The art of le pee in Belgium

The American bathroom situation is a joke to much of the world.

I went down to a local in Ixelles the other night, an alternative-style place called L’Athnee, which has an interior that looks like it was a barely rehabilitated squat (not squat beer prices though!). The place was unsurprisingly packed, given it was Saturday night and next to a fairly popular nightlife area.

When I went down to the toilet downstairs—because toilets here are always on the other floor—and I immediately remembered the trans toilet debate. As I remember every time I head off to the splash studio.

Brussels has a very weird situation about bathrooms in that they’re very much an afterthought. They’re usually clean and hygienic, don’t get me wrong, but they’re often with very odd setups that would never fly in the US. Mainly it seems the theme is, “We’re all adults here, just piss.” Whereas in the US, people would absolutely freak.

For example…

• One urinal wasn’t even in the café… or the bathroom. It was in a hall under the stairs, and offices or residences are upstairs. So you stand there to pee, look to the left and watch the people come in and go up the stairs. 

• Another bar, men have to walk through the women’s toilet to get to the men’s.

• In a sushi restaurant, there’s a urinal right next to the shared sink. Like splashing distance next to it.

• Many places just use the same room, the same toilets. And people are expected to, again, be effing adults.

• There’s one outdoor urinal—or what they call for unknown reasons a “uritrottoir”—in the center that looks like a mailbox. And the side walls aren’t even high enough to block the view of your postage. At least, I hope that was a urinal, because if not…
  

• Most parks have a lot of areas with really thick undergrowth and lots of trees. Those are public toilets.

• And on top of all that nonsense, a lot of places will charge you for the toilet. Like, I understand a public toilet charging, because it’s basically a business. But a club charging for the toilet seems counterproductive. I left one club. Why would I drink there? I’d just drink less because I wouldn’t want to have to skip to the loo.

• Or worse, the cinema was charging for the bathroom the first time I went (they seem to have dropped that bladder criminality).

• Festival urinoirs. The “urinoir” is a somewhat concealed, prepared place to pee. They are usually at wherever there’s a long line of portapotties. By providing urinoirs, they free up the portapotties to the ladies who might need them. I actually love these things, because there’s something weirdly liberating about peeing out the open and having it be perfectly acceptable. These are different than “pissoirs” because pissoirs are permanent installations. And yes, these are actual French words.

• No public toilet? Pull out a euro and offer one to the nearest bar. They'll most likely let you head up/down the stairs. This is a general rule throughout Europe.

• McD's of course is a public pisserie just as it is in the US. But unlike in the US, the majority of the pissing is in the toilets and they charge.
  

BELGIUM AND PEE

Belgium has a strange relationship with pee. There is of course, the fact that the national hero is a pissing baby, and the overabundance of pissing statues, which includes said baby, a little squatting girl, and a dog.

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Public peeing is pretty common, because of the pure lack of toilets in most public areas. It’s not France or the Netherlands, where France has FREE clean toilets in every park on nearly every corner, all of them with chemical showers to keep them clean, and the Netherlands has futuristic toilets that rise from the ground at the push of a button – if only they detected when you needed to pee (though to be fair, the Netherlands was forced to deal with this issue because of what the Dutch call, “wild peeing”, that is, drunk guys peeing into the canal and then falling in and drowning, which remarkably has a higher death rate than murders).

In Belgium, the capital of Europe, not so much. But that’s why businesses in Brussels have gotten together and formed a coalition of public toilets in Brussels. Many cafes and bars don’t mind it when you rush in in need of a pee. Maybe because their toilet is in the hallway anyway.

There’s a map here if you need it. And they identify themselves with the handy sticker next to what forms of payment they may or may not take.

Pee for free at this sign

THE AMERICAN ISSUE

For my non-American friends, there has been a neverending and incoherent debate about transgenders using the restroom and why apparently it should be everyone's business on which restroom they choose, because pedophiles are active in public restrooms and public toilets are also a place for children. The debate got so bad that people were even volunteering to "check" if a person was transgender or not. Yeah, I find a guy wanting to check for transgenders a bit more disturbing (and more likely to be a pedo), than a transgender. They even keep trying to pass laws on it.

And as much as the common conservative says, “I don’t care what your preference is, just keep it out of my face”—many transgenders are wanting to do just that. They want to use the toilet where they’re most comfortable. And when they do that, you most likely wouldn’t even know that, unless you’re sticking their preference into your face.

But it's election time, so we've got to make every g-damned thing a political issue. Which includes others' private affairs that I could care less about.

Just be adults, Americans. Use the toilet. Wash your hands. Get the fuck out. It’s not a hangout. The only people who should be standing around in the toilet are Instagram influencers. You don’t have to monitor pissers’ orientation. It’s ain’t your business, don’t make it your business.

And why are you so sure that a transgender is remotely interested in your fat little whiny Switch-bot pre-teen anyway? Trans doesn’t mean pedophile.

Nobody in Europe, at least as far as I know, is worried about pedophiles lurking in the public toilet, because pedophiles usually don’t strike in there. They’re more often striking at homes, churches, and other places where you’re supposed to be able to trust people. But anyway, if someone is lurking in the public toilet, does it matter if they’re trans? Just ban pedos from public toilets.

Football patriotism

The other night, like most other nights, there were two groups of guys. One group of guys was trying to kick a ball into the other group’s net, and vice versa. It was said to be a competition of sorts, and these guys were representing entire nations of people in their ball-kicking. And so it goes.

Some call this ball-kicking thing “football”, others “soccer”, and yet, still others “pekhburti”, which roughly translates to “soccer”, because I’m not English.

But what made that night different was that it was in Tbilisi and the Georgians won for a change. And now, the Georgian team for the first time ever has qualified for the UEFA Euro Cup. So good on them. That’s historic as far as such things are historic. And gives them one more claim to the European family that’s not Eurovision.

Trigger alert: if you're a sports fanatic, maybe stop reading here.

My love of sports

You might not believe me when I tell you I’m not really a sports fan. I grew up playing saxophone in the school marching band, and when the football (American) couch called me to join the team because I was tall and fat (read: wide), I declined because I was afraid I might stub my toe or something painful like that. I also didn’t want to do all the running up and down a field, afraid I might run out of breath. But the eating-a-lot thing that athletes do did appeal to me, but I did that anyway and skipped the athletics.

I tried to get into soccer in high school. All my friends were into it. It was a little group of “Europhiles” who, once they hit university, started hanging out at the only British pub in town and calling the sport “football” because we were cool (read: pretentious c*nts, as the English would say) like that.

So, not only was I never really interested in playing sports, but also, I wasn’t interested in watching them. I still don’t get how other people who don’t play a sport can even get fanatical about some dudes playing a game. Unless of course, there’s money to be won. Then I’ll get excited…

Sports as patriotism

In the US, we have a bizarre tradition of standing up for the National Anthem before a sports event. I’ve never understood the connection between the two. What does my high school swim team competing with the neighboring town’s high school swim team have to do with my country?

But then, if that wasn’t weird enough, sports games going wrong are no strangers to wars and riots. There was the Serbo-Croat War in the 90s, and more recently the Odessa riot that is quoted ad nauseum by Russists in 2014. Sports is a metaphor for war, and it often leads to war. That of course is a little more understandable on a national level, but back to the high school swim team, really, wtf?

I get it though

And though I don’t really give a flying pig about sports, I do understand why people wrap up their own pride in it. People want to be a part of something. It’s so tempting, so numbing, to feel yourself as a part of a greater whole. Whether it’s a nation or a writhing mass of cheering people, all united for a common cause. Oftentimes we best not question that common cause because that can mean ostracism and loneliness, just cheer and be done with it. You might not be a part of the football team, but you’ll be a part of the greater team. The fans. And that at least is some sort of community.

Humans are communal animals, after all. We need to belong to something.

And so, even if it’s not something that you’ve done yourself, it’s perfectly acceptable to be part of the “extended team” and take pride in the actions of the core members. Why not? You are doing a service to it, you are adding your spirit to the great pool of spirit that is giving the core members the morale and money to keep on going. So that’s something.

A collective pride

But if you feel pride for your collective, mustn’t you also feel shame for what the collective has done wrong? And on the other hand, if you don’t feel pride for the collective, are you really responsible for that collective’s actions?

I don’t personally feel proud for the victories of some wood-toothed general upon crossing the Potomac River. Well, I wasn’t there, nor were any of my ancestors anyway, who were busy running piracy schemes or something in the Spanish Province of Louisiana. I don’t know really know what they were doing, and I don’t really feel pride (or shame) for a bunch of dead folks I never met.

But these are questions to be discussed, aren’t they? If I feel a collective pride, should I not feel a collective responsibility? Are we even entitled to feeling pride for our ancestors, or forefathers of our traditions?

Patriotism vs. Nationalism

Everyone’s (second) favorite French leader Charles de Gaulle once pointed out the difference between Patriotism and Nationalism. Patriotism is the expression for love of your country, Nationalism is the expression of hatred for all other countries.

And maybe that’s what sums up people’s love of sports. It’s the love of your community, country, and so on. Maybe I don’t get stirred up the way others do because I moved around and don’t feel at home anywhere. I don’t have a sense of place or people. I am the vagabond. I feel myself a metaphorical orphan no matter where I am. I look in through windows while standing in the rain.

And maybe it’s a selfish thought. I’m only home where my family is. My wife, kid, parents, wife’s parents. I grew up not to trust the government, trust the church, trust others, and so on. Why would I feel proud that some jock slammed a dunk forty times in a row?

Love of country

That all said, who am I to detract from that? Everyone can have their day. Better for people to have their day than not. That’s what I say. And if millions of people need football to feel a part of a community… it’s better than needing a war to feel a part of a community. And so it goes.

Not all farmers fling poo

I write this while farmers are spraying liquid manure at a police wall on a neighboring street.

I used to get all the fun protests on my street. It was the legal route for protesters to follow, and it would end at a police wall in front of Le Berlaymont, the Imperial Fortress of the Evil European Union Empire or whatever. We moved here during Covid and got to see wave after wave of Libertarians throwing themselves against the police wall, and they’d always devolve into a pitched battle of mounted police in the park launching tear gas against Molotov-cocktail-throwing protestors. It was all in good fun, only one time did they light a neighbor’s building on fire and in general, I give them 5 stars over whatever crap was recently uploaded on Netflix.

Now the farmers are protesting, and it seems they didn’t take the advised police route. Instead the tractors just rolled over their barriers and went straight onto Schuman, where the Bureaucratic Buttress of Le Berlaymont stands supreme. On one end, they lit a big bonfire of tractor tires, and on the other they’re dumping steaming cow shit.

Tractors lined up at Le Berlaymont

My own history of unrest

There was a time I was all about protesting. I was there in Denver during the DNC, rallying against whatever tool they were about to put in place at the time (Obama), shouting down the War in Iraq. The police presence was ominous—snipers lining the tops of the building, big police armored vehicles with machine guns pushing the crowds into a kill box (just in case, of course, they didn’t really intend to kill anyone, right?). In general, the police responses to protests that I had been to in the States seemed designed to escalate violence, round up prisoners, and make bank on bail fees.

Fast forward to my life in Europe/Asia/Africa, where I tended to accidentally be at random large-scale protests, from the yellow vests to pre-Maidan-free-Timoshenko festivities, to the revolution in Egypt. For me it’s just a case of really bad timing, but for passport control guys everywhere they must be considering whether I’m an agent of some sort.

Managed protest

But the protests I’ve witnessed in Europe are managed very differently. In Paris, there are squads of police that take up corners throughout the city, out of the way and view of the protest itself, only to move in if violence ensues. This is similar to what I’ve noticed in Prague. They’re somewhat non-confrontational, even to the point where no one gets arrested despite flaming cars sent flying through the Arc du Triomphe a la Fast et Furious. When the police do come in to settle things down, there’s a bit of a beat down, but then at the end of the day you can spy protesters and policemen sharing a cup of post-apocalypse joe, with only one or two protesters actually getting written up on charges and probably no one actually getting arrested. Despite hurtling incendiary bombs made of other people’s property. I mean, no wonder protesting is a kind of national sport there.

A room with a view

Here in Brussels, there was a certain pattern to the Covid protests. There was a police wall defending on street, wall to wall. They’d have basically a barbed wire fence set up, where the police would stand around and look intimidating. Nobody could really get past the fence, so they wouldn’t actually do anything. Then some anarchist blackguard dude would stand on a wall and start shouting. That’s when you knew shit was going down. Molotovs would start to get launched, police would raise their shields and make jokes between themselves.

Let's start a riot

And here’s where I’d like to be fair to the Covid-protestors. Mostly they were peaceful people in tight situations just looking to release themselves. It probably wouldn’t have gone violent had it not been for the two or three blackguards who were there just to bring on the violence and incite a riot. The majority of protestors weren’t there for a riot.

Meanwhile, from behind the protestors, three water cannon trucks would roll up and start spraying everyone until they left. And here’s the kicker, this was the designated spot because they knew the protestors could flee into the massive park across the street and dissipate. Few arrests necessary; even during that one tear gas occasion I mentioned earlier.

What's the point of the farmers protest?

What is the point of most protests? Bring media attention to cover your event so that viewers can ask, “What’s that all about?” and maybe do a Google search to find out more. I’ve seen loads of peaceful protests here, from pro-Ukraine protests to anti-Iranian Ayatollah ones. But there is a line, when you’ve gone from raising awareness to being a nuisance, that you don’t want to cross.

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Now, as I hear the sirens outside my window and smell the poop in the air, I’ve got to wonder about the farmers. Those dudes are absolutely all here for action and being a nuisance. And clearly not that much worried about their farms they claim to be protesting about, because it’s this kind of thing that kills public sympathy for their cause. What exactly is flinging poop on residential buildings going to get them? Public support? I don’t know. I sympathized with them earlier. I still do maybe, I don’t know, but I do know I want the police to get their beat down on so I don’t have to walk in shit when I go pick up my son at school.

Postscript:

It was an interesting walk home. The tractors for the most part had left, so the columns of police vehicles were also headed out. The kiddo was busy asking me what all the problems were.

“Why are there police?”

“Because there were a lot of farmers protesting.”

“What do the farmers want? Mom says they want more money.”

“Basically, yeah. Protections against cheap imports, minimum product prices, looser environmental regulations, be able to use pesticides, and so on. But it goes down to money.” I have a tendency to talk to my kid like he's an adult.

"They want candy don't they?" he asks, threading the lines together in his little head.

I talk to him like he's an adult, though he's clearly not one.

And then as we passed Schuman on the way home, witness to the burning piles of tires and shit. “What’s all that?”

“Well, the farmers were spraying the police with poop.”

“That’s bad. Probably they were stealing candy too.”

“No, I don’t think they wanted to steal candy. They don’t want to steal, they just want to make honest money.”

As something of a “classical liberal” myself, I don’t wholeheartedly agree with trade restrictions and minimum prices. For one, not having those benefit a huge number of impoverished people throughout Europe. The small-time farmers might be hurting, but they also need to realize that if food prices are raised, then everyone hurts. They seem a little unaware of this, since I did see once sign saying, “Our death is your hunger”. Which didn’t make that much sense, as no one is plotting to kill farmers.

But the economy is changing. Farm production is absurdly high, far beyond the needs of the world. There is no agricultural reason for world hunger anymore. And it was the lack of foresight by farmers who just needed to earn a living that led us to the Dust Bowl as well. I do feel for the farmers. I’m also in a trade where most humans will one day be replaced by bots. Not that anyone actually wants to read text written by bots, but other bots do at least, and that's more than can be said about people who want to read what I write.

But whatever, I just know that not all farmers fling poo, most just want to earn an honest living.