This all started years ago. During a conversation with a few friends after too much wine, we decided that doing a gigantuous review of all the university toilets and putting it online would be a brilliant idea. This was before the concept of blogging really became a thing. We had our livejournals, but we just rambled about our personal life. Using it for the big things in life, like toilets wasn’t an idea we would have come up with. And after a while the idea just faded and died.
Until one fatal day in mid november, lars started reviewing toilets. When he can do it, i most certainly can, I thought, picked up my camera and started to explore.
What do we want in a toilet
1) Clean environment and toilet paper.
2) Information and location. We need to find it.
3) Reading material and light enough to read it.
I will grade then with the good old dice system, since that was what Lars did.
1. Sophus Bugge’s house
As a history student, this was my first Blindern toilet. I might be biased, but this is a great place. It’s rather clean, and it has Gadamer (damer=ladies in norwegian) written over the entrance. That must be Blindern’s most geeky grafitti. The graffitti over the door also works as a rite of passage. The first time you find it vaguely amusing, you know that you study at the right faculty. The reading material is great. It shows that kids who read too much have been writing on the walls for at least a decade. There is one setback though, and what a disappointment it is. It’s so bloody dark in there! If you ever bring a book or something, you won’t be able to descipher a sentence. Locationwise, it’s a brisk three second’s walk from the nearest pub. As soon as you’re done peeing, you can refill your bladder. it doesn’t get much better than that.
Hygiene: 5. Always toilet paper and soap. Sometimes paper on the floor.
Information and location: 6. Easy to find and close to the pub.
Reading material: 4. The reading material is great, but it’s too dark to read it.
Extra point: Gadamer
2. Vilhelm Bjerknes’ house
Vb is where the mathematicians live. And although you would expect some xkcd-like drawings on the wall, and perhaps some nice equations, they really don’t know how to decorate a toilet. It’s big, and even closer to the closest pub than the Sophus Bugge toilet, but alas. No wall decorations. On another note, it helps enforcing the idea that geeks smell bad. Perhaps that rumor really started here at VB. It does however have one big plus. The little information note that tells me that the toilet I was about to use “has a quirky lock”. That makes me want to come back.
Hygiene: 3. What’s up with the toilet paper?
Information and location: 6. Easy to find and close to the pub.
Reading material: 0. Doesn’t matter that it’s dark, when there’s nothing to read.
Extra point: The quirky lock.
3. Niels Henrik Abel’s house ground floor
When you are studying, you drink a lot of coffee. When you drink alot of coffee, you need to pee. It all makes sense. The toilet I’m about to review could have been the perfect toilet. It’s really close to the canteen. It’s a dashing two meters from the master students lunchroom. It’s a few meter from the master students’ reading room and even closer to the master computer room. It’s clean and spacous. Unfortunately it’s also one of two toilets reserved for the one person working in the canteen.
Hygiene: 6. Shiny and clean.
Information and location: 6. Easy to find and close to the pub.
Reading material: 6. There’s always a newspaper on the floor and the lights are on.
Extra point: Withdrawing all points because we’re not allowed to use it.
4. Niels Henrik Abel’s house cellar
When toilet nr 3 is closed, we either take the lift up a few floors, and use the historians’ toilets, or we go downstairs to use the toilets in the dungeons. They are clean, probably because noone use them. If you try going down there in the evening, they are usually locked, and you need to have an entrance card to get i, which is vaguely inconvenient and a lot of work just to be able to pee. It gets a few extra points for the surreal graffitti. When you’re seated, and you look up, it’s written on the inside of the door that “closed, use toilet on the other side”, but there is no toilet on the other side. It makes no sense. Fortunately, the toilet works just fine.
Hygiene: 5. Clean, light.
Information and location: 3. Hard to find and far away. Locked in the evening.
Reading material: 2. Good light. Nothing to read.
Extra point: Surreal graffitti
