Raptus Regaliter

One thing that is definitely strange, when you first come to Germany, are the taps.

Now, in England, you get two taps. One cold, the other, slightly less cold. Or scaldingly hot, usually depending on the age and efficiency of the plumbing in the building. Basically, however, you're forewarned that the one with the red mark on it will deliver something that's generally a bit warmer than the one with the blue mark.

Not so in Germany.

Germany, you see, is run by obsessively fashion-conscious design engineers. Having two taps, apparently, is not efficient. No. In Germany, what you get is a horrendously complex wet-dream of futuristic mixertap where the mixture of hot and cold water has to be adjusted in three dimensions, using a joystick, which operates in a completely unintuitive manner, completely different from any other taps that you have ever come across in Germany, or, for that matter, in the same building. I think it says a lot for the German attitude to plumbing when you realise that most of the set of the "Raumschiff Orion" - Germany's answer to the U.S.S. Enterprise - came straight out of a bathroom catalogue.

Even worse are the taps that I call the "false friends". These seem to operate in a similar manner to an English mixer tap - but the truth is you couldn't be more wrong if you tried. You see, rather than operate as separate valves for the hot and cold water, these unbelievably fiendish and cunning traps operate in the following way : the blue one adjusts the water flow, and the red one adjusts the heat of the water. It took me several layers of skin before I'd worked that one out.

The worst, though, are to be found in German male toilets, many in drinking establishments where you would think they'd install something a lot less complex for the benefit of the customers. German plumbers, you see, really want to be taken as seriously as nuclear power station engineers. To this end, they invent numerous methods of activating the "flush" on a urinal, such as infra-red detection and switches that operate by measuring the resistance of urine, so that the urinal automatically flushes itself after use, rather than the english method of just squirting the things every five minutes whether they've been used or not. This can get confusing, because some older urinals still have to be flushed. This can mean doing a rather awkward version of the hokey-cokey in front of the urinal until you realise that the thing isn't automatic, and you have to push the carefully-concealed button on the top of it. What really makes me mad, though, is they still haven't worked out how to make a urinal that doesn't spray your trousers with your own waste products if it comes out a bit too fast (as it is often wont to do after a night on the Kölsch). What really gets my goat is that German urinals stink far worse than their english counterparts. Some German urinals honestly smell like a rat has died in the plumbing.

The ultimate in humiliation, however, has to be the taps in Starbucks. I don't know how they work. I can't work out how you turn them on. I've rotated the little lever on the side. I've pulled it. I've pushed it. I've waved my hands underneath the tap, over it and round it, in some desperate attempt to activate some hidden sensor. I've even checked underneath the sink and tried headbutting the mirror. I wouldn't mind, but I'd already squirted liquid soap in my hand, and there were no towels to be had to wipe it off, so I made my way upstairs (German toilets are always in the cellar) to ask the staff for a paper towel. Halfway up the stairs I met a typical female Starbucks customer coming down, who looked in my hand and assumed the worst.

It probably didn't help that I said "It's not what you think - sniff it if you don't believe me", and followed her when she raced into the toilets. I mean, how was I to know she'd phone the police on her mobile and tell them she'd locked herself in the ladies loo to avoid some lunatic?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how german plumbing nearly got me arrested.