24 January 2014

Twin Olympic toilets

When BBC reporter Steve Rosenberg went to use the bathroom at the cross-country skiing and biathlon center for next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi, he found two toilets but only one stall...

Although toilets like that are not common in Russia, social media users posted photos of other side-by-side toilets, including ones in a courthouse and a cafe. The editor of the state R-Sport news agency said such communal toilets are standard at Russian soccer stadiums...

In a nod to the tight security measures imposed in Sochi for the Winter Olympics, another joke has it that the second toilet was for a Russian security officer.
Reported in the StarTribune.  Photo: Steve Rosenberg, Associated Press.

4 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 24, 2014 at 2:25 PM

    I went to the Finnish Community Centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 1968, and had a delicious, warming snack that consisted of a large bowl of heated milk and a huge slab of Russian black bread, which one dipped into the milk. Afterwards, I went to the toilet.

    There were two toilets behind a partition, one on one wall and the other on the wall facing it. In other words, if both were in use, you sat facing each other, presumably carrying on a conversation while waiting for nature to do its business.

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    1. MinnesotastanJanuary 24, 2014 at 3:30 PM

      My parents remember the era of two-hole outhouses, but my understanding is that both holes were not used simultaneously. They might be different sizes to accommodate the couple's derrieres, or each used privately for personal sanitation preferences. But not at the same time. I assume...

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    2. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2014 at 2:36 PM

      This was a community centre, capable of holding a lot of people. There would be times when there was high demand for those toilets. There were two toilets behind a partition which hid them from the urinals, but there were no doors in front of the toilets. They were identical porcelain toilets.

      We're talking about Finns here, from the land of the sauna. They didn't have the same fears of nudity as us more delicately-raised folk.

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  2. AleksejsJanuary 28, 2014 at 5:16 AM

    Here come the pictures of actual athletes in this famous toilet :)
    https://twitter.com/Nepareizais/status/428114220643659777/photo/1

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