"Which way is it to the gents, please…?" (Flickr, 0zel)

It would be fair to say that the Germans have a slightly, ahem, different relationship to their… err, bathrooms than we British. Indeed, it’s quite different to the attitudes I’ve encountered in American friends, too. And in France. And Spain. And… well, alright: pretty much anywhere else in the Western World.

What does “different” mean in terms of the little boys’/girls’ room, then? Well, for a start, it means that Germans don’t beat around the bush like I’m doing in calling a shovel a shovel and a toilet a boghole. When a German needs a toilet, he or she will ask for one, generally in somewhat undisguised terminology like “Toilette”, “WC” or “Klo”. This last word, for instance, is perfectly polite, friendly even, but comes directly from the word “Kloake”, or cesspool.