Where is the bloody light switch? Bathrooms in Poland

​ I already wrote on some small differences between Poland and America once on this blog before. Now, I am not sure if this topic was popular with our loyal readers, but there is another small thing that I noticed. It is another thing that I certainly did not think about nor expect to be different. Today, this small thing will be light switches, more importantly light switches for bathrooms in Poland.

​When going to the bathroom, it is very important that you are able to see. This seems so obvious that it does not need to be said. However, there is a small problem when it comes to this matter in Poland; the light switch. I have noticed that on nearly all of the non-public bathrooms that I have been in the light switch is outside of the bathroom. This meaning that when you go to the bathroom you need to first turn on the light, then enter the bathroom, then shut the door. This is a fine sequence of events and it works for everyone involved it seems. However, for me it is strange. The system I am used to or accustomed to is the light switch laying on the interior wall, inside the bathroom. This means that when you enter a bathroom, it is usually dark and you then find the light switch, turn it on, close the door, and then do your business as needed. In Poland I find that I many times enter into a bathroom first, only to realize that I forgot to turn on the blasted light because the light switch is on the wall outside of the bathroom.

​Forgetting to turn on the bathroom light is very annoying for me, but I see greater potential here for mayhem. I have three siblings and when we were growing up we enjoyed to pick on each other and fight. Sometimes it was small things such as calling each other names, or making faces at each other. Other times it escalated to greater extremes. For example, once my brother and sister caught me, tied me to a chair, and left me in our upstairs for a good long while. This was not the best experience for me, but such is life with siblings when you are the youngest of four. My point is that people, children especially, must abuse the fact that the light switch is located on the wall outside of the bathroom in Poland. Surely, there must be moments where a brother goes to the toilet and his siblings sneak up and turn the lights off on him while he is on the toilet and in the bathroom. This seems like such an easy prank that it must be commonplace. I must ask around and see if this was or is the case for some people. However, I can say this for sure that if in America our light switches were outside of the bathroom, then I would have been going to the toilet in the dark quite frequently thanks to the antics of my siblings.