CAUTION!!! I am about to write way too much information, or as my mom likes to say, "TMI!" If you don't want to read about Jack and my Mist, don't say that I didn't warn you!
We're all friends and/or family here. I'm going to level with you. The toilets here in Germany are crap (pun intended). Not because they don't work...they do, but because it's one of the most convoluted and annoying things I have experienced thus far. Picture the toilets that you are used to in America. You do your business and flush, right? It's simple. Occasionally, you may have had Mexican food the night before, and you need to use the plunger, but for the most part, you go and flush. End of story.
Not here in Germany. Going #1 is one thing...that's all fine and dandy. The Go and Flush process stands. But #2 is different. The toilets in Germany have what Jack and I call "The Mist Ledge." Sometimes, we say "shelf" instead of "ledge," but the point stands clear. There is a shelf/ledge directly under your dropping point. When you flush, the German toilet shoots out water like a jet in a jacuzzi and supposedly pushes your mist into the small hole at the end of the ledge. Note the word supposedly in my last sentence...the jet stream usually does not push the mist. It stays there...just chillin' on the ledge. The smell stinks up the bathroom and I'm not going to lie...it's gross.
At first, Jack and I thought that it was just us. Clearly, we're somehow not misting the right way. After 26/27 years of misting, Germany was trying to tell us that we were doing it wrong. Then we learned that we are, in fact, misting the correct way! Phew! Most German toilets have a cleaning brush that sits next to it. You're supposed to take the brush and push your mist with the stream into the hole where it flushes. You use the stream to help clean the brush There is a toilet cleaner that pours into the water when you flush, so the brush gets cleaned and rinsed.
Gross, right? It doesn't end there...next time you mist, look at it. Does it float or sink? Lucky for you, it doesn't matter because American toilets follow the Go and Flush procedure. If you have a floater here, you have to use that same cleaning brush to push it down while the toilet is flushing. This is because there is not a strong enough water stream to push the floating mist down. So next time you have to take a mist, remember this post, and be grateful for the fact that your toilet does its job, whether it's a floater or a sinker :)
The toilet and cleaning brush. The yellow thing is the toilet bowl cleaner
Visual on "The Mist Ledge"
Is this tutorial on Mist for Gail and I for when we arrive next week? lol
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