Sir, excuse me, the toilet?

The Belgium I know is not that of Brugges, the Manneken Piss, Brussels or Antwerpen. It is the French Belgium in the province of Namur: A 30km radio surrounding the city, Namur.

As elsewhere in Europe, Belgium's constructions still smell like centuries. The narrow stairs, the small steps, the wood that squeaks when stepping on it, the strong walls, the heatings in the walls, the red color that's predominates.

Suddenly, in one of the many houses I stayed at, I asked:
- Excuse me, the toilet?
- Go to the kitchen and right there, in front of the stove is the toilet.
- Thanks.

A toilet in the kitchen? in front of the stove? and what if...? there's somebody cooking?

I met the afternoon with a friend to get a drink. Now she's married, has two children and just they bought an old house at a very good price in the outskirts of Liege. It has been hard, because like so many young couples here, they have had to do the remodelings. Then she tells me that the first difficult part was to construct a toilet. A toilet? -I asked her- but if a toilet is so part of a house as the kitchen or a room. Well, not completly, in the house they bought use to live an old woman, and so during her generation they used to bath in the kitchen. At that time the toilet where outside of the house.

But with the modern times also new parameters of hygiene were stablished. But the money is always a problem, and people had to construct the toilet, wc, near the kitchen, because the needed to spend less in installing complex pipes all around the house.

Then you star to understand these things, those that seems strange. And you don't feel shame get to the bath between onions, cereal and milk.