MOSCOW, RUSSIA (KELO-AM) – When you gotta go, you gotta go, whether it is in the USA or Europe.
And if you gotta go in Europe, chances are you’ll be doing so in a uni-sex restroom.
While South Dakota’s attorney general joins lawsuits against federal transgender bathroom rules, Europeans often go potty in a bathroom that is neither male or female, or, depending on your point of view, is male, female or whatever.
How can these crazy Europeans do such a crazy thing?
They put locked doors on their bathrooms.
While on a recent trip to Scandinavia and Russia, I went to same sex/non-sex bathrooms in such international businesses as McDonalds (Copenhagen) and BP (outside Moscow). No one on my tour group was attacked by a crazed transgender person or any other perverts. You go in, lock the door, do your business, wash your hands, use the hand dryer that doesn’t work, wipe your hands on your pants, unlock the door, and then do the walk of shame back to the tour bus.
The bigger issue in going to the bathroom in Europe is that you typically have to pay to pee, whether the bathroom is in a Czarist palace or a sketchy Russian truck stop. A modern church in Helsinki, Finland charged one Euro (about $1.25 US) to use the men’s room. I wondered what would Jesus think about charging to use the bathroom but maybe Finnish Lutherans are just thrifty. Meanwhile the Russian truck stop charged 10 rubbles, about six cents. And that was too much, given how nasty the facilities were.
In Russia, the people who collect the potty toll are called “dragons” or “dragon ladies.” They are often—but not always—older women, often scowling, who make you pay the piper to pee. They scared me more than some transgender person lurking in the urinal.
Seems to me if the Europeans can pee in peace in same-sex bathrooms, we Americans can also figure out how to do it even better—and for free. Now that’s what I call American Exceptionalism!