It really happened--I swear!
 

A few years ago, my friend and I were on a business trip to Germany. We were to meet a company executive for dinner in Basle, after we had spent a relaxing weekend in Interlaken.
Leaving Interlaken in casual clothes, we pulled in to a roadside rest area and grabbed our suits and ties. Running a little late on time, we dashed into the Toilette and found stalls (we were the only ones in the place). We were changing clothes when James whispered, "Hoover"!
We both heard the unmistakable "Click--click--click" of high heels.
Clambering up on top of the commode seats and hunkering down, we waited until the Fraulein finished and left. We dressed in warp speed and raced out--noting the DAMEN sign we had missed on the way in!
(Footnote) We both swore each other to secrecy. No one was to ever find out our mistake. James came back to the USA a week earlier than I--and you guessed it. Everyone in our company had heard the story. And it was all my fault!!

Regards,

Jinx Hoover

Good one jinx. What are friends for?Here is one I submitted a long time ago, but for the newbies:
We were in France, the Dordogne, heading for Sarlat. We stopped at a "super market" in a remote area to get the fixings for our usual picnic lunch. As we exited the parking lot, we saw a car wash up on a rise behind the market and having been on the road for about two weeks, it was time to get a wash. We took the little road up to the apparatus, positioned the car in front of the car wash, inserted the coins, jumped back into the car and waited for the wash to spring into action. Nothing! Got out. Looked at the coin mechanism. Hmmmm, right coins, properly inserted, well in position. OK, I'll put coins in again and see what happens. Nothing!. I jumped out and banged and re-examined the coin mechanism several times and then, happened to look up on the hill just above us where two elderly, weathered gentleman were sitting on a bench, sweaters buttoned all the way up, caps at a jaunty angle, laughing uproariously. I am talking knee slapping, belly jiggling, red faced laughter that signaled immediately that something was very amusing about our plight. I looked at the apparatus once more and then.... Yes, I jumped into the car and pulled up into the car wash and it began to work immediately. I could have sat there all day. There is no way that car wash was ever going to move over our car. We laugh about this one from time to time. Can you visualize these two old gentleman at home that evening? There were these two Americans.... How dense can one be?

I, for one, would love to hear your stories about embarressing moments on your travels.

I doubt if the Europeans would be as upset about mix-ups like that as Americans. I can recall on my first visit to Paris that restroom facilities in the street were relatively common. The metal shields were not all that extensive, either above or below. It was not uncommon to be able to see a man, head and shoulders, engaged in a common biological process. Once, as I walked by the street facilities, one gentleman in progress tipped his hat to a passing lady of his acquaintence.

Also, people change clothes on the beach without drawing any attention from the locals. Just part of the normal routine.

Even today, in Paris, it is not at all uncommon to walk into the "Gents" and find a female attendant who is there to assist and keep the place clean. I do not mind at all leaving a tip or paying a fee because the place is clean, stocked with supplies and, to some extent, patrolled.

In my experience, people over there are not as hung up on that kind of thing as Americans. I found it refreshing to not have some of the prudish American standards always dogging me.

And certainly the Janet Jackson stunt would not have gotten much attention, if any, in many European countries. The "so what" audience response would not have been worth the effort. Over here, it touched off a furor. I even had fun pretending to be morally outraged and irreparably scandalized. (Actually I was more amused than disgusted at both sides of the issue. There is a difference.) The same bureaucrats who bellowed and yelled about Ms Jacksons alleged public obscenity and immorality are probably sitting in their dens drooling over the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. We are in some respects the masters and servants of the double, even triple standard.

We should be more concerned about public health problems, drug/alcohol abuse, and the fact that our schools are turning out relatively uneducated graduates. Extra curricula activities like band, soccer, and football take priority over learning. One can prove with test results that the longer students stay in the American public school system, the relatively more ignorant they become until late in their undergradute careers and/or graduate school at leading universities.
Our Ph. D. programs, and preparation therefor, are often so rigorous that the trend is often reversed for the few who qualify and complete the program.

And I will conclude with a little illustrative example. At the University where I was employed for 33 years, the big push has been for cultural diversity. Fanfare and headlines announced that the campus needs more students from different cultural, ethnic, religious, and educational backgrounds. There has been a very active process to recruit from outside the state, even outside the nation. We just gotta have it! Otherwise we are deficient.

The School of Music has been very successful in meeting the diversity goals. It has both international students and faculty of superb talents. Recently, the School held its annual concerto competition. The seven winners of the competition, who performed in concert with the full orchestra, were all from some nation other than the USA. They came from Croatia, China, Italy, Korea, Brazil, and Argentina. Some of the same administrators who publically touted the success of the diversity program bellyached in private about the fact that no American "was allowed to win." Go figure. Not a bad idea.

Several Septembers ago my wife and I attended a performance at the Vienna Opera house. Needless to say, it was a fairly elegant affair, with lots of women in evening gowns and men in formal attire. The theater was a bit warm, and so by intermission I was quite thirsty. I searched around for a water fountain, but there was none to be found in the entire building. I asked at the refreshment stand in my broken German for a place to get a drink of water, and was directed to the men's room. There at the lavratory sink was a queue of well dressed gentilemen waiting to get a drink of water from a communal water glass! When it was my turn, I instead improvised a paper cup from my rolled up program, which got a lot of chuckles.
I don't know what the norm is in Europe for the public sharing of a drinking glass, but this is unheard of in the states. On the positive side, we througly enjoyed Vienna and would love to go back.

Jinx,
Your story reminded me of a trip we were on in Austria with our two sons (neither spoke any German). In a cafe, they both went to the men's toilet and were surprised to find women in it. They had read the signs on the doors and decided that HERREN must be for "her" and DAMEN must be for "the men" so they chose the latter.

My husband tells the story of being a teenager in France and going to a restaurant's restroom, which had two toilets side by side with no separation.

He tells of having a lovely young woman enter, say good day, proceed to do her business at the commode next to him as he sat totally frozen until she left. He still shakes his head decades later. I told him he couldn't have been too frozen if he had the wherewithall to "check her out"!

Since we're on bathroom stories.... Mine happened at a winery tasting-room in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. We had had a good time tasting, and nature called. I let myself into the unisex toilet, which had a very heavy wood door. I closed the door, and it locked. No key. No way to get out. The temperature was in the 90's and the odor was substantial. I pounded on the door. No one came. After about 20 minutes my travelling companion returned, realized what had happened, and went for help. I was very glad when that door opened.

In a restaurant in a chateau in France I went to the toilette and really loved the window decor. It was a lovely cloth over a wooden base used as a valance, so I lifted it a little to see how it was fastened to the window. You guessed it, it came off in my hand and I had to catch it, there was no place to lay it down without ruining it, so I carried it with both hands and handed it to the surprised hostess at the restaurant, then ran away as fast as I could. Outside, I was weak with laughter at the look on the poor woman's face, just another notch in the belt of American Tourist faux pas that she must have!

Funny stories! We had just checked into the Belvedere Hotel in Bellagio after a pretty harrowing ride from Downtown Milan to Bellagio. Needlessto say, I needed to use the bathroom pronto. IT had a VERY strange kind of lock that I had never encountered before, but I locked it somehow. Problem was I could not UNLOCK the darn thing! I tried about 5 minutes and was starting to get a little panicky. Then the door was opened by a hunky young bellboy;-), who had heard me trying again and again to open it! I was so mortified. He just smiled away and I blushed and stammered that I was VERY TIRED!

My wife was stuck in a cubicle in the ladies at Chateaux Chambourd. I heard her banging so I went in and sprung her with my handy dandy Swiss army knife.
Twenty minutes later we passed by again and there was banging coming from the ladies.

Oh! I wanted to share my "I can't believe___" story but it isn't a bathroom story, except that when it happend I just about $#!%. Before taking off for Paris, some young obnoxious "gentlemen" nearly got kicked off the plane for screaming about not being seated together. (This was not long after September 2001) They were rude and all of us seated near them for the next 12 hours wished we were on another planet. I then had a glass of wine, put on my dorky teal suede Magellans eyeshade and took a super powered sleep aid that I wish I had the name of now. When I woke up we were landing. The eyeshade was not on my head. Not on my lap. Not on my seat. When I stood up to walk around, I found my eyeshade. Around the head of Sleeping Obnoxious Loud Guy! When he woke up I gave him my best stare. I did. Quite intimidating, no doubt. Still too wimpy and fidgety to say a WORD and fearing confrontation I decided he can have the $6. EEK!

OK. So my French carwash post won't work on this thread. Here is a bathroom reply.
We were in Assisi. We had toured the Basilica and were walking up into the village when nature called. We looked for a public toilette and found one near the Piazza del Comune. The only problem was it took coins to get in. It was a fairly touristy day (not bad for Assisi), but there was a line of people waiting and scrounging for coins made the situation worse. We waited our turn and pretty soon a Priest with three Nuns came to the head of the line. I know enough Italian to understand he was trying to see what the holdup was. When he read the sign which pointed out the requirement for coins, he became very agitated. He reached into his pocket to get the required coins, opened the door, directed the three Nuns to enter and then stood there and held the door until evryone in the line had been able to enter. We all said thank you as he waved us in. After all, who had a better right. I am not a Catholic, but I lit a mental candle for this Priest who was administering to his flock, at the moment, in the best possible way.