{"id":467,"date":"2015-08-07T16:44:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T16:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/2015\/08\/07\/where-are-the-bathrooms\/"},"modified":"2021-10-15T16:28:49","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T21:28:49","slug":"where-are-the-bathrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/where-are-the-bathrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Are the Bathrooms?!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Undergroundedit\"<\/a>

Underground sign, Charing Cross Station<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMIND THE GAP.\u201d The harsh, British, male accent commands us as we get on the Underground. I look down as I step up onto the train, and the phrase is repeated on the ground in bright yellow road paint as well. There\u2019s a small gap in between the concrete platform and the floor of the train, about two inches wide. Just enough space for a foot to slip into if you land the wrong way.<\/p>\n

\u201cMind the gap?\u201d I\u2019m thinking. \u201cOh, you mean \u2018watch the gap,\u2019 or pay attention to the gap.\u201d Many of the phrases we Americans use everyday are different here in England. \u201cGive Way\u201d means yield (but the road sign still looks the same), \u201clift\u201d means elevator, \u201cway out\u201d is exit, \u201cengaged\u201d is in use or occupied, \u201cto let\u201d is for rent, \u201cunderground\u201d or \u201ctube\u201d is subway, and the one I find the weirdest is \u201ctoilet,\u201d which means bathroom or restroom. All the others just seem so proper compared to our English counterparts, but toilets\u2026 One of the other students on the trip said he felt like he was asking where the \u201cfecal depository\u201d was. It just seems so improper for this ultra-posh society.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really get used to these different phrases until I\u2019d been in London for a week. When leaving the subway (I mean Underground), I\u2019d look for \u201cExit\u201d and then remember I should be looking for \u201cWay Out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WayOutedit\"<\/a>

Way Out sign, Victoria Underground Station<\/p><\/div>\n

If I\u2019d ask an employee at a museum where the bathrooms were, he or she would stare at me, confused, until I\u2019d realized what I\u2019d said and inquire about where the toilets were. Then they\u2019d comprehend what I was saying, and we\u2019d both be on our merry way, me feeling a tad foolish and very American.<\/p>\n

But even though we Americans and Brits have this slight language barrier, we\u2019re all still human beings. On our first day here in London, riding the Underground from Heathrow to our hostel, a mother and her kids got on with a stroller. There was a little boy, around six or seven years old, who I don\u2019t think had been on the Underground very often. His mother mentioned that they normally took the bus. The boy was asking a lot of questions about how the Underground worked and was insatiably curious. The mother was explaining, very simply, what everything was and adding a couple fun stories about how she and her friends would hang from the bars in the Underground and kick each other off. It was all very reminiscent of the interactions I\u2019d seen back home in America between mothers and children at malls or restaurants.<\/p>\n

A couple of times we\u2019ve been standing in front of the Underground map, trying to figure out our stop. A Brit also looking at the map will ask us where we\u2019re trying to get to and tell us the route. This was terribly reminiscent of our \u201cMinnesota nice\u201d attitude. Niceness doesn\u2019t just exist in the Midwest! It may be a bit harder to find in a huge city, but some people still go out of their way to be kind to others here, as well. Even though an ocean separates our countries, we Americans and Brits are all still cut from the same cloth.<\/p>\n

–Elizabyth Ladwig<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMIND THE GAP.\u201d The harsh, British, male accent commands us as we get on the Underground. I look down as I step up onto the train, and the phrase is repeated on the ground in bright yellow road paint as well. There\u2019s a small gap in between the concrete platform and the floor of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":1567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[162],"tags":[166],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-london-2015"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb2ffS-7x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1887,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/1887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/academics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}