A Note on Useful Gifts

Our last post was about a gift, and so is this one.
There are so many useful products out there - one of them turned up in our letter box! Our warmest thanks to Mr and Mrs Smith for this revolutionary, life-changing present! This is bound to do wonders for our OCD, and we will perhaps never be found cowering in fear in a public toilet ever again!

Our gratitude is inexpressible: A public toilet survival kit!

Such soothing instructions!

Hygeia sighs wistfully.

Fairytale Toilet

Intellectual Friend gave us this beautiful gift - a fairytale toilet! We have personally never seen a more charming bog - we bet you haven't either! (If you have, send us a bloody picture.)
Here are Intellectual Friend's musings on the subject:

"A Danish fairytale toilet house! A fairytoilet! In Aarhus, at the edge of the woods around Marselisborg. It was probably closed at the time, otherwise I'd have ventured in. Might need to be re-checked this summer!"

We can't wait to see what awaits inside! Although possibly there be dragons...!

Danish fairytale toilet

Royal Flush

We are delighted with these Bond-themed toilet pictures not only because our very own Toilet Tales feature a Bond story, but because we have recently been nurturing a private Bond-themed obsession toiletally (sorry) unrelated to plumbing!
German Friend has been at it again, "chipping in with a broad loo-related smile [...] to keep [The Privy Counsel] ahem... afloat"! These pictures are from a ferry! In German Friend's own words,

"I feel a true monarch on this ferry between Singapore and the island of Bintan, Indonesia. Not in the picture: my pokerface."

A ferry between Singapore and the island of Bintan, Indonesia: Royal flush!

We ACHE to press this button!!

Oooh, we're quite flushed from all the excitement!

Tap-Hunting at Pitcher and Piano

Kind friends took us mixer-tap-hunting in York one memorable night. Lo and behold, we bagged ourselves all kinds of trophies! Like these babies, from Pitcher and Piano:

Large cattle-trough-type sink, with two different types of mixer-tap: Bingo!

The fiesta continues: Both soap and lotion!

A depressing air-dryer, but on the other hand the Privy Counsel-approved air-dryers aren't necessarily
all they're cracked up to be - more on this at a later date

Tally-ho: Covered bin and easy-to-use, water-saving flush!

Bij, morduj - we give these toilets 11 points!

Pitcher and Piano
Ebor Hall, Coney Street, York, YO1 9QL
01904 658 580
http://www.pitcherandpiano.com/where-are-we/york

Ah ! well a-day !

According to Wikipedia (ever a source of inspiration for toilet bloggers!), "The word 'albatross' is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)^[1]".  
This aspect was very far from our minds, however, when checking out the toilet of the favourite restaurant of some relatives of ours. Restaurang Albatross is situated in Malmö's West Harbour, and offers spiffing food, friendly staff and a simply corking toilet!

We like: Mixer-tap and soap!

Hygienic paper towels and bin!

Disability-friendly toilet, hygienically covered toilet roll and a supremely convenient and hygienic bin!

An aesthetically pleasing touch

There's no coat-hook, but according to Albatross veterans one can hang one's jacket on a hanger outside,
and one's handbag on the door handle! Also, thanks to the design, one can open this door using one's elbow (or other part of the body one doesn't regularly use for eating), thus saving oneself much OCD-related angst!

All appliances from Tork!

A close-up of the high-quality, disability-friendly mixer-tap!

 This supreme toilet gets eleven points, leading us to the inevitable conclusion that we need to revise our points system - it should be much more than that!


Albatross
Västra hamnen
Barometergatan 58
211 17 Malmö
http://gastrogate.com/restaurang/restaurangalbatross/

A Suitable Gift for an OCD Hysteric

We had a lovely toilet conversation with a couple of lovely friends last night. Lovely Friend 1 told us about using squat toilets (read more about squat toilets here) while travelling in Asia, and how convenient and hygienic this is, especially after a dodgy curry. Lovely Friend 2 was not convinced, but reminisced about the toilets in the palace at Knossos. We'll write more about these 2,000-year-old technological marvels another time. For now, we'll content ourselves with showing our faithful readers what Lovely Friend 2 whipped out of her handbag:

Finally, we can relax on public toilets!

Toilet wipes! Hurrah!

Cowering in Copenhagen

Kind friends took us out on a bit of an adventure last night, to experience new bars and, subsequently, new toilets. It was epic: we found mixer taps and lovely soap! The pictures will have to wait, however, until such a time as we're not a) hungover, and b) rushing back and forth like idiots, trying to get important stuff done. (Be prepared to wait.) In the meantime, let's look at some Danish toilets! No, actually, let's go off on a tangent first.
For some reason every single Danish person we know is frighteningly intellectual. We don't know why that should be, but mentally cower a little bit in the face of their hideous intellectual powers and weird language. This is probably the reason why, according to Danish Friend (the same one, incidentally, who took the picture of the Mordor-esque public toilet in Finland - the one that's famous for its Finno-Ugric negative suffix), Danes are obsessed with toilets. Absolutely obsessed. So, here's an article on public toilets in Copenhagen, with lovely pictures. If you don't understand Danish, use Google translate or just find a comfortable position in which to cower in shame.

http://politiken.dk/kultur/madogdrikke/ECE362480/guide-her-finder-du-byens-bedste-toiletter/

You might also find it interesting to know what Danish people do in public toilets. 3 per cent sleep, and 27 per cent use toilet paper to touch things. Fascinating.

http://politiken.dk/tjek/sundhedogmotion/familieliv/ECE1082726/det-laver-danskerne-paa-offentlige-toiletter/

We like copper pipes, and Danes do them well, it would seem

Related Reading
Sing If You're Glad to Be a Dane
Blogging Something Rotten
Waltzing around Amalienborg
Cowering in Copenhagen