Cabin Pressure
Her tank was full. Her options empty.
The pressure had been building for hours. My hands gripped the grey wheel of the Citroën until my knuckles were white. A clammy sweat lay heavily on my forehead. Fat raindrops mocked me as they flowed across the windshield. I had been driving through the French countryside since morning. And I had to pee like nobody’s business.
The day had begun serenely enough. I was midpoint in an eight-day trek that sliced back and forth across southwest France, starting near the Atlantic coast at Bordeaux and heading east to the Perigord Noir and the castle-strewn land of the Dordogne River.
I had spent the night at a comfortable stone farmhouse after a day touring the medieval village of Saint-Émilion, an oenophile’s dream of rich red wines. In the morning, I filled up on the ubiquitous baguette, butter, and homemade jam of French bed and breakfasts, and then stepped outside, eager for another day of solo travel. A light mist covered the landscape, and diffused sunshine gave the lime green vineyards a fuzzy glow.
After breathing in the cool morning air, I reached for the door of the grey sedan. Just as any mom will appreciate a hotel room—“I don’t have to make the bed!”—or a restaurant meal—“I don’t have to do the dishes!”—so I appreciated this rental car, where, clearly, no child had ever kicked muddy sneakers against the back of the driver’s seat, nor dropped greasy fries that would be discovered in crevices years later, nor left a red crayon that would permanently melt into the fabric seat cover in the summer’s heat. As I entered the immaculate black interior, I felt happy and free—or as free as a mother of two can be. It helps to put an ocean between you and your kids.
With a bottle of Evian and maps, and I was ready for the long drive to my next destination. It was a mild fall morning and the scenery was picturesque. First there were acres of vineyards, long straight rows of green across softly arching stretches of land. Then orchards, where ripe plums just lay on the ground. I pulled over and grabbed a few off the wet grass. After rinsing one with my bottled water, I took a bite. The taught blackish-purple skin snapped under my teeth and my mouth filled with sweet juice. Now this was road food!
My route wound its way through numerous old villages. I was fascinated by a church whose stone façade was cut like a lace doily. A half dozen bells dangled on it like showy earrings on a cabaret singer. I stopped and took some photos. This was what I loved about driving as opposed to train or plane travel—the opportunities for discovery, the ability to pause and soak it all in.
After the first hour, a heavy rain began, and I got serious about driving safely on the slick foreign roads. And then I felt it. The first twinges of the need to relieve myself.
While Europe’s countrysides possess numerous charms, convenience is not among them. Deep in the country, I knew there would be no public restrooms for miles, so I soldiered on, fiddling to tune in NRJ—the French radio station that reliably pumped out bass-thumping dance hits.
Finally, the two-lane road grew to four, and the farms and vineyards gave way to factories and outlet stores. I pulled into the parking lot of a supermarché. Inside, I searched the perimeter of the store, walking with that hip-twitching gait that comes with trying to hold it in. Tracking down an employee, I inquired about the restroom in French.
Asking for the bathroom is one of the most essential language skills of foreign travel, right up there with being able to say yes and no. I can ask for the bathroom in French, “Où est la toilette?” Italian, “Dove il gabinetto?” If I don’t know how to say “Where is,” I can simply use the word for bathroom and inflect my voice up while raising my eyebrows, such as “Baño?” in Spanish.
The woman flatly replied, “La clé est perdue.” The key is lost. I wanted to ask her, “How does this happen? How do you lose a bathroom key and never replace it or change the lock?” I wanted to grab her by her loose red supermarket shirt and shake her thin French shoulders and say, “But where do you go to the bathroom?” Instead, I retreated from the store, promptly setting off a high-pitched alarm as I removed a fabric band blocking a closed checkout lane. I walked as fast as possible—considering it would be less embarrassing to run—and returned to my car: spirits low, bladder full.
The drive continued and my anxiety increased. I desperately wanted to pull over and run behind a tree. But the roads were frustratingly barren of any vegetation higher than my kneecap.
As I drove, my eyes darted back and forth, scanning both sides of the road for any sign of a toilet. And then I saw a dull concrete block of a building. “Yes!” I whipped my car into a small parking lot, where three male gendarmes were standing around smoking. I ignored them and went into the damp building whose once white stucco walls were now peeling and yellowed. The esthetics were secondary, however. What mattered was that I had succeeded in my quest.
My feeling of euphoria vanished as I walked into a small stall area and found a Turkish toilet: a hole as big as a coffee can with a porcelain surround. I remember being shocked by this seedy answer to nature’s call as a young woman of twenty-one on my first trip to Paris. However, it was far better than nothing, so I pulled down my tan travel trousers and squatted. Ahhh … the undeniable pleasure of release.
I tossed the tissue into the hole, zipped my pants, then turned around to flush. There was a metal water tank above my head with a pull chain. Simple enough. But also, a handwritten sign on a piece of notebook paper taped to it. “Tirez doucement.” Pull gently. Okay, that much I knew. There were more French words that I couldn’t translate, but I didn’t worry about them. I pulled gently on the chain. Nothing happened.
At that point, I had two choices. I could walk away, my urine having gone into the hole, but the used toilet paper still wadded near the top of the bumpy porcelain floor. I opted not to be the “ugly American.” I would try again to properly flush this contraption. So, I pulled slightly harder. And then, a gush of water that I can only compare to heading downhill on a Six Flags log flume, shot out of a pipe, filled up the toilet hole, and headed straight up at a perfect angle towards the lower half of my body. In two seconds my pants and legs were soaked with water that had mixed with my pee and the built up bacteria of the Turkish toilet. I screamed.
While I am not a prissy woman, this was unsanitary beyond any situation I had ever personally been involved with. I stood there dumbfounded and paralyzed for two minutes. I had solved one enormous problem—where to pee? Only to be immediately confronted by another—what to do after being soaked by toilet water? I took a deep breath and drew upon every ounce of traveler’s savvy I could muster. I left the building, where the gendarmes had scattered. I scowled, imagining them laughing at my scream, and wondered if they stood around hoping for a good chuckle from hapless tourists who soak themselves.
Pushing that thought aside, I pulled clean jeans, underwear, and socks out of my suitcase, and returned to the bathroom, where I gave myself an unsatisfactory sponge bath from paper towels and put on the clothes to continue on to my destination.
Later that evening I settled into another bed and breakfast. I took a long shower, where I scrubbed every inch of myself with the mini hotel soap. I washed my pants with water as hot as would come out of the tap. When I felt like I was no longer crawling with microbes, I got dressed in sweatpants and walked to the back of the inn, where a small refrigerator held a box of wine. I poured myself a plastic cup of inexpensive Merlot and returned to sit on a rattan chair outside of my room. I sipped the fruity wine and sighed. I saw the black outline of fir trees against the indigo skies, and I heard cattle lowing, just like in the Christmas carol. As the wine warmed my insides, I forgot about the day’s trials and fell back in love with the French countryside. This feeling of acceptance and vive la différence lasted all the way until the next afternoon, when I lost the rental car and spent two hours learning that every exit from the walled town of Sarlat looks exactly the same. But for the moment, as I watched the clouds drift across the starry country skies, I was once more content in the pleasures of the road.
Diane Letulle is writing a memoir about her journeys in wine country. Her travels have taken her across North America, from Napa Valley to Niagara on the Lake and all over Europe, from Portugal in the west to the Republic of Georgia in the east. Diane writes a blog called Wine Lover’s Journal, contributes to numerous wine websites, and teaches wine classes in New Jersey. She recently was a featured presenter at the International Wine Tourism Conference in Perugia, Italy. Diane is the mother of two children, who have learned to tolerate their mother’s itinerant ways.