Beware – Hungarian toilets

Next to the infamous squat-hole toilets of Asia, the German/Hungarian Poo-Shelf Toilet is undoubtedly one of the least pleasant methods of waste removal - assuming you're like most folks and don't feel the need to get to know your waste. It finds itself here in Hungary and Poland because these regions were once part of Germany until the Germans got all riled up and tried to take over the world. The Poo-Shelf comes from a period in German history when Germans were less interested in world domination and apparently more interested in spending quality time with their feces. That, or they were prone to accidentally eating their wedding rings and needed a toilet that allowed them to conveniently rummage through their dung before dispatching it to the abyss. Those must have been fascinating times and I'm quite glad I wasn't born in them.

I don't know how many such devices are in existence. Perhaps they're quite rare and we were simply lucky to stumble upon a lot of them in our travels. All I know is that upon encountering the Poo-Shelf Toilet, one is forced to solemnly contemplate the reason such a horrible mechanism exists, and what demon designed such a thing.

Rather than whisking your waste away, the PST simply lets it sit there, mere centimeters from your rump, so that you might think about the brief time you had together. When you're done reminiscing - or when the odor of a pile of poop begins to negatively affect the ambiance of your bathroom - you simply pull up on the flushing mechanism to send your creation on to the Great Beyond. However, if the flushing mechanism doesn't work - well, you're on your own with a shelf full of poo and a toilet designed so as to render the plunger useless.

It should also be noted that any man who chooses to stand up and use the Poo-Shelf Toilet for the purpose of bladder-emptying can be expected to enjoy as much splash-back as one might get from say, peeing on a coffee table.

For a country which prides itself in the engineering of some of the finest motorcars and energy systems on the planet, one would think that by now, Germany would have designed a far better method of human waste disposal, and for the life of me, I cannot fathom why any home owner would want to install one.