MaureenB

We just returned from visiting Vienna, Prague and Munich. Lovely cities, great vacation, nice hotels. But my questions are: Why do even the newest bathrooms still use those funky hand-held showers? And why don't they believe in shower curtains or doors? I got really tired of trying to use the shower head and not getting water all over the floor. Is there some trick to using those blasted things?

Sjoerd

You have been really unlucky with your hotels. In 35 years of travelling around Europe, the times that I didn't have a decent shower with fixed shower head and shower curtain /door, have been very few and far between.

Travelnut

If you are talking about a bathtub with a handheld spray nozzle, the deal is you are to take a bath then use the sprayer to help rinse off. It isn't meant to be used as a stand-up shower.

Of course, if there is a bracket higher up to hang the handheld nozzle, I can see why someone would try to shower with it.

I have stayed at a few hotels that had shower curtains, a couple that had those 1/2 doors, and then just the tub thing.

jody

I love hose European tubs with hand held showers , just remodeled my bathroom and had one put in!

nytraveler

You have in fact identified one of the major mysteries of travel in europe. I can;t tell you how many hotels I have stayed in that have these "showers" - yes with brackets high enough in the wall to shower with - and no curtain or door or etc. (And this was not a mistake - the room was rented "with shower".)

I have given up trying to make sense of them. I just shower away - and if the entire room is soaked - let the hotel deal with it. If it happens often enought they may get the bright idea to put up a shower curtain.

(FYI I asked them abut this at one hotel in France and they said how would they hang a curtain - I can't imagine they have an entire country without extendable shower curtain rods - but perhaps they do.)

tomboy

Their idea is that, since the floor is tile, it's MEANT to get wet. Yes, it's for a shower, not to rinse off bath suds. I, as a house guest, asked my host this question in 1978; he wasn't troubled in the least that water got on the floor; it's supposed to, he said. If there's a lot of water, just throw a towel on the floor, he said.
(Brand new house, too, it was).
We must be careful not to impute our American practices and values to others in the world; sometimes theirs make more sense. After all, parking structures in Germany, Czech Rep, and elsewhere have 24/7 machines that take money or card in exchange for parking time tickets; we have.......$7/hour parking attendents which, for the same time period, cost (with payroll taxes) $70,000/year.

bob_brown

The hotels I used in Vienna had great shower enclosures. The apartment we rented in the Ötztal for a week had a great shower compartment with an automatic water temperature control device that I wish I had.

Even the room we had at Landhaus Christoph in Heiligenblut had a decent shower. So did the Sallerhof Pension outside Salzburg.

Christina

I have traveled in quite a few countries in Europe, and have been in Vienna and Prague (not Munich), and have never once had a hotel without a shower door if it was indeed a shower, not just a sprayer to rinse off. A few hotels just had tubs, and of course they have the sprayer to rinse off (as is common in Europe), but it wasn't a shower. Those did not have a high hook on the wall implying it was a stand-up shower, however.

Perhaps you just need to stay in a higher level of hotel, I don't know. I've have never had that problem, even in 2* hotels. So maybe you were just unlucky on top of that.

MaureenB

Thanks for sharing your experiences. It's always interesting to hear what other travelers encounter.
We were in a four-star hotel in Vienna (which we loved-- the Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth) where the hand- shower nozzle was mounted high enough to stand underneath. And yes, the floor was tile, so wasn't damaged by water. But we used all our towels just sopping up the water so we could finish getting ready in the bathroom without slipping and sliding.
Our hotel in Munich was three-star and had a brand new bathroom. (We also loved this place, the Hotel Uhland, right by the Oktoberfest park.) The shower stall used the partially affixed shower sprayer and actually had doors-- but nothing at the bottom of the doors to stop the water from running all over the floor. The first shower that I took, I hadn't been aware of this and found water standing on the bathroom floor that had actually leaked onto the carpeting outside the door! Not a good thing. Then, we created a dam by folding and placing the bathmat strategically, and that worked somewhat.
In Prague, our pension was three-star with a shower head partially mounted over a bathtub. (The Pension U Lilie.) Even trying to sit down and use it was uncomfortable. I thought my back would go out trying to reach for the darned thing, and it was not fun getting cold before spraying off. I guess I'm a wimp!
I'm a bit compulsive about not damaging things, so it bothers me to flood anyone's flooring. Anyway, not a big deal, we loved our hotels and didn't spend time reflecting on this while there. I am just curious why the practice persists. It can't be easy for them to deal with mopping up after shower-happy Americans. I still find it odd.

papagena

I must have stayed in about 200 hotels in Europe and I've never encountered this arrangement.

ira

Hi maureen,

We use these at home.

The point of a hand-held shower is that it is to be held in the hand, close to the skin.

You aim it so that it does not splash on the floor.

You rinse. Turn the water off. Soap up. Rinse. Repeat, if necessary.

This saves water.

stardust

I think the point is that if you ask for a room with a bath, you get a bath. The sprayer is for rinsing off, and perhaps they added the sprayer-holder later for people who really wanted to take a shower. But I find plastic shower curtains rather dodgy and a glass wall for a bath is kind of difficult to place.
If you prefer showers to baths (as I do), ask for a room with a real shower, and it should have protection of any kind as well.

Cobos

I think some of this confusion especially about the wet bathroom floors comes from the fact that some parts in Europe ALL the baths are wetrooms while other parts they are not. In Norway f. inst. every new bath MUST be a wetroom, while in Belgium there are no such requirements. So in a wetroom it's no problem getting the floor wet and the owner should not mind at all... While if the floor is not a wetroom you have to make sure it doesn't get wet since that will lead to the floor getting destroyed by mold/humidity. FYI: a wetroom is a room where the floor is covered with some waterproof covering and the floor is slanted towards the drain. A high threshold to block any overflowing water is normal as well.
And personally I was mystified when I visisted a 4 star Chicago hotel last year and the floor was NOT a wetroom, but I suppose that might not be standard there.

Cobos

hopscotch

Showers without curtains are more or less the standard way it is done in Europe, hotels and apartments. The <i>douche</i> room gets soaked and so what? I've been in about 30 countries over there and hundreds of hotels and it is always a pleasant surprise when I see a shower curtain, about 50% of the time.

As for some <i>&quot;trick to using those blasted things&quot;</i> MaureenB, I try to aim it toward the wall while rotating myself to rinse down. This doesn't work 100% so the floor gets wet, whereupon I throw the towel in the puddle.

nytraveler

Ira -

That works fine except when washing your hair - after you lather you need both hands free to rinse while the water is running - then have to do the same with cream rtnse. I know in someparts of europe its not that common to wash your hair every day - but even if its every two days those hand held guys just don;t work.

And we're always sure to ask for a shower - frankly we don;t care if there's a bath or not - and have found this often even in 4* hotels.

clevelandbrown

We have an old house with small bathrooms, so on our trips we took note of what we liked in the small bathrooms in Europe. We ended up incorporating the hand-held shower head (granted, in a tub with shower door), a bidet, and a towel heater powerful enough to warm the entire room. Its a definite improvement over what we had before.

ParadiseLost

Does anyone know what the advantage is too having this type of wetroom bathroom?
I can think of a few disadvantages.
A wet tile floor is slippery, a wet tile floor with soap &amp; shampoo residue is very slippery.
After the floor dries it will leave a film from the soap and shampoo. This soap film will also settle in between the tiles in the grout.
In hotels I've stayed at with this setup it seems the floor never completely slopes towards the drain, so the water pools. And a few times the drain was capped but did allow the water to drain but *very slowly*. So a 5 min shower would overflow into the bedroom and soak the carpet. Although the bathroom's electrical must have it's own (ground fault) circuit breaker which trips before a person can be electrocuted. You are standing in water with a metal drain in the floor, so you are grounded. So in the unlikely event (but not impossible) that something electrical did malfunction, the only thing between you and 220V is a 20e circuit breaker. I'm certain that 220V electrical outlets are't allowed in the bathroom, I'm thinking more along the lines of the mirror lightbulbs, switches and those very low amp shaver outlets which could malfunction. Regards, Walter

Cobos

I will add that in most cases of wetrooms I've seen they ALSO have proper shower curtains or shower stalls or similar. And assuming the drain actually works you should drain the floor within the minute. And not to mention in Norway at least every bathroom that is less than 20 years old has heating under the tiles or other covering so that the water will evaporate. Of course the problem with soapy water is usually very small since the drain in the floor is in addition to the one inside the shower/bath, so only the water splashed outside the shower escapes... Of course if the water gets between the tiles you should contact your plumber to fix your faulty bathroom right away, as that problem is just as serious as not having a wetroom bath. I've experienced that in a new bath, and then the whole bath had to be redone (and it was done free of charge as well). As you can see we Norwegians take our bathrooms seriously but considering winter temperatures some of the places that is no wonder.

Sindre

m_kingdom2

A proper wetroom has no toilet or basin in it, just showerheads - a ceiling rose, and several jets from the sides. The idea is you can have a much larger showering area and no sense of being enclosed. Of course the bathroom should be large - and the wetroom acts as an ante/post room which is separate.

Every hotel I stay at has a separate shower cubicle, and a bath with handheld shower. No problems there.

ParadiseLost

Cobos: My fault, I wasn't clear on what I meant.
A wetroom is a very practical idea for a bathroom no doubt. And I'm very jealous of Norwegian's bathrooms with heated floor tiles (I live in New England).
The wetrooms I question are the ones where the water floods the room itself, either because of no shower curtain or usually because a curtain or so light-weight that it gets sucked into the shower/tub area.
Regards, Walter