The Trickiest Part of Traveling
It’s exactly what you think
The spatio-temporal relationship between a shower knob and what comes out of the shower head is well described by a stochastic differential equation on a five-dimensional manifold with a non-Riemannian metric. If you’re lucky.
You may feel that the author pulled that sentence out of his arse and wouldn’t know a non-Riemannian metric if it kicked him in the nethers; if so, you are possessed of a sceptical, rational mind and I congratulate you, but that’s not the point. When you check into a hostel after an all-night bus ride and you desperately need a shower, a coffee, and a bed, in that order, then figuring out what that knob actually does to the temperature, and with what delay, becomes both an urgent and an impossible task.
We travel to experience the difference, true, but there are times when we yearn for the boring and standardization becomes the most visceral of urges. Bills that have a predictable number of zeroes printed on them. Electric sockets that don’t look like queen Victoria was still being driven around in a horseless carriage (I’m looking at you, America). And shower controls that are somewhere in the range between hot and cold.
At times like this, the occasional “No hay agua caliente” is refreshing in its bluntness. Also refreshing to the body and the mind, once the cramps stop and the screams from the shower stall subside.
My apologies to anyone who called rescue services. I was just taking a shower.
