Sightseeing places not made for the Lonely Planet! (A female bathroom matter)

If books talk about cultural differences, they often talk about business related matters like how much tip to give a waitress or weather you should wait to get seated in a restaurant or not. Whilst these things seem to me truly differences people should be aware of there is something in my opinion also important, nobody really mentions. 

Toilets!

Just friends may talk about the place people immediately get acquainted with once they placed their feet on the ground of another country and which seems a unavoidable place for us to visit ;)

I remember, that I as a little girl often feared not being able to unlock the toilet doors again at public toilets (in Germany these locks can sometimes be fairly old and tricky) and that I would need to scream my lungs of to get my mom or whoever else to help me. If there even would be gaps above or beneath such a door in Germany, the gap would be usually as small as in the image below. Whenever such a door lock would strike to open you know that your body will wipe this floor by trying to escape through this gap… and regardless in which country you are, your body (or face) never wants to wipe that floor!

In the US I never made any experience with this kind of my childhood fears, because to me there seems sometimes to be so much space and gaps in the single toilet doors that I from time to time  wondered why there even are some ;) I mostly feel more privacy in any dressing room in the US than at the places I wished it most for ;)

Why are these gaps to the right and left of theses doors mostly about an inch wide and the gaps below and above the door so huge that the person outside can nearly see your knees? I have to admit there are moments where I get so jealous of guys.

I Have to admit that as it’s nice on one hand to know that I’ll get rescued in case I become unconscious is a nice and comforting thing but besides this aspect … I try not to waste any time there ;)

Therefore my conclusion here would be privacy vs. getting rescued in an “emergency”.