Toiletological Statues
Brussels is a good place to find surrealist art.
The two symbols of Belgium are the art of René Magritte (and also see the Trompe l'Oeil Toilet page) and Manneken Pis, the famed Pissing Boy Statue.
Here is Manneken Pis in all his diminutive glory.
Really. That's all there is.
One little statue, and it's small, probably less than 50 cm tall.
But the little square he overlooks gets very crowded — everyone is determined to see him.
As you can see, he's quite the tourist attraction.
He's just off the Grand-Place, the main square in old-town Brussels where every visitor ends up.
To get there, he's at the intersection of Rue de l'Étuve / Stoofstraat and Rue du Chêne / Eikstraat — every street in Brussels has both Walloons (Belgian French) and Flemish (Belgian Dutch) names. Take the street to the left of the Brussels Town Hall — not the street in the far south corner of Grand-Place but the next street to its right. Walk three short blocks, you will see the crowd before you get there.
Figuring that if one Peeing Child statue was a good thing, then two Peeing Child statues would be twice as good, a local artist created Jeanneke Pis. She is also plumbed for realistic operation.
To get there, she's on the right-hand side near the end of the 30m-long dead-end alley Impasse de la Fidélité / Getrouwheidsgang. That alley leads north off the narrow passageway packed with restaurants and obstructed by restaurant touts, and known as Rue des Bouchers / Beenhouwersstraat.
The easiest way to get there might be to follow directions to the Delirium Tremens cafe, directly across the narrow alley. They have over 2,000 beers on their menu, and are a very popular tourist site. Click here for my pictures of that bar and other traditional Brussels cafes. Across the alley (appropriately next to Jeanneke) they have an absinthe bar with a few hundred choices.
The creator of Jeanneke Pis seems to be a practitioner of Belgian surrealism. The sign by the fountain says, spelling, grammar, and all:
This fountain was built in honour of loyalty.
A very old custom has it that your wish be granted if
you throw a coin into the bowl of the fountain.
The coins thrown by passers-by into the fountain of
Jeanneke Pis bears witness to Tenderness, Virtue
ans Admiration of the loved one with the wish to
remain faithful to one another.
Yes, it really says "ans"...
Well, if two Peeing Child statues are a good thing, then adding a third statue of a peeing dog would be THREE TIMES as good!
And so Zennike Pis was created.
Like both Manneken Pis and Jeanneke Pis, Zennike Pis is plumbed for realistic operation. But alas, he has not been operating when I have visited...
To get there, he's at the corner of Rue Van Artevelde / Arteveldestraat and Rue St-Kristoffel / St-Kristoffel Straat. Start at the Bourse along the main north-south Boulevard Anspach / Anspachlaan. Three streets fan out from the opposite site of the boulevard — take the left-most one, Rue J. Van Praet / J. Van Praet Straat. The Mappa Mundo bar is across the triangular square at the far end of the block. All the Thai and Vietnamese restaurants along that block and the bars around the square are great places, by the way. Anyway, Zennike Pis is around the triangular block on which Mappa Mundo is found.
Zennike was created by Belgian artist Tom Frantzen.
"Zennike" is based on a Flemish word for "mongrel". As the artist says, "Because he is a dog of mixed breed, he symbolises the multicultural nature of Brussels."
Finally, Brussels has paired statues of what appear to be vomiting goats. I don't know if they are intended as part of the theme, it's hard to tell with surreal Brussels....
These are at the south end of the park on the north side of St Catherine's Cathedral.
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
