Sometimes stuff works best together

---

I am finally starting to figure out the German showers thing, and with it, kind of having an epiphany about the foreign cultures thing.

I particularly value my showering experiences, so it was a particular concern for me that I, and I think Americans in general, have a thousand different kinds of trouble with German showers (and British showers).

For one thing, they're tiny, like so much else in Europe. I, like so many Americans, am not tiny.

I had a serious problem with how slippery the shower/tub floors are, and apparently so did my American expat host in Nördlingen, for she had installed little anti-slip suction-cuppy things, but they didn't work. The floor was so slippery that even the suction cups slipped. It was precarious.

In Ettlingenweier, I re-discovered the joy of shower curtains/doors that only cover 25% of the shower/tub opening.

I finally started to get a clue in Berlin. LG had no end of trouble with the shower temperature... it was either way too hot, or too cold, with no good way for her to adjust in between. After her miserable shower, I decided to just wash my hair, which entailed taking down the hand shower from its overhead-shower wall bracket. Doing so un-did a kink in the hose, and the water temperature immediately became pleasant. Ah so! This shower works best in "hand" mode.

Once I started actually using the hand shower as a hand shower, I noticed a couple of interesting side effects.

First, I tended to stand still and let my arms do all the water-work, instead of pirouetting under the fixed overhead shower like I do at home. When I did finally try to move my feet from the glassy-smooth floor, I made an amazing discovery: humans have these ridges on the soles of their feet, and these ridges tend to stick to smooth things if you squeeze all the water out from in between and then don't move. I actually had to peel my sticky, sticky feet-prints up off the smooth shower floor.

Hmm!

Once I figured that out, I started noticing that certain standing positions made it easier to control the spray than other positions, and made it less likely that I'd hose down the parts of the bathroom unprotected by the partial shower curtain.

Hmm!

And, when I didn't need to keep twisting and turning around under the shower, I also didn't run into the walls or the curtain as much. It was relatively easy to find a position I "fit" into.

Hmm!

And best of all, when I coached LG on effective use of the hand shower + gravity, she discovered that keeping water and soap out of her eyes isn't too difficult... and therefore she can actually wash instead of practicing avoidance. I assure you, our travels together got a lot more pleasant-smelling for me after that.

Win!

I probably would have figured out more about effective use of the German shower in Dresden in any case, since our hosts' shower didn't have an overhead wall bracket... just a hand shower. Little hint for us clueless Americans, I guess. 😉

Anyway, the point is, when you use a German shower as designed, things work together and everything seems to go better. The floor makes more sense, the curtain makes more sense, the size is more bearable, it's a more comfortable experience all around.

I realize that hand showers exist in the USA even without slippery floors and half-curtains, but my point is Europeans are not a bunch of morons who don't know how to set up a proper shower. 😊 They've figured out a collection of features that do, in fact, work just fine if you figure out how to take advantage of them.

This kinda goes along with things like following the local meal schedule, eating local food (the everyday kind, not the touristy kind), letting our hosts determine when windows and shades should be open or closed, taking siestas and lunchtime closures and Sunday closures in stride, and otherwise doing as the locals do. They've been at this living-in-Europe thing longer than I have, and probably have some good ideas about how to do it effectively.

Having said all that...

Czech showers. No curtain at all. WTF? Even using the hand nozzle, it's a huge mess. In 2005 I even tried showering while sitting down in the (narrow) tub, which didn't work at all and is even less of an option with new bad knee. Readers... any advice on showering in Czechia without re-creating the 2002 floods? Seriously desperate... Praha (Prague) is imminent.

Update: I did a Google search for "prague shower curtain" and got a long list of hotel reviews by Americans, along the lines of: "This place sucked! They didn't even have shower curtains!!" Sigh....

---

Photos

Somebody else's Prague shower
I totally forgot to take a picture of MY pension's shower, but here's a very similar one. Note the lack of curtain.