It makes you wonder, doesn't it? :)
Pissing in public is practically unheard of in France/Monaco, but it is a major issue in some cities like Amsterdam where vast numbers of tourists flock into the city on weekends, drink inhuman amounts of beer, and do not have nearby homes/hotels to go to. For your amusement, please find below an excerpt from the dinner speech (really!) of a friend who is an ex-pat in Amsterdam, about problems of being an ex-pat in this fair city:
The way in which people piss and, occasionally, shit in the street is also rather disturbing. I was walking home a few weeks ago at about 7.30 p.m. going past the Albert Heijn at Waterlooplein and a guy, who didn't particularly look like a tramp, junkie or alcoholic, I'd say some sort of manual worker from what he was wearing was urinating against Albert Heijn's front window in full view of everyone. It was still open and pretty busy but no one made any move to stop him, let alone calling the police to arrest him.
I've seen numerous pissoirs where people have taken a dump, which ispretty disgusting and I don't understand the point of those plastic urinals which get dumped all over the city, seemingly at random, every Friday night. While I'm sure they reduce the incidence of people relieving themselves in the street to some extent I've seen Dutchmen happily pissing away against a wall with those portable urinoirs less than 10 metres away and any advantage they do have is nullified to a great extent by the fact that by Sunday morning many of them start to over flow sending great orange torrents of piss cascading down the street. I've sometimes seen them after people have shat in them as well and, frankly, if there is anything more disgusting than that in the world I don't want to know about it.
And on that note everybody please enjoy your main course. |
