Reactions to a call of nature in Salzburg

Once, a friend and I spent a month backpacking by train around Europe. Our plan was to attend every match that Spain played on the Eurocup and to travel around in between the match days. We learned something: Pissing and shitting is expensive in Europe, in the US and Spain you can do it in several places, for free. In the middle of Europe you have to pay, and shitting is more expensive than pissing (I guess that makes sense)

One night we arrived in Salzburg, we checked in to a cheap hotel and went out to have some drinks. The city was great and the pub’s zone wasn’t bad, we went to one of the few Irish pubs and started drinking beer (Madly expensive by the way).

We were just sitting at the bar drinking and checking the people out, my friend was writing ideas on the coasters, I realized he must have had a lot of ideas when I saw that he was stealing coasters all over the place. It was crowded, there were majority dudes but there were some girls too, as usual the prettiest was the waitress. She looked somewhat interested in us, we probably were the only foreigners there that night.

When you spend weeks travelling, sleeping on trains, showering and going to the bathroom in train’s stations (paying for it) and eating just Kebaps, your body starts to be unpredictable. That night we paid for a hotel, I could have a shower and use a private toilet, but even though I tried, I couldn’t shit, I thought I just didn’t have to go and forgot about it.

But while sitting in that pub waiting to make a move on the waitress and start a conversation and probably an unhappy marriage, my stomach started talking, you know how it goes, you drink something cold, it wakes up your tummy and suddenly you really have to shit. That’s truly annoying, you try to convince yourself you can hold on, that it will disappear after a few minutes, but you’re wrong, every second is worse than the previous.

I went to the restroom, it was the classic pub bathroom; a broken sink, a disgusting chamberpot and a stinky toilet without paper behind a broken door full of names written on it. I wasn’t drunk at all, if I was I’d maybe shit there anyway, but when you are completely sober even though you are in a pub you don’t want to take a shit in front of other people without paper to wipe your ass. So I decided to ask my friend for the hotel’s key and go there to unload.

The only problem was that I was in an absolutely unknown city, I didn´t know anybody and I was broke, I had spent my money in that hotel that I was trying to find. I recalled more than twenty minutes of walking from the hotel to the pub’s zone but didn’t exactly recall the direction, plus I could hardly walk, the call of nature was really strong. I wandered around the city’s drunken youths pretending I was ok and just going somewhere I knew. It’s funny, I know that it’s impossible, but when you are suffering an unexpected call of nature, you think everybody around notices it, you think they are laughing at you and making fun of your misery (They probably were laughing at me and making fun of one of my others miseries though)

After fifteen or twenty minutes walking around trying to find something I could remember, a house, a store, something that made me find the direction to my hotel without success. I had to make another decision, I was going to shit in my pants if I didn’t change my strategy. I assumed I wasn’t going to find my hotel and just started to look for some other hotel, hostel, whorehouse or whatever place with a light inside.

I found a hotel, it was early, not 1:00 am yet I guess, a man was at the front desk. I asked him if I could use a bathroom. He asked me if I was a guest in his hotel. I said no. He said I couldn’t use his bathroom. I was suffering and didn’t have strength enough to get involved in an argument (Besides my English was even worse than now and his was awful too, of course nobody speaks Spanish around there)

I kept walking the deserted streets cursing that guy. On top of my needs to shit, piss needs were added. It came as a surprise, I didn’t pay attention to the piss before because of the shit, but before I knew it, the piss was almost getting out. There wasn’t a chance, I wasn’t going to make it. I had to piss on the street. When I was about to do it, a group of mature people appeared and I had to wait and act like if I was studying the street’s walls and bin containers.

When they left I could piss, but it wasn’t a relief, in fact pissing made my needs to shit bigger. Of course, nobody was in the street, but when you take out your dick a lot of people show up. I tried to go through that with the most dignity possible, the people passed by me and some of them said things in German and laughed. I pretended to be so focused on my activity that I couldn’t even notice their presence.

I ended and still walking hoping my hotel just appeared in front of me. When I was walking I saw a party in a house, there were topless women in the window screaming, smoking and laughing. Imagine how bad I was that I just kept walking looking for my hotel.

I was swearing a lot. I started shivering. I really needed to shit. My clock’s countdown was ending. I have to clarify that of course it wasn’t a regular crap, I had a diarrhea one. I can hold a regular shit. For God sakes! I’m not fifteen anymore…

I tried in another place, I can’t remember what exactly it was, hotel, restaurant, can’t remember. I begged for a bathroom but in Europe they don’t respect nature, their bathrooms are holy for them, not everybody can use them. I asked for help to find my hotel, I told them I was lost, they weren’t concern. They asked me about the name of my hotel, but I didn’t know it. I just left downcast.

After an hour searching for a bathroom, everything started to become really confused. I started to talk to my self out loud convincing my self I wouldn’t shit on myself while lost in an unknown city. I got in to a discussion with a bum who spoke Spanish with a Basque accent. I shared my misery with a really drunk lonely villager. A bouncer denied me entry to his whorehouse for using his bathroom, he spoke English or Spanish, I don’t remember, he told me they didn’t have a bathroom in there (that explains a lot of things doesn’t it?)

Don’t ask how or when, but at some point I recognized a monument on a roundabout, followed my instinct and found my hotel. As soon as I got in the bathroom’s room I started to shit like if I was a fucking fountain. I stayed there sitting on the toilet for a long time, not just shitting or wiping, but resting and calming down too. When I was done I washed my hands, my face and changed all my clothes. I didn’t shit on myself, but I sweated so much my clothes were sticking my skin.

It took me a lot of time to find the pub’s area after I left the hotel, but walking after being relieved is easier. When I got into the Irish pub it was almost empty, sleepy drunk people or drunk couples without a hotel room were the only things I could find there, the usual leftovers of that kind of place. I looked for my friend and he was almost asleep in a corner watching a pre-recorded broadcast soccer game that we had just watched in the stadium a few days before. The waitress wasn’t there anymore, the party was completely over. My night in Salzburg sucked because I didn’t know how to react to a call of nature. Now I have thought about it and I have found some better reactions than the one I chose that night:

1/ Go to the pub’s bathroom. Take the shit, wipe my ass with my hand. Wash my hand without water or soap because there wasn’t any. Get out of the bathroom. Shake everybody’s hand on my way back to the bar (Do you think I’d be the first one?)

2/ Confess my problem to the waitress and ask for her help (That would have turned out in love for sure)

3/ Get drunk quickly. Shit in my pants. Pretend that it never happened and continue with the party (I would be famous in Salzburg now)

4/ Shit in my pants. Blame my friend. Accuse him of the smell (I think he shit in his pants anyway)

5/ Jerk off (Why not? It’s always pleasant)

6/ Get naked pretending to be very drunk. Dive in to Salzburg’s river and take a submarine shit (Those are the best ones)

7/ Hold it until I died (I’d have a funny grave at least)

8/ Look for a church and shit inside it (Jesus would have understood it)

9/ Once I found the first hotel where they rejected me, take down my pants and shit on the hall’s floor (I would have shit all over myself too because I don’t know how to shit without a toilet but it would have been worth it anyway)

10/ Get in the house with the topless women and begin a shit, piss, puke dirty sex party (They would have agreed to that request for sure).