Suprised By Italian Toilet Repair

We got a call from our landlord, Luigi, yesterday, who said in his very broken English, "Bonna serra, Tamera. I'm Luigi. Tomorrow come to fix bangno . . . eight o'clock. Ok?
 
It seemed a little early, (especially in light of my last post), but what could I say? "Grazie, Luigi. Siamo felici." (Thank you, Luigi. We are  happy.) All three toilets are running continuously after flushing, especially bad in the evening and during the night when we're trying to sleep! Grrrrr! 
Well, first of all Luigi really meant to say 9:00, but he got the English mixed up. I was up far too early. Double grrrrrrr! Three workers finally arrived at 9:20 with all kinds of equipment to start smashing up the tile behind the toilets to get to what they call "the cassettes" and then replace them.


Surprised by ripping out the tile to put in what they
called "replacing the cassette."

At this very moment, three workers are pounding simultaneously making it sound more like a construction site in my house than what I thought was just going to be a simple toilet fix. As I watched them pound and chisel away, I couldn't help but think about our recent trip to Florence and our visit to see Michelangelo's "David." All that marble and chiseling! And my-oh-my, how noisy it must have been for him! I'm sure he had hearing loss.

If I need to say something to the workers, I take my computer with google translate and ask my question. It's a system that works pretty well.

As far as I can tell, most residential Italian toilets (like ours) are deep, steep bowls with a few inches of water at the bottom of a dark recess of porcelain.  Compared to the American toilets with large, shallow, gently flowing bowls of water, Italian toilets swallow up their contents with the force and swiftness of airline bathroom strength suction. The sound and force reminds me of flushing on an airplane, but with more water. It's over about that quickly as well. You get used to it after awhile, but I must admit I did think that the Italians would have very modern toilet and bathroom fixtures.




This is not the case, however. Traveling throughout Italy can be a toilet adventure. You might find anything from a hole in the floor, a toilet with no seat, and even the Japanese style of toilet with the porcelain toilet built flat on the ground. All with the omni-present toilet brush designed especially to leave the toilet cleaner than when you arrived!

The pounding continues . . . it's 3 and 1/2 hours later. They have just moved to the second bathroom; my bathroom upstairs. The sunny day has turned to gloom and pouring rain, and ironically . . . I have to go POTTY!



*Tamera