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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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This is going to be an effective way to tank the Google/Yelp review score of your restaurant. And pay toilets are also stupid in Europe, I say that as a European.
Where is this mystical European place where people charge for toilets? I swear, I hear this all the time when it comes to US vs EU differences and I don't know what they mean.
I mean, I know places that have toilets just for customers, so you need to ask for a key or a code to use it when you're there, I know of a couple of cities that charge a nominal fee, like a quarter for outdoor latrines for some reason, and I know of one specific train station that licensed toilets out to a private company and they tried to charge for them, which is very shitty and everybody hated it.
The idea of restaurants charging extra to pee is not a thing in the European places where I've been/lived.
There are plenty of public toilets that charge a small fee. Train stations and airports for example. Also at gas stations it's pretty common. But I have never seen it at a restaurant or bar. Maybe sometimes there's a sign that says it's 50 cents for non-customers or something. But never for customers.
Yeah, right? That's my experience, too. I feel like outdoor latrines charge like a coin, presumably to keep people from squatting in there, but most places don't even have those. Maybe otherwise people are conflating customer-only toilets with paid toilets? I've never seen a paid toilet in an airport, though, and only once in a train station, and people seemed to be quite pissed about it and using the restaurants' facilities instead.
Munich central train station toilet had donations when I was there in 2012. Money went to charity. It was so clean though that I sat in the cubicle longer than usual before heading out into the hustle and bustle of the streets.
But public and restaurant toilets in general were cleaner in Germany. It was not unusual to see a toilet brush in the cubicle for you to clean your own shit up. Much more civilised than Australia.
I also didn't see out of control drunks on Saturday nights like we get in Australia, despite alcohol being really cheap and available from your corner store where you buy milk and bread. They would often have a couple of seats outside the store for you to chill and drink.
Keep in mind things have changed over the decades, with a general push towards a public health code for establishmends of "free bathrooms, free tap water".
Historically, Germany used to be famous for having only a few stops along the highway, with toilets you had to pay for. Tourist traps along France, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, used to let restaurants and bars charge for bathroom use, patron or no patron. Gas stops varied wildly, from free bathrooms, to "hole in the ground" ones, to "ask the manager for a key" ones. Rest areas along highways tended to have just a free "hole in the ground" type toilet, and it was up to you to avoid touching anything, then wiping off your shoes .
As for public bathrooms (outside an establishment), it still varies from place to place. Public events are required to put a number of free porta-potties, tourist traps may want to either finance installations with a fee, or reduce the number of free-standing turds in the bushes.
Still, over time the general move has been from "pee posts" for sailors to freely urinate onto, or people going down some stairs to sea/river level and taking a dump right there, to having public bathrooms with a "donation" policy, to public bathrooms with free piss walls/areas and a self-cleaning booth for a nominal fee.
As fas as I know there's nothing keeping restaurants or bars from charging to use the toilets. Also as far as I know, and I've used public toilets in restaurants and bars in most of the countries you list many, many times over several decades, those are exceedingly rare and absolutely not the norm. That was true 40 years ago and it's true today.
The type of toilet is a different thing and yeah, until maybe the late 90s a lot of Europe was no stranger to squatting toilets. Honestly, for pubs and places where you're mostly disposing of the drinks you're having, I'm not even sure they're a bad idea. Less accessible and whatnot, but I'm not sure a sit down toilet with a carefully developed patina of beer urine developed over years of sloppy drunken aim is a safer or cleaner proposition.
Right now it depends on the health code, which depends on each city's council and particular situation (like, if the city has no potable tap water, then it makes no sense to have a regulation to serve it for free).
On the EU level, there has been back and forth about:
It's an ongoing debate, that on one side would provide all of the above for basic humanitarian reasons, but on the other side has restaurant owners up in arms about extra expenses.
That's about when I saw a guy take a dump directly into the river instead of going to the "pay what you wish" bathroom. They've remodeled the piers since then, removed the stairs going down to water level, put a couple free public restrooms along the way, and enacted stricter regulations that turned the river from foamy brown to murky green.
I've used one in paris. Had to put .50 euro in the coin slot on the door in order to get in and stand over a hole in the floor.
Where was this? The times I've been in France I was there with friends and I've been in Paris for maybe four hours in my entire life, but that sounds like it was either in the 90s or you were being scammed in more ways than the toilet.
I mean, what I can tell you is I'd definitely found a different toilet unless this was a free-standing outdoors latrine and I was in a hell of a hurry, just based on the fee, let alone the squatting toilet thing.
Around 03/04 - Near the Eiffel tower - walked into a restaurant, asked for the restroom, was sent down the stairs, found the door had one of those things like a gumball machine on it where you put coins in and turn the handle to unlock the door. The urgency I had to go forced me to pay for it, go in the bushes outside (police everywhere), or go in my pants.
maybe they are talking about public toilets on the streets. not in restaurants. like the ones that clean themselves in Paris.
Some malls have actually clean toilets, those..
I've never been charged for a mall toilet in Europe. But hey, that's the problem with saying "Europe". I can tick off maybe a copule dozen malls in maybe three or four countries, so we only have like twenty or thirty countries left to verify, assuming the practice is set at the national level and not regional.
In my mind this was a German thing that people kept saying was a European thing, but I haven't peed in enough public places in Germany to tell you.
In the past 10 years I have only used public toilets like 20 times, probably had to pay for half that.
Also it just occurred to me that here most tourist attractions have paid toilets as well. (castles and such) As for malls, I'm talking about the fancy mall with restaurants, jewelry stores and a multiplex, not the Walmart type.
Yeah, no, me too. I've peed in a couple of those in just the past few months, and in hundreds in my life, and I haven't paid money once. Like I said elsewhere, the one time I've seen a paid toilet in a place it was a public transportation hub and both I and other patrons seemed full-on outraged.
Clearly we have experience in different places and it seems like this is a regional thing. I just don't know which regions that is.
I've encountered them in Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, and France.
Not everywhere though, and restaurants often have free toilets for customers. Mostly in cities, busy places.
Germany has paying toilets near on the Autobahn, but last time I checked you get a rebate coupon to buy something in the shop or cafe.
Not necessarily opposed to them. Some people are animals and 50 cents keeps out the worst of them and helps keep things clean.
I'm not entirely sure of the logic of why somebody would be cleaner after paying 50 cents than otherwise. It seems like a move to keep away homeless people, but even then, it's not that hard to secure fifty cents and unless they have a timer going in there, which seems ill-advised, it wouldn't help either.
In any case, I've only ever seen them in outdoor latrines and rarely in public transportation hubs. They are definitely not the norm anywhere I've been.
I'm sure I've seen them in the UK. I can't recall where else.
I've been in the UK dozens of times and never seen those. I guess I just don't pee out that often, but in the pubs and restaurants I've been to it's never come up.
I'm in the UK, and where I live, it's almost exclusively local council owned toilets that charge a fee. So these aren't toilets inside private businesses, they're separate buildings located in car parks, at beaches, and so on. So the fee to use them is almost certainly a combination of preventing homeless people from squatting in them (since they're not watched over by staff) and to cover the costs of electricity, water, and sending someone over to clean them once in a while (since the majority of people using them are not residents of the area who have paid council tax). The fee is nominal, £0.20, and most of them now have card readers so people don't need to have a 20p coin on them.
Right. That tracks with my experience. So when Americans are all weirded out by "paid toilets" in Europe, do they mean those? I always read that as them finding they had to pay for toilets in businesses or restaurants.
In an ideal world, yes, the council-owned toilets would be free to use (and there'd be some mechanism for taxing tourism so the people that are using the beach and car park toilets are the ones paying for them). But I really do think Americans and Australians are overstating how common this is, because it really is a minority of toilets - I only actually know of two in my area, compared to dozens of other toilets that are completely free to use.
Yep, I'm assuming that's what Americans get weirded out by. Which is just weird because it's definitely a minority of toilets anyway. The vast majority of toilets in cafes, restaurants, bars, and large shops (or indeed any business where it's normal to be there for more than 10-15 minutes) are either publically accessible and free to use, or can be accessed with permission. It's generally frowned upon to walk into a business, use the toilet, and not buy something though, and even cafes and restaurants will only let you use the toilets if you buy at least one drink, so it could be that Americans are running into that.
There's also a thing that only some businesses have toilets positioned in a place where customers can access them - obviously if it's a tiny shop and the only toilet they have can only be reached by going through the stock room, they're not going to let people just wander in and out (and may also be barred by their insurance policy from letting non-staff into the back rooms.) They might bend that rule for someone they know, but not for someone they don't - in my home town, I know several businesses that would let me use their toilets in a pinch, but they wouldn't let a complete stranger do so (they trust me not to nick stuff, or know where to find me if I do!) So there's definitely a bunch of social conventions about when and where you can use a business's toilets, which I can easily see Americans tripping over. As I understand it, the approach to customer service is quite different in the US compared to here.
All over the place in Europia. From train station to public parks, in multiple countries, it is somewhat common for a turnstile with a coin slot for a small charge. Doesn't bother me if it allows for cleaner, safer facilities and keeps the riff raff out.
The issue is, at least in the US, the "riff raff" is usually just unhoused people looking for a place to do their business in private and maybe wash up a bit. Adding a paywall to public restrooms is just cruel.
I see it occasionally in Finland. Saw it a lot in Estonia. Saw a few in Sweden.
OK, what I'm increasingly getting from this thread is that one-off kinda scammy touristy places get over-reported and maybe mixed up with outdoor stand-alone toilets? Stuff gets presented like "in EU you have to pay for public toilets" in clickbaity travel articles, but it seems to be more like people were in one scammy place that was chargning and that's what gets talked about? Maybe I just don't go to enough tourist traps.
Well for Finland I have experience from all over and pay toilets aren't rare in cities. From Tallinn or Stockholm, it was like that at least in city centers, not sure I would call those touristy places or just high-traffick places. Touristy places make me think more of old towns and such.
I ran into it in a mall in London, was pretty surprised.
Along what others have mentioned, we still have the 'Old lady sitting in front of the toilet building'. It's less common these days but there are still some of these around in eastern Europe. She keeps the facilities clean(er) and takes money from entrants. They usually have a little stand or something.
Tbh, I haven't even seen many pay toilets in Europe. I only saw them in Hungary.