Oct 11, 2006

On Showers

College, like so many other things, is a mixed bag. But one thing I'd really, really like to change is to have decent showers here. Seriously. They're just disgusting. I don't even want to talk about, for fear that I'll just spontaneously vomit. I often feel that I'm filthier when I leave the bathroom than when I entered, albeit a tad waterlogged.
Now I'm no stranger to strange showers. In fact, in Germany the showers were far more interesting than here. When we stayed in the hostel in Berlin (meant for backpackers and such), the shower was activated by pressing a button. It also only stayed on if the button was pressed. Thus, if you were taking a shower, you had to twist and turn to keep at least a finger on that button, and perhaps take a few risky hand-switches in the middle. I assumed that the problem there would be that the water was too cold. It's a relatively cold country, and so they could run out of hot water, or any number of associated problems. To my suprise, the water temperature was fine; pleasantly hot. The only problem was, it increased in temperature as time progressed. So after one minute it was warm, after five it was hot, after ten it was scorching, and by God if you stood in there for over twenty minutes you'd have third degree burns all over your body.
When I got to my German exchange partner's house, I figured the situation would be easier, especially after I got to the shower and discovered the familiar red and blue labelled knobs for water. The caveat, however, was that the blue knob released hot water, while the red knob yielded...hotter water.
In any case, I'd still take scalding water over a shower that looks like it came out of a dumpster. The air fare home to Texas is almost worth it just to take a clean shower.

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