Well, people need them.
It's even in the name in Esperanto.
(The Esperanto word for bathroom means "necessary place.")
I think we all understand why.
Hopefully you've never been in a situation where you had to take a p-
no no no
had to use the bathroom,
but couldn't because there wasn't anywhere to go.
What a shitty situation!
I found myself in that kind of a shitty situation two years ago when I visited France.
Me and a few other
students who were studying (not "are studying") French in school ("Bone-jewur")
traveled to Toulouse together to study.
Luckily, my school had a very suspicious
definition of "study" and the week we spent there
was basically a vacation.
Every American student was paired up with a French student and their family.
I got paired up with Benoit, and we still talk!
Together, we did everything one could do in Toulouse:
we went to art museums
(Les Augustains et Les Arbatoires),
and to another really cool space museum
(Cité d'espace),
we played soccer with his friends (like this, but a lot worse),
and I even saw his school. (It looked nothing like this.)
One day, when he was in school,
neither the American nor the French school planned anything for us,
so they MADE us go shopping for the entire day.
I was kind of mad!
There we were, in a foreign country, full of
interesting things to see and do, but in the eyes of both schools,
the attraction that deserved the majority of our time was...
...shopping.
For some reason, it seemed like most of the American students
(and teachers)
actually wanted to go shopping. ("LET'S GO SHOPPINGGGGGG!!!!!!!!")
Luckily, there was another student who wasn't very interested in it either,
so we quickly bought some souvenirs for our families and
then walked the streets of Toulouse together.
First, we found a wine shop,
because her parents requested that she buy and bring back French wine.
Neither of us were more than 16 years old,
so if we were still in the US, the whole thing wouldn't have been legal at all.
We (mostly me, but also her) (French for "a bottle of wine please" written with Esperanto spelling rules)
were afraid that the shopkeeper would somehow figure out that we were Americans
*in an American accent* maybe because of our accents
or because of our ways of thinking
or because of our smells (???)
And then he would reveal that he was a member of an international police force
and would send us to jail.
But, luckily, that didn't happen
and she bought the wine without any problems.
I noticed that I had to use the bathroom,
but the store was too tiny and didn't have a bathroom. ("We need more space for our wine! Screw the bathroom.")
(Thanks for nothing!)
We tried to do what I would do
if I was in the US:
I would look for the fast food restaurant McDonald's,
buy the smallest and cheapest thing on the menu,
and go to the bathroom.
Certainly not the majority of people in McDonald's are there only to use the bathroom,
but I think going to McDonald's mainly because you need to use the bathroom isn't an uncommon thing in the US.
Apparently, in France, it's as taboo as saying that French
food is disgusting. (Actually it's delicious. :D)
We found the McDonald's, but I realized
that there would be problems as soon as I saw it.
In the US, the whole thing doesn't matter
because McDonald's restaurants are already seedy and
filthy, so nothing can really
make the building more dirty.
This French McDonald's looked
like an expensive and formal restaurant for rich people. (This one is in a city next to Paris.)
But our bodies don't care where we are
when we have to take a shit, (I decided not to draw anything for this sentence.)
so I went in anyway.
First, I looked towards the bathrooms.
There was a GUARD in front of the bathroom,
blocking the entrance, as if bathrooms were treasuries
that people guard.
Apparently some EVIL people had tried to GO TO THE BATHROOM before
in the bathroom-treasury!
What a messed up idea!
Thank god that that NOBLE and KINDHEARTED
guard was standing there to protect us!
I took my wallet
and got out enough money to buy
something cheap.
The next problem was that
I no longer had money.
Maybe someone stole my money, maybe I somehow dropped it, or, most likely,
maybe I wasted it
when I bought the useless souvenirs,
but the fact was that I no longer had money. (I had more money back at Benoit's house, so it wasn't a total disaster.)
Even worse, my friend spent her last Euros
in the wineshop, so I was gonna have to
request the right to use the treasury.
"Heeelllo."
*fake cough*
"I need to use the ba-"
"First you have to buy something!"
We left and tried to find a public bathroom.
If we could find a bathroom that wasn't in
any kind of store, I shouldn't have to buy anything useless (way too expensive with no new functionality!)
and theoretically I should be able to use the bathroom
freely and peacefully.
I was hopeful that downtown Toulouse was big enough
to have a public bathroom.
There weren't any signs that led
to any bathroom, but there are never
signs that lead to public bathrooms.
Why??
Do public bathrooms serve some other purpose besides letting people use the bathroom? ("portal to Mars")
Why do they have to be secrets? ("secret portal to Mars")
Finally, I found a public bathroom and –
Shit.
The first thing I thought of when I
saw that that public bathroom wasn't free
(besides that I hoped
that one day its creators would find themselves in the same situation)
was the video game Roller Coaster Tycoon.
By the way, that is a great video game!
Unfortunately, there is no Esperanto version, but
it might be possible to understand everything by looking at the pictures?
Creating a theme park is so much fun!
You can build roller coasters...
You can sell umbrellas...
make ducks quack...
drown the guests...
Oh.
I'm talking about this game because you choose
the prices of everything, including the bathrooms.
I thought that it was a cruel joke that you can
make the bathrooms not free, but apparently
there are actually places in the world where public bathrooms
aren't free.
Again, why???
Does no one see the obvious problems when you take away
people's right to shit in a bathroom instead of
on the street?!
I'm joking.
The bathroom was free.
Actually I think all public bathrooms
in Toulouse are free.
I was really afraid that I would have to pay
because I saw lots of
non-free public bathrooms during a previous trip to Paris.
Luckily, Toulousians understand that access to
bathrooms is a human right.
Except the people in charge of McDonald's.
Screw them.
I finished my first video in Esperanto!
Thank you very much for watching it, of course!
When I was writing the script
for this, I did a bit of research
on the history of non-free public bathrooms,
and found that there was
a big movement in the US to get rid of them.
I was very proud to learn, that
my hometown, Chicago, was the first city
in the entire world (wrong, just the first in the US), who completely banned them.
More reasons to visit Chicago, I guess.
Every good story has a moral, so here's the moral:
if you ever have to use the bathroom,
but want to visit France,
visit Toulouse.
Or Chicago, if which country you're visiting doesn't matter.
Both cities are cool.
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