Toilet Seat Style

Imagine, you’re in a foreign land and you need to use the toilet but you can’t find one and you don’t speak the language. Or perhaps you have found the restrooms but you can’t tell the men’s toilet from the woman’s toilet and you just can’t hold on long enough for someone to come by and use it so that you know which is which. Hey, it can happen, don’t get caught unaware because some bathroom signs are downright funny! See the funny toilet signs below.

Toilet Hand Signals : Now since i’m not sure how to throw down a good toilet seat gang-like hand signal I’m going to leave this one up to your imagination. If your charade skills are up to par you can rely on your ability to convey your need of a toilet quickly with a simple hand gesture. I don’t recommend it, some strange things can happen when you start drawing attention to some parts of your body. Proceed with caution! (can a hand gesture convey “toilet now” ?)

Unknown Toilet Jokes : Sure, you can rely on the assumption that no mortal sign could possibly befuddle your astute knowledge and understanding of the simple toilet sign but remember… it’s only going to take one wrong guess in your lifetime to leave a permanent and likely embarrassing psychological scar. If a toilet seat funny stumps you and an opportunistic camera phone user is witness rest assured that you will become the known toilet joke on youtube.

Lost In Translation : Don’t get lost in translation, sometimes the meaning just isn’t what you think it is and even politicians can feel the wrath. I put Yahoo’s babel Fish Translator to the test to illustrate the issue. A simple question - Where is the toilet? - produces many different results. For example, when translated into French the response is “Où est la toilette ?” which is correct but if you forget to include the question mark your response would be “Là où est la toilette” which roughly means “over there where the toilet is”.

French: Où est la toilette ?
Dutch: Waar het toilet is?
German: Wo die Toilette ist?
Greek: Πού είναι η τουαλέτα?
Italian: Dove è la toletta?
Russian: Где туалет?
Spanish: Donde está el tocador?
Portuguese: Onde está o toalete?

Interesting fact: Sign language is the only truly universal language. If ever you’re interested in learning it here is a book or two that can help a lot.

	The Everything Baby Sign Language Book Get An Early St $19.19
	2dayship Brnd New Book American Sign Language $18.60

Help me build this guide further, take a minute to share any funny public bathroom stories you have and any tips for travelers you’ve found useful. Perhaps the most useful universal tool to help you out of a potentially embarrassing situation, besides learning from the internet, has to be paper and a pencil. How fast can you draw a picture of a simple toilet seat anyway?