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Comment by PreInternet01 | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing particularly smart about these urinals: the screens are meant to show ads, but usually only show reminders (accompanied by a godawful jingle) about how you can use part of the EUR 0.50 you just spent on entry towards a purchase in the adjacent shop.

(These setups showed up all over Europe years ago, with gas stations outsourcing their toilet facilities to companies taking care of cleaning and maintenance. Payment is collected on entry, which gives the customer a ticket, which entitles them to 30-cent-or-so discount on coffee or whatever. Advertising is supposed to make this all work. It does not seem to have been a very successful model, with many facilities being in a state of disrepair as shown in these pictures)

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Whenever people call out Europe for having paid toilets, commenters always show up to say they’re glad toilets aren’t free because they’d be so filthy otherwise.

I’m glad you nipped that in the bud. Euro paid toilets have always been outright disgusting and not once better than the free toilets found literally anywhere else in the semi-developed world in my experience. I’ll take a free SE Asian toilet over a paid French toilet any day of the week.

Nice thing about ads in toilets is frustrated users will be very creative in showing their lack of satisfaction with commercials blasting while they piss.

Apart from SF, where there's literally a human shit map because there's no public toilets.

The best place for bathrooms: Wegmans. Always the pleasant experience.

> Euro paid toilets have always been outright disgusting and not once better than the free toilets found literally anywhere else in the semi-developed world in my experience.

No idea where you're using toilets, but I've been all over Europe and have yet to see a disgusting toilet.

Conversely, I haven't found a (paid, public) toilet which wasn't disgusting in the UK or Germany.

The best public toilets I've ever used were free, actually, and can be found at the waterfront in Vancouver, Washington, just north of Portland[0]. They're called the Portland Loo.

https://www.columbian.com/news/2018/oct/10/portland-loos-ins...

Toilet quality is almost entirely dependent on "who" can get to it; as a tourist you may always get high-quality toilets, unless you intentionally go to certain areas.

So for example, the restrooms after the ticket barrier for a high-speed train will almost always be miles ahead of the restrooms available as part of the before-the-gate in a subway or Metro.

In Germany, there are free restrooms on autobahn parking lots (essentially truck stops without a gas station or shops or anything, just the restroom) and these paid restrooms. The paid ones are objectively miles ahead in terms of cleanliness.

(Every once in a while you also see free restrooms where the cleaning person asks for a tip.)

In France, the gas station restrooms on highways are free and they are clean (the restrooms in rest areas without a gas station are more hit and miss) so it's more a question of being within a building with employees being there at all times, I would think.

In Belgium, you'd better not need to pee on the highway on Sundays or at night because the restrooms (paid, or reserved to clients of the restaurant/shop owner) are simply closed, outside of a handful of gas stations where they cost 0,80€ AND are only moderately clean.

I was at the train terminal in Paderborn (visiting Germany) and did not see the sign that "suggested" paying to use the restroom—but the attendant did not miss that I didn't pay and almost assaulted me. When your German is rather limited it's sort of difficult to understand when someone is screaming at you...

In the US we have free gas stations along our freeways. I've never stoped at one on he Autobahn so I can't compare, but they sound like the same idea. They are run by the state and in general clean and nice (there are exceptions). Gas stations are hit and miss - most of them are also nice and clean, but some are disgusting.

Can we avoid sweeping generalizations over a continent of 50 countries?

It's essentially flamebait, since it's highly unlikely to apply to all of them, so you just trigger counter-anecdotes.

Complain about French rest area toilets if you like, and praise Vietnamese railway station toilets. Those would seem more reasonable scopes.

They recently changed the payment model, at least in some locations. It's now 1 EUR for using the restroom, but you also get a 1 EUR voucher for food and drinks.

This is one of the ways to go about it; roughly similar to the "ask for the key at the counter" you sometimes see in the USA (though that is often to keep drug users out of the bathroom with more or less success).

The locked bathrooms don't really help though. Last time I used one there was a shit on the floor (with a shoeprint and tracks!).

it's really weird... I moved from America to the EU, and found myself in a tiny village in France, where my nearest neighbor was a trucker. They seem to have the same mentality all over the world.

I'm inclined to agree, but what mentality are you referring to in particular?

Watch ads for 30 seconds to flush or activate 4.99€ monthly subscription to flush anytime

The problem is that you don't have to care about whether you flush or not - that's the problem of the guy using the urinal after you...

At the risk of ruining the joke: these Sanifair urinals don't really flush. They are advertised as some sort of self-cleaning chemical solution.

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