December 18, 2006

Irish Showers

I did not expect too much from Irish showers, especially after living in Finland for such a long time.
One really has to give it to the Finns; they know how to build efficient showers. The water pressure is always the same wherever you happen to shower. Huge water towers provide plenty of water so everyone can indulge in long, warm showers with the perfect water pressure for as long as they like. Water isn't really in short supply; after all the country is covered with lakes and it does rain a lot during the very short summers.

Remembering the good old days I carefully stepped into our shower for the first time. My friends had congratulated me earlier that our flat that was supplied with an electric power shower. They only threw in a word of warning that it might make an awful lot of noise, which would be a small price to pay, after all, I could take a hot shower whenever I wanted to.
I had eagerly nodded at my friends, but did not quite get what they meant. Why should I not have been able to take a hot shower whenever I wanted? Who would hold me back?
In the shower I started off by inspecting the chunky box that was hanging on the wall of my shower. There was a round dial for power and another one to adjust the heat. At the bottom of the box was a “Start / Stop“ button. Apprehensively I pressed the “Start / Stop” button and a few drops of water started to fall from the shower-head paired with an incredibly loud sound that reminded me of an air plane having a bad case of diarrhoea. I watched the drops for a while and then took a look at the power dial. It was on full power!
I stared in turns at the dial and the showerhead and then adjusted the showerhead so that all the drops would come out at least in one big stream. The water now came out in the middle of the showerhead and had slightly more power, but I still needed to turn up the water temperature to very hot, so I would at least feel a burning sensation where the hot water hit my body.
Quite a strange feeling really; part of my body was covered in goose bumps (it was cold in the bathroom since we had not yet found all the right switches to switch on the bathroom heating) and the other part of my body was stinging from the hot water.
Its not too bad really, after a while I am sure I will get used to these showers, and for sure there are a lot of things worse then freezing in your shower and it might always happen that we do find the right switch for the bathroom heater).
Come to think of it I cannot name a single one at the moment.