Toilet Humour

Yes, this is a post about toilets. Please don't read on if you are squeamish.

For as long as I have been travelling independently, particularly with Girlguiding, I have had what some may see as a completely bizarre obsession with toilets.

My introduction to international guiding, at the age of 14, was a presentation from an older girl who had been to an international camp the previous summer. I can't remember where she had been, or who she was, but I do remember she told us a lot about the toilets. She even showed us a picture (I'm pretty confident it was a portaloo, so pretty safe as far as international camps go, as long as your tent isn't down wind, particularly towards the end of the week).

My first experience of an international camp was in Germany in 2003.  I remember we had portaloos, and they were horrendous and weren't emptied until they started to overflow three days into the camp. Add in the communal wash tents (15 year old me was not expecting to be surrounded by hundreds of fully naked Germans), and it was a pretty traumatic experience.

Regardless, thus began my apparent obsession with toilets.

The reason I'm telling you this is because I realised during my 'mini grand tour of Europe' perhaps how unnecessary and weird this obsession has become.

In the Netherlands, we always seemed to end up talking about poo at the dinner table (I noticed my friend stopped putting tomatoes in my salad after I told her about a man who noticed tomato plants growing at the bottom of his garden thanks to the British train toilets which 'evacuate' straight onto the tracks), and whenever I go on a Dutch train I'm careful not to drink too much - there is something very off-putting about seeing the tracks moving at hundreds of miles an hour below you. I'm also petrified of accidentally dropping something important (it wouldn't be the first time I've dropped my passport in the loo).

In Brussels, I noticed that the toilet cubicle doors opened outwards, and on more than one occasion I found myself thinking this is a much better design than in the UK, where I more often than not have to balance either myself or my shopping on the toilet seat in order to squeeze the door shut behind me.

And that brings us to Paris. My friend lives in a beautiful but very small studio apartment with a communal toilet. To be fair to her, she did warn me about the toilet in advance, but it wasn't until I arrived (having drunk many cups of tea while waiting to meet her after work) that I remembered it is a squat toilet.

Now, in theory, I have no problem with a squat toilet. Once you've mastered the art of balancing and not peeing all over your trousers, you're all set (I was going to say it's a bit like riding a bike, but we all know how good I am at that...)

The problem comes when you're very tired. As I locked the door behind me, I had a horrible flashback to the first time I used a squat toilet. Without being too graphic (use your own imagination), I hadn't accounted for how slippy the floor might be, and ended up in a less than desirable position.

I don't think I drank for a week afterwards.

Needless to say, I was a lot more prepared this time around. I just made sure I used public toilets at every possible opportunity, just to be safe...

I promise I will try not to blog about toilets again.

As easy as riding a bike...

I have come to the conclusion that the phrase 'as easy as riding a bike' is pretty much a pile of rubbish.

I mean, ok, the physical act of sitting and pedalling is not hard once you've worked out that you just need to stick your feet on the pedals and move your legs around in a circle. Staying upright is a bonus.

Being in the Netherlands, cycling is pretty much the only way to get from A to B, and there are literally no hills (something that, having grown up surrounded by mountains, completely freaks me out every time we go outside), so I don't really have any excuse not to. Therefore, on Saturday, I rode a bike for the first time in roughly 15 years (I'm not counting the time I cycled 3 miles from my parents house in North Wales to visit a friend, and then left my bike at their house for six months because the journey was so traumatic!).

I borrowed my friend's mother-in-law's bike, and after some faffing around trying (unsuccessfully) to lower the seat, we headed off on what should have been a relatively short journey into town.

Wait, that makes it sound like it just happened.

Now might be a good time to mention that, the night before, it snowed in Meppel for the first time in over two years.

So, we decided we would walk to the end of the street, where the snow had been cleared. Then, to avoid the confusing anticlockwise roundabout, we walked across the road. We were essentially half way into town before I even attempted to get on the bike.

In between my nervous/hysterical giggling, and my short legs not quite being long enough to reach the floor, it took a further ten minutes before we could actually set off.

I was just about settled into being on two wheels when we arrived at the supermarket. I had navigated my way around a small child and snow drifts, and managed to not crash into any cars (stationary or otherwise), so I was pretty happy.

The one thing I hadn't factored into my journey was stopping. I mean, I knew I would have to at some point. I just sort of forgot to think about how.

As I mentioned before, my legs aren't quite long enough for any more than the very tips of my toes to touch the floor when I am sitting on the saddle. Those of you who know me will know that I have a hard enough time staying upright when my feet are on the floor.

Needless to say, the disembarkation was less than elegant. As we came to stop, I forgot which of the many knobs and levers on my handlebars (which are, by the way, located somewhere near my ears) were the ones for stopping, and I panicked, steering the front wheel into the pavement. Fortunately, the snow provided a soft landing...

I'd like to say I'm getting better at this game, but I'm currently sitting on the sofa drugged up with ibuprofen and feeling sorry for myself, having lost control of the lower half of my body (ie, the bit attached to the bike) while crossing a road. Turns out I can do the splits (a challenge even without a bike tangled around my legs).

I think I can safely say that cycling is not a thing I will be taking up on my return to Edinburgh.

Flying Solo

(Written Friday 23rd January 2015)

I'm writing this post on a train. Somewhere in the Netherlands.

Three weeks into 2015, and I'm off on what I like to describe as a "mini grand tour of Europe '. 

I started planning this trip on a whim back in the summer of 2014 after the wedding celebrations of one of my best school friends. She now lives in the Netherlands with her husband (it still feels weird saying that!) And I realised when, we were all sitting in her parents' back garden just how much I miss her. Over the next few months, we caught up on life via Facebook and Skype, and by October we had decided I should go and visit.

At the same time, I had been chatting to my friend Helen, who I have known for 10 years (we went on a trip to Iceland with Girlguiding Cymru together). Helen lives in Paris, a city that I have wanted to go back to since my last visit seven years ago, so when the possibility of a trip to mainland Europe came up, I figured I could combine the two cities into one trip.

But when? 

Conveniently, my birthday is at the end of January, and I do not like January. That, plus the need to use the rest of this year's annual leave, plus a large number of Nectar Points, east coast rail vouchers and hotels.com points, made it surprisingly easy to book an 8 day holiday. Add a day in Brussels and a weekend in London into the mix, and I'm all set.

So here I am at the start of this mini adventure. I've survived the nightmare that is Edinburgh Airport's new security checks (basically a large cattle shed with automatic barriers that need to be staffed because they don't work, so those of us who used up the last of our printer ink printing our boarding cards at home had to queue for 20 minutes to get new boarding cards printed. I'm not at all angry. Nope.) I've downed 2 litres of liquid to avoid having to throw it away on my way into said cattle shed (and regretted it 2 hours later when the plane spent longer taxi-ing down the runway at Schipol airport than the whole rest of the flight). I've even managed to pack for a week in hand luggage (and we all know how much I dislike packing)!

All I have left to do now is work out where I'm supposed to get off this train...