect that she has no use for such mortal devices as bathrooms.
Says she never did.
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