Pissing in the Streets

Written by Terje B. Englund
Re-published with permission

Take, for instance, this real-life situation: you are travelling by bus to a village in Western Bohemia, when the bus-driver stops suddenly because the car driving in front of you pulls over and blocks the narrow road. The chap behind the wheel jumps out of his Škoda, takes a few steps towards the ditch – and starts urinating blissfully in front of the fifty bus-passengers. Not a single word of condemnation is uttered, be it against the car driver´s tasteless behaviour or the delay he causes.

When it comes to children, the tolerance towards public urination is both understandable and praiseworthy. Contrary to Western countries, where children use diapers almost until they become teenagers, Czech parents regard it as a matter of personal honour to teach their children to use the toilet before they reach the age of two. From time to time, this inevitably implies the use of a bush in a public park or even the gutter as an improvised toilet, but thanks to the educational character of the act, nobody complains.

Nevertheless, this pressure should not give them carte blanche to terrorize their surroundings through urination. Even the most run-down hospoda in the country has a lavatory of some kind, and the network of public toilets is often better than those in Western Europe (see: Central Europe). Why, then, do so many Czech men so often feel free to dispose of their bodily fluids in public places?

According to a less widespread theory, the public urination-syndrome merely reflects the domination of Czech society by male chauvinists, who don´t care about their surroundings. And then, of course, there are those who see it as a nation-wide problem with alcoholism. In any event, a foreigner in the Czech Republic should better be prepared: a man, who is waving his genitals in public, is not necessarily an exhibitionist, but more likely an ordinary chap on his way home from the local hospoda.

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Terje B. Englund is a Norwegian journalist, writer and translator. Educated at the University in Oslo and the Institute of Slavonic Studies at Charles University, he has been based in Prague since 1993, covering Central and Eastern Europe for Scandinavian media. Englund is an affectionate cyclist, mountaineer and diver, and he also enjoys the company of his French bulldog, Gaston.

“Czechs in a Nutshell” can be bought via Internet at www.baset.cz and in bookstores throughout Prague.