I can still make you cringe from overseas

Today I'm going to tell you about the weirdest shit.  Literally.
Austria is a nice place.  It has all of the comforts you would expect in a western European country.  It even has peanut butter.  And Tyrolean ravioli, which...is great.

Amazing shit, filled with amazing shit, topped with amazing shit.

But this isn't about food.  It's about what comes after food.

Austrian (and I believe some German) toilets have what they call a viewing shelf.  I yoinked this picture from some other poor soul's blog, so...sorry, dude.  But it illustrates nicely what I'm talking about.

The infamous Austrian Shit Shelf

This is apparently a holdover from the days of parasites and yore, when it was fairly important that you got a good view of whatever came out of your posterior before you sent it into the great beyond.  You know, so you could figure out what was wrong with you before you went off to have your blood let or something equally useful.

Now, it's pretty damn useless.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't...check shit out, but this is a bit extreme.  Because Austrian food...well, it's really hard to find a vegetable in typical Tyrolean cuisine, at least.  I guess you could count potatoes, since most of America counts French fries as a vegetable, but it's meat, bread and potatoes, usually fried and topped with butter.  Yes, it's awesome, and no, most people here are NOT obese, but by day six of standard fare, I'd kill someone for a fucking Brussels sprout.  (Here, the Brussels sprouts actually come from Belgium, believe it or not.  I actually get to see where my food was grown when I buy it at the store.)

The downside of such a diet, besides it being a bit...heavy, is that your shit soon gets the consistency of paste.  You sit down on one of these lovely shelf toilets, let it go, and there's a nice log of fucking caulk when you get up.  If it was sanitary, you could probably seal your bathtub tiles with it.  (Please don't.)  So you...well, you get a good look at what pre-constipation is like.  Soon enough, you don't need the shelf at all, because you've got a giant wad of biscuit dough corking your sphincter.

But enough about the description.  What do you do next?  Well, genius, you flush.  This IS the first world, you know.  No squat toilet shit here.  But when you flush, what happens?  If you're lucky, you send your wet Play-doh like progeny into the sewer with only a disgusting brown streak to mark your spot and remind you of the naughty thing you just did.  But if you're not, and trust me, this fucking happens, the poop doesn't budge.

Nope.  It's fucking glued there.  Staring at you, in all its fiber-free glory.  Reminding you that the last time you ate a green vegetable was about two weeks ago.  You have two options.  You could flush again, and pray.  (I'm not a religious person, but I'll be damned if I didn't appeal to every god Man ever invented...)  Or you could get the good ol' toilet brush and...poke at it.  Coax it, plead with it...just get it the fuck off of that stupid-ass shelf.  Regardless, you just spent more time with your shit than you would ever want to.

And you just spent way more time reading about shit than you ever wanted to.  I'll leave you with this, then, since you're probably...de-friending me on Facebook, writing me out of your will and putting out a burn notice.  This is the best thing I've seen since coming over.