On 8/9/2015 10:17 AM, philo wrote:
On 08/09/2015 08:49 AM, Don Phillipson wrote:
"philo" wrote in message
...

I'd be curious about the toilets in Germany.

When I was stationed there in the 70's the toilet bowl had no water
in it
and your "business" would land on a flat slab, which when flushed (a few
times) would wash things down.

I figured someone could have gotten very wealthy selling them
American-style toilets.

This may be a significant cultural difference. Americans rarely
want to inspect their product i.e. would rather flush it unseen,
but the older European tradition was that your poo could provide
valuable information about health.

The display toilet described above is still the norm in Germany/
Denmark/Netherlands (I think.) My brother in law's flushes clean
first time (but then he was in the building trades.)



I read a book, I think it was Carl Hiaasen who wrote a book taking place
on a tropical island and the natives went down to the beach each morning
to take a dump and inspect each other's waste...to see if they were OK.
The tides would then wash is all away.


For those who like to inspect, you can still do so if the stuff is under
water...it's just not as smelly I guess.

Years ago, at a hotel in Austria, we stayed a a place that had a toilet
with a shelf in the bowl above the water line where your dump would sit
high and dry until flushed. Not only that, the toilet was in the same
enclosure as the shower and if you took a shower the toilet would get
all wet. Think I have a picture of it somewhere.