It was easy before. Grip? You approached a bar and, seeing your contorted face, perhaps the stiff position of your hands, your rapid breathing, they showed you the way: “At the back on the right.” How kind we all were then! But it ended. Now it is difficult to find the establishment that has a sad bathroom. The world has changed, and most of the usual places have been torn apart into small grandiose spaces with cool interior design, a good showcase and maybe even four tables, but without what you are looking for. Make no mistake, they are very cute (or “very cute” as some people keep saying), but few will offer you a bath when you need it. Everything is takeaway; also your needs. And when you find that bar, hotel or restaurant that has the booth, toilet or whatever you want to call it, they exchange the heavenly “in the back on the right” for a figure.
It’s the price. Between two and five dollars in any bar in New York. Two Swiss francs in a normal restaurant in Geneva. One euro (you can pay with a card) in the zen bathrooms that appear in airports and train terminals across half of Europe. It is clear that before you reach for your fly, you should make sure you have your wallet with you. To avoid that discomfort added to the squeeze, there are applications like Bathroom Search – it has 2,700,000 geolocated public bathrooms and warns you, quite frankly, that in most places they will ask you to consume before; you need to be able to…–, Toilet Finder (includes photos and even the type of toilet paper), Toilet Map, Pee Place or Public Toilet Nea.
There are many and with enough data to allow the preparation of the first accredited ranking on the subject. Paris wins by a landslide (7 public bathrooms per square kilometer) and Barcelona comes out on top. With 1.15 it almost enters the top-10 (it is 11th) and has Madrid very far away (with 0.13 it ties with Marrakech and Rio de Janeiro). The good positioning of Barcelona is surprising seeing how it is and how it smells. And it is hoped that our defeated bins, street corners, doorways and very large containers have not been counted for this ranking.
