The few times that I went to a restroom at a German business, particularly restaurants, there was usually an attendant that took care of the restroom and you had to leave a tip. I could never see American businesses willingly opening their restrooms to the homeless, let alone having a full-time attendant to watch over them.

I'm not sure when that was, but when I was in Germany in 2017 my experience was that every gas station had a washroom that was available to the public at a cost of about 1 euro. There was no attendant, but a coin-operated gate. The washrooms were large, well lit, perfectly clean, had several stalls and often showers as well. It's a sharp contrast to the free washroom experience in most North American gas stations, which is a single stall that you need to request a key for, usually horrifyingly dirty.

I resented paying the euro a bit, but the format made a lot of sense to me.

In most ares of the US, it is illegal to charge to use the restroom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i...

That is actually a more recent (~20 years?) development. You cannot say anything about the quality of restrooms, but it is basically one company (Sanifair) for all of Germany that established a monopoly. People working there are often sub-contractors with bad working conditions. You get a coupon for the price you paid to exchange against wares at the local gas stop.

The coupon was created to get acceptance for paying, which wasn't common a few years back, but most of them never get redeemed. It is a business worth billions.

Unfortunately people tend to fall for coupons of any kind because they suggest you could save money.

For those who do redeem the coupon, it's often an incentive to spend money they normally wouldn't have (in high-margin stores).

Very true. Additionally, in many cases the shop and toilets belong to the same parent company.

At least the business case isn't stupid.

>It's a sharp contrast to the free washroom experience in most North American gas stations, which is a single stall that you need to request a key for, usually horrifyingly dirty.

I have road tripped around much of the western US and can think of only one time encountering a bathroom like this. In fact, clean bathrooms seem like a major point of competition between gas stations.

I see the clean restrooms/competition thing a lot on interstate roads. Its more the secondary highways and byways where the gas stations only do enough business to have 1 employee/owner working at a time that have small/dirty bathrooms.

If you want to pee for free at a German Autobahn stop at one of the rest areas without a gas station or shop. They still feature the usual public toilets with all that this entails.

The same system - Sanifair - is also active in the UK; last time I was in Germany, they cost 70 cents per visit - extrapolate that to the amount of visitors / hour and I think you get a decent wage to keep the toilets clean at all times. In addition, you get a coupon worth 50 cents, which can be spent at all gas stations / truck stops using the same system (most of them), incentivising making a purchase to help cover more costs.

In addition, the bathroom areas are designed to be easy to clean and brightly lit.

The toilets in the station I commute via daily are like this but without taking contactless payment it's of little use to me. I barely-ever carry cash and never coinage.

I travel quite a bit on the weekends, on the way to my girlfriend, and all toilets that I've seen are nfc-enabled (Baden-Württemberg -- Bayern). Except for Crailsheim. There are Toilets by the Bahn, but are closed at 18:00 or so.

It seems to me that in the past decade or so, gas station restrooms in the US have gotten much better. Yes, you can still find nasty hole-in-the-wall toilets if you look in small independent gas stations that have been there forever, but nearly all of the chain stations are at least cleaned regularly and many are almost luxurious in comparison to the past.

Yep. I remember how horrible gas station restrooms used to be back in the 1980s. They aren't like that any more, now that we have big chains like Wawa.

Maybe it's a product of where I live - an island on the west coast where there are no interstates and many independent gas stations.

I think they figured out they were losing money by having people avoiding their facilities.

Most gas station restrooms in the US aren't terrible anymore, I haven't seen a bad one in over a decade.

If you got the pay for it I doubt that it is actually solving the problem of people urinating in the street. The main question seems to be if there is enough business that provide the facility for free to the public.

American truck stops have huge clean bathrooms with separate showers (for fee) as well. I’ve never tried a truck stop shower, though.

So do poor people in Germany just not poop? Or are there no poor people?

"I can't see change happening so we shouldn't change".

With attitudes like that you should recognise you're part of the problem, you're part of the feeling of resistance to change.

I think you're confusing indifference with opposition.

Have you been to Portland? Local restaurants don't want to deal with the street folks there.

Germany has the significant advantage of being mostly populated by Germans, who are notorious for their adherence to rules.

Or, Germany's welfare system and mental health laws mean their citizens are satisfied or at least kept somewhere warm and clean.

> who are notorious for their adherence to rules.

That is a meme the Prussians have created to look more scary - to all other Germans.

Even the Swabians follow the rules, unless you mean the grammatical ones.

Counterpoint: jaywalking is virtually nonexistent in Germany.

Counteproint: in my town, jaywalking is the norm because there are only 2 traffic lights. I regularly see people jaywalk in the city as well.

Usually the reasons for jaywalking are either 1) the road is empty or 2) late for a train/tram/bus.

edit: It should also be noted that jaywalking is not illegal in germany IF 1) you're not crossing the road at an intersection with traffic lights for pedestrians AND it is red or 2) you're crossing the road in the shortest and fastest manner without impeding, endangering or otherwise causing trouble in traffic.

So if you walked over the road, a police officer could at worst give you a stern talking to. If you crossed a road with a red light for pedestrians, you'd get a 5€ fine.

I was stopped by a cop in Berlin for jaywalking. He didn't give me a ticket. But there were no cars around either.

There is also an unspoken rule for jaywalking, don't do it around kids. I also saw 3 tween girls walking across the street on a green, they were right around half way when the crosswalk light turned red. They all turned around and went back. It was kind of funny. My American friend told me a funny story where he was drinking with German friends, and they walk back at like 3am with no cars in sight and he of course crosses the street and all the Germans were back at other side waiting for it to turn green.

Reminds me of an incident narrated by Prof. Amartya Sen during a speech:

He had gone to Germany for a conference. While walking back to his hotel, had to cross the street. There were no vehicles in sight, but the light was red. After waiting for some time, he thought "what the heck", and crossed the street even though the light was still red. After a few minutes, a German man walked up to him and said "Mr. Amartya Sen, in Germany we follow the rules even if there are no cars". He apologised to the German, and asked him if he knew him, may be from the conference. To which the man replied, "I have no idea who you are, I just read your name from the conference ID card hanging from your neck".

As always with these kind of things, you should consider explanations which do not require sweeping assumptions about national mentalities. I'm no sociologist, but I'm pretty sure that differences in policing priorities play a big role here. Being fined or at least reprimanded for jaywalking is very common. On the other hand, speeding tickets are a joke, and therefore the notoriously rule adhering Germans do not give a flying fuck about speed limits.

> Being fined or at least reprimanded for jaywalking is very common.

As one of the grandparent comments correctly pointed out, jaywalking is legal in Germany if the road is empty. (A policeman's instructions would override this rule, however.)

Source: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stvo_2013/__25.html

I found out that jaywalking is mostly about being from a big busy city (everyone jaywalks because otherwise you would stand more than walk), or being from a small city (no one jaywalks as the semaphores are sensible and traffic low) and a village (everyone jaywalks because there is not even a pavement, however city is scary). Religion plays a role although I've noticed that it's probably just because the religious fathers I know of are very strict.

In Philadelphia, you jaywalk if 1) The next car arrives in 10 seconds and 2) You believe you can get across the street in 9 seconds.

If you wait for the light, or because a car is in sight, people think you're weird. People have loyalty not to the law, but to nothing other than self-preservation. Absolutely no consideration for legality is given, whatsoever. This is in my experience in stark contrast with German culture.

I assert that there does exist in Germany a cultural appreciation for rules. This is not an exclusively German trait of course, I see similar in Seattle, but it is a trait that Germany has and some other regions do not.

Jaywalking is rampant in Germany, tho a bit more "polite" (if you can call it that) from what I am observing every day. People will jaywalk when they think it is safe and when there are no small children around (to avoid being a bad role model), and that is my MO as well; as opposed to the mentality I have seen in other countries where it seemed to me a lot of people will just cross the street no matter whether it's safe or not and let the motorists deal with not hitting anybody.

Whether or not the motorist is likely to be capable of stopping in time is factored into the "is it safe?" calculus that people in jaywalking cultures perform. For instance in Philadelphia when it snows, people are more conservative in their jaywalking because they know the stopping distance of a car on ice is longer than a car on dry asphalt.

If a motorist would have to stop for you, or even would have to significantly slow down, then no, it's not considered safe, or "polite". Because the driver may not do that and might hit you.