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From: arndt@lymph.DEC
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Toilet paper on the Eastern Front
Message-ID: <2535@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Jun-85 16:53:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.2535
Posted: Thu Jun  6 16:53:16 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Jun-85 04:20:30 EDT
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 45


And you think France is bad!

In the good ole USSR they use (1975-6) NEWSPAPERS ripped up for handy wipes.
Of course I always said that they were making one of the few political
statements that could get by the censor by using Pravda.

I have a series of shots of pots and their degeneration the further East
one moves across the Euroean land mass.  ALWAYS, if you are going to the
Motherland take a travel pak of toidy paper.  I always said I was going to
suggest we bomb them with rolls of the stuff just like you see falling from
planes at the beach.  The people would go wild!  They'd follow Mr. Whipple
anywhere!

Once in a tourist hotel in Leningrad I opened the door of a stall in the
men's room and there STOOD on the western seat a gentleman from the Gobi
Desert - shades of Gengis Khan!  He railed at me in some forgotten language
as he stood there with his pants at his ankles (just like a yuppie) and
his little piece of Pravda in his hand.  By the way, cute little custom
of bathroom etiquette in the USSR is to throw the USED wipe in a little
metal waste basket right next to the hopper.  I refuse to speculate why.
But this terrible Tartar with his drooping mustache and slanting eyes
and grubby clothes seemed quite at home using all the modern plumbing
in the old fashioned way.

I have stood in line for a shower at a campgrounds and when it got to my
turn refused to do it because the drain was stopped up (some claimed by
retreating Germans) and even the board grating sank below the water? line
if one foolishly stepped on it.  Some outback Aussie behind me stepped 
in and started singing.  Hmmmmm.

There is no end to the fun traveling through the ole USSR.  Again on the
topic of plumbing, at the campgrounds outside of Moscow the shower lady
insisted on closing them down to clean just when everyone was getting up
in the morning to shower.  Made sense to her!  She was just getting up too.

We always stopped the vans on the road.  Birch trees, forrests forever,
shades of Dr. Z.!  Girls on the right side of the road, boys on the left.
Be back in 10 minutes.  No McDonalds in the land of the workers.

Ahhhhhhh.  It takes me back.  "Sell your jeans?"

Regards,

Ken Arndt