Seeing these posts made me think:

Some (most? but not all...) Americans use washcloths to clean the, uh, nether regions. Works fine with a fixed shower head, especially ones that aren't low-flow (though even the low-flow ones put out good water volume and pressure--I might suspect more than the typically greener European conservationist-oriented appliances).

This, coupled with adelauro's comment (though I'm not sure if that user's experience in British hotels translates to Continental hotels) makes me think that perhaps the reason handheld shower heads are popular there is because they don't use washcloths. Without washcloths, unless you want to, uh, dirty your hand, the only way to cleanly rinse everything is to aim the wand at it. With washcloths here, the wand is unnecessary.

It's just an idea--I could be wrong...

What are washcloths?......I hope they're not the same things as flannels!

Energy use is not completely a free market in the US. Indeed, specifically with oil, one can argue that it is subsidized by military and foreign policy spending, since most of the US' military and foreign policy problems are oil-related. No, not the simplistic "invading Iraq to steal the oil" claptrap that some people say. But plenty of governments and groups enriched by oil money are unfriendly enough that the US has spent a lot of military and/or foreign policy money dealing with them.

Hmm! Interesting.

From Wikipedia's List of American words not widely used in Great Britain:

Washcloth
(UK: flannel, UK often & US less frequently facecloth; US less frequently also washrag)

I've never seen one made of flannel, though--mine are usually terrycloth...

I agree that having a shower head that is both fixed AND able to be removed is superior to the fixed American version. But too often I have seen European versions that flop around with no way to wash one's hair. And by definition and shower without a curtain or way to keep water from getting all over the bathroom is inferior.

European luxury hotel bathrooms are just great. But I've stayed at a lot of lower end places, and sometimes the bathrooms have been a bit scary. You generally don't find that level of scariness in a lower-end American motel.

BTW, in Holland and perhaps some other countries as well, the toilets are designed so that you can't flush poop down the toilet without the help of a brush! Yuk! I do not want to brush my poop. So yes, I dare to say that a toilet that I might merely flush and get rid of the contents is better than one that I am required to "brush" the contents clean with a second flushing. Showers with curtains are superior to those without.

Europe has some things that are clearly superior to things we have here in the states. Bathrooms, in my opinion, aren't among them.

How cheap. You don't know how arrogant this post is and those who posted typical American as well. But you've started this childish BS.

Do you know that most Americans origin from Europe? So everybody who is living in the US in 2007 origins from the old European tribe that uses to take bathes and those who remained in Europe are the stinkers? Is that why people left Europe for the US?

The entire thread is so ridiculous


We need to encourage people to take more efficient showers. Yes, everybody on earth should take a shower each day but this doesn't have to take 25 minutes each. You can easily make it within 10 minutes. You don't get any cleaner after a certain amount of time, just use soap ones.

My flat in the UK has a half-length plexiglass screen as well. I actually like it, as it is long enough to keep water inside the shower and much easier to clean than a shower curtain.

My last flat (elsewhere in Europe) had no shower curtain, and the design of the bathroom was such that it would have been impossible to hang one without suspending a rod from the ceiling. That was admittedly a bit unusual.

Sounds sexy! Sounds like things could get messy and slippery and...

Wait, you are talking about showers without curtains. Oh well then never mind.

When you study water usage, showers are such a miniscule part of water consumption that it just doesn't matter. For example, in some U.S. states more than 90 percent of water consumption goes towards irrigating silly little crops that society doesn't even need. We could all shower for two hours every day and it really wouldn't make that much difference.

FWIW, when the first Europeans came to America, they were absolutely aghast at what they views as a filthy habit of the Indians: daily bathing! (Of course, we're talking my ancestors here.....).

I suppose this is NOT exactly the way we like to think about it, but water that flows down the drain isn't exactly disappearing from the planet. Ultimately it ends up either flowing into treatment centers (for those with sewers) or into your back yard leaching field. It ends up back in the ground one way or another.

The big issue with water isn't how much is used, but where it is used and where it ends up. Outside of the industrial use which ends up absorbed into products (which is admittedly a huge issue), water is eventually recirculated, it just takes time. We end up with water being taken from certain places and put into other places as polutants. I think the real concern is dealing with waste water.

Lol! How would you attach this? I knew that pubic hair weaving class that was forced on me in high school would come in handy one day. :D


I quite like the Japanese approach to nudity in public places.
Back to the days of early childhood.

for future reference:

It is both. Good manners says one should use it to try to cover up a little as one walks around.

Not correct. Bigger shower rooms has no relation to a better establishment. e.g. small pricey ryokans (small but expensive) vs Japan Post Kampo hotels (cheap but big)

This is utter nonsense. I have lived in the Netherlands 44 years of my life, and have been using toilets (almost) every day :p and I never used a brush to get rid of the poop. Never. Not even once. Just flush the toilet and the poop magically disappears. Perhaps your poop has a high glue content, in which case I advise that you see a doctor soon. :D

I use shower quality as a way to distinguish a good from a great hotel.

To be a great, a hotel room must have a separate walk-in shower with a door. It must have both a ceiling mounted waterfall showerhead and a handheld and it must have superior watrer pressure and volume. No low flow for me.

About the only mechanical thing I can do is take apart a shower head to remove any impediment to water volume.

The oddest thing I have seen in a European hotel bathroom (from my American perspective) is the sign in the bath in the hotel at the AMS airport: "Please shower inside the bath tub." (Or something similar). I assume it must be for folks who shower before they bathe.

What aggravates me is either (1) shower curtains that are made of fabric and do not keep the water inside the tub or (2) shower curtains that don't quite close around the front of the tub so no matter how careful you are, there is water all over the floor.