SPECIAL REQUEST: STEFMATTNICKELLEN'S BATHROOM, ADELAIDE

it has been quite a while since i have been in this bathroom, which is really unfortunate, as it is closely associated with being overcome with happiness and hilarious memories from drunken nights before.  some people might be surprised to hear , on seeing this bathroom, that the sight of such a room would ignite so many warm feelings, like a drop of pink food colouring in a bowl full of water.  i will have to describe it how i remember, but it quite possibly has changed a lot since i laid eyes on it.  

so it has a stereo in the bidet which was pretty annoying cause i always wanted to try one of these things and this time woulda been especially good, under the watchful eyes of a tween poster of mary kate and ashey olsen locked in an incest-y embrace, but i was thwarted by the stereo and an assortment of broken cd cases including the strokes, room on fire, which i believe was matt's.  actually, its not really a stereo, more of a dusty battered boombox, like ghetto blaster thing.  i have never heard it blasting, it was quite possibly broken.  i perhaps wouldnt have used the bidet anyway, as i am as yet undecided about its purpose; is it a bum washer, or a fanny washer?  is it both?  how do you dry your bum or fanny after you use it?  do you stand or squat?  is it possible to blast other people's poo particles into my own fanny?  i am unsure as to whether i would've had the mental agility to navigate through this potential minefield of possibilities on a half-cask-of-rose hangover, so maybe would've steered clear regardless of the presence of unused appliances inside the porcelain fixture.  i think i have only encountered one other bidet on my bathroom adventures, again which i was unable to use.  one day.

the shower in this bathroom has a lovely heavy pressure and has always been hot when i have needed one, but perhaps not after.  the door is broken and after you have manouvered it across to be kind of closed,  you can sit rather comfortably on the bottom of this shower as it is very warm.  if water goes out of the half closed door, there were always a mangled pile of people's towels or a sodden brown bath mat on the floor to catch the drips.  i think most people might be too squeamish to sit on the bottom though, due to the sickly feel of sitting on various species of fungi, and the slick oily texture of the unwashed surface.  

cause this bathroom is pretty dirty.  since staying there stef has insisted to me that she cleaned this bathroom regularly, indeed, the MOST regularly of them all, and despite the fact that i never saw evidence to prop up this statement, on asking nicks opinion on this claim, discovered that her cleaning mostly involved taking all of his beauty products off the sink, and stuffing them into his drawer.  i cannot say either way.

this bathroom gets a hundred points for always facilitating happy hungover showers, generally into which sam and i would huddle, saying over and over again what a good time we were having staying with these amazing hygenically challenged friends of ours.  it also gets points for being the origin of an unusually entertaining photograph i have been privileged enough to see, of nick sitting on the toilet in the nude, talking on his cell phone, beside a full bubble bath.

it loses points for having very few products i was interested in pilfering.  there was a lot of iodine for some reason.  little brown bottles of iodine.  it gains points for having really good lighting, making you feel quite hot every time you put your make-up on for going out.  it also has a really big mirror which two people can comfortably doctor their faces in front of, no problem.

less points because it is so close to the living area and it needs to be soundproofed.  i have memories of overhearing some very intense screaming vomiting.

there is actually another toilet in the house, which again bumps up the overall score, which you reach by passing through a blue and green beaded curtain, which basically ensures a shoe-in for the highest score possible, though it was kinda beadless in patches.  on the floor of this toilet is a big hard cover book, that if my memory serves me correctly was on greek gods?  and maybe a birthday book as well?  great bathroom reading, educational AND interesting.

it gets five points for surprisingly always having loo paper, indicating some standards amoungst the housemates, and gains another five for always being filthy enough so that when we stayed, i could clean it, and really feel like i had made a big gesture to say thank you.  more points alloted as we were allowed to use it and stay when we were complete strangers, and they didnt know us from a bar of soap, which was the beginning of a lot of things.

oh, and it always had a pile of trashy mags beside the toilet on the corner of the bath!  and stef had nice face cleanser which felt like it repaired the damage the weekend had done.  she still does.  all in all, quite a high point, one might say.

JANE AND DAVIDS BATHROOM, GENEVA

so sam's folks live in geneva, switzerland, a seemingly lovely place with moutains and lakes and shopping or whatever gets most people in a tizz about places being amazing or not; i am however, not the person to say one single word about the place, as though we have spent many a tour-break day here in the last year, much, if not all of my time has been spent with my sizeable nose pressed up against, either the computer screen against which i am currently pressed up, or the television screen in the next room, which has enabled the watching of jane and david's rather large quantity of DVDs.  i have however, been into the town approximately five times, once even to do christmas shopping, and spent one night drinking pinkish wine with sam and stef, at what i suspect was the local derelict sports club.  i have lost much of my self respect for finding it much too terrifying to try out my high school french on the  people of the city, preferring to go into a type of burning faced paralysis, rather than spit out a few unassuming french words.   i have lied with both brilliant flair and commitment, to my mother about day trips to italy and france, both within minutes drive from sam's parents house, deftly choosing the minor mental gymnastics required to concoct believable travel anecdotes, over the guaranteed violent berating i would receive from my mother, if she ever found out i sat on my arse all day and watched b grade rom coms, instead of turbo-sight-seeing my fervent way across switzerland.

jane and david have two bathrooms at their house, which is an average sized apartment on the top floor of an 15 story building over looking the mountains and lake geneva.  possibly stunning, but somewhat wasted on me.  they have one small bathroom, which has a toilet and a shower, and a larger one which has both those two things also, but including a bath.  

the first bathroom has a shower head that propels the water so finely into your back and shoulders, that it feels more akin to acupuncture, than cleansing.  the boiling hot needles swing widly between way too hot and way too cold.  i flood this bathroom almost every time.  someone left some nice clinique cleanser in there a while back, which i have just finished, after polishing it off steadily over a few visits.  which is a shame, as it was one of those ones that makes your face feel tight as a skanky girls latex halter top on a thirty degree day.  this bathroom loses points for the lack of soothing moisturiser, which is needed after blasting your face then vaccuum sealing it with the cleanser.  it also looses points, a bit unfairly, for always having extreme shit stains in the toilet, undoubtedly the fault of me and my band mates, as opposed to the bathroom itself.  it has lovely thick paper, which you really only need about three squares of, and a nice new toothbrush which i have since claimed as mine, that does a great job of removing the food which tends to fester in the huge cave made my my wisdom tooth.  the bathroom also loses points for having a medicine cabinte which makes a noise as you open it, exposing you as a thief and liar.  but gains points for being warm, and also for not being the only toilet.

the other bathroom, trumps the first one hands down for having a strangely big stock of panadeine, and some anti aging eye cream that makes me feel like scarlett johansen stuck her eye skin to my face.  good, in other words.

EUROPE TOUR NUMBER 3

so now it is a while later, quite a while later in fact, and i had forgotten about this blog.  but now, we are touring again, through europe for the third time, and the cast has changed but the bathrooms are still the same.  maybe my penchant for designer body products has lessened, but my appreciation of other peoples tooth brushes most definitely has not.  i am not going to backtrack, but if a particularly good bathroom comes to mind from the last year, i will add it in.  i have new priority products and new base levels of how low i will go.  we will see if the tone has changed, maybe i'm over it, maybe i'm too good to just review bathrooms anymore, but probably not.