Indeed, an Italian shower is just fresh deodorant.

Tom

Indeed- the gradient has to be carefully worked out so the water runs easily to the drain but not be too slippery or difficult for the user. Ours is just perfect. We made the shower area wide, 1m60 with a glass partition and visually you can hardly see the 'slope' to the drain, but it works perfectly. The plumber certainly called it 'douche à l'Italienne'.

Turn on the hot shower and the floor gets warm in seconds. Our bathroom is not heated at all, so it gets slightly chilly there in winter, like 10°C or so. But as soon as you're under the warm rain, that doesn't matter at all.

And at the end just walk around the room and flush all the hair away. In our case, it goes into a small covered pit and then gets caught by a net, so it won't clog up the drain. Pit and net need to be cleaned out a few times a week, simple task.

And it also works very well washing down a couple of big dogs at the same time. Fun and games. Cats though...

Yet such things don't exist in Italy!

"Douche à l’italienne, così i francesi chiamano la doccia contemporanea priva di piatto doccia." I.e. a name invented by the French.

Sort of like calling Fleischkaese "fromage d'Italie", same French logic!

Tom

Actually the "Italian shower" used to be not showering at all but just use deodorant and run out the house in the mornings. Don't hang me for it, I don't know where that came from.

Do the French get beaten up often in Italy for the Fleischkäse-thing?

Heh, from me this is a French shower. You know, since there were no bathrooms in Versailles, they were only ever using fragrances.

I thought drains only existed in the Simpsons.

Please wake up:

Tom

In Italy this is often said of other cultures/country...

As a proof of the superior hygenical habits of the peninsula it is often mentioned that nobody outside of Italy knows what this object is for:

A wake-up shower? Italian or French?

Took secondary school kids to Italy for a ski trip- and one of them could not understand what it did not flush !!! Mind you, Chris had come on the trip with his granny's embroidered tea cosy for a hat - so ... It had a litte cottage on it and was embroidered with 'Home Sweet Home' ...

Visiting daughther's new house in UK last year, they had a bidet in all bathrooms- so I said, 'did not know the house was designed by Italians' - she wondered how I'd guessed.

It's for little kids to wash their hands in of course!

Well mine did before we explained it to them...

I hope his face wasn't entirely covered.

lol - it was more square and did not have holes for handle and spout - funny as a teacher how you remember some kids more than others I wonder why Actually, probably had holes, not sure- never saw it on a teapot, just on his head. Foppolo was the name of the resort.

Ooops, sorry. I was actually extremely busy today and when I do pop in here I always jump to the last page so yes, I probably miss a lot. I've noticed I can live well with that though.

So the Italian shower is still the Italian shower then. Look at me, I'm up to date.

Swiss think the whole world revolves around Switzerland and that makes Coriolis force confused - thus they could decide which type of skews for water sinks would be need (left or right skew) .

I always thought that they were a French thing.

We removed ours and put the washer/dryer in it's place.

Tom

It isn't?
I was told, Olten is the navel of the world.

It is a French invention.
<<French[24] furniture makers in the late 17th century, although no exact date or inventor is known.[25][26] The earliest written reference to the bidet is in 1726 in Italy.[27] Even though there are records of Maria Carolina of Austria, Queen of Naples and Sicily, requesting a bidet for her personal bathroom in the Royal Palace of Caserta in the second half of the 18th century, the bidet did not become widespread in Italy until after WWII.>>

According to italian Wikipedia (...) while a French invention the bidet is currently most installed in Italy and Portugal, where it is mandatory; France is reported to have a 42% installation rate, UK 3%.

An architect once told me that he ordered one for a US house, and the puzzled workers installed it on the wall, thinking it was a strange pissoir...

Guess inhabitants of Italy and Portugal have no toilet-paper-trauma after covid then.