The Anatomy of an Italian Shower

This is bound to be one of my less glamorous posts but life is not always pretty, even in scenic Italy. So to the bathroom…

The bathroom in our apartment is not set up for a shower in the American, perhaps modern sense. There is a bathtub and then a faucet for filling the tub. Slightly above the faucet is a shower attachment with hose.

Problem A: There is nowhere to “hook” or fasten the shower hose except just above the faucet that is only slightly above the tub ledge.

Problem B: The faucet and shower hose are mounted in the center of the tub. So if one wants to stand and hose off (while holding the shower hose) water sprays out into the room.

Problem C: There was a shower curtain rod with hooks but no shower curtain. We could not find a shower curtain anywhere. Seriously nowhere and I even asked at work. I mean I work with a bunch of people who also live in Rome, no answers.

With this set of problems we started the semester by bathing and washing our hair in the sink. But I hate baths, a lot. So I got tired of that archaic form of human grooming and devised my own shower.

Here are the components to our new fully functioning shower: a wall mount for a woman’s razor, two rubber bands from the States that once bound broccoli ( they read “Organic US Produce”), a suction cup from a wall-mount Italian toothbrush holder we bought for our toothbrushes, and two unused government issued recycling bags.



The solution was attaching a suction cup to the back of the shower hose so that it could be stuck on to the wall when needed. Luckily the hose reaches far enough to be stuck onto a sidewall. Then I cut open the trash bags, punched holes at the tops, and threaded the shower hooks through.



For the inventive shower solution that has bettered our lives immensely, I would like to thank my mother, my Davidson education, and American ingenuity.