The toilets at Hanover railway station cost €1.50, which feels a bold amount of money for what is, biologically speaking, not really an optional activity. I appreciate that toilets need cleaning, maintenance and supervision, but there is still something faintly dramatic about standing in a major railway station and being asked to make such a substantial a financial commitment. But, this is Deutsche Bahn and passengers are really just an inconvenience to their general operations. There was also a substantial queue for the female toilets, so paying a premium price doesn’t even allow for a fast visit although I suppose it gives better value for money if there’s a twenty minute wait for the facilities.
The toilets are run by Sanifair, a company that operates paid public toilet facilities across Germany, including at a number of railway stations, shopping centres and motorway service areas. At Hanover Hauptbahnhof everyone gets a €0.50 voucher when going through the barriers, but there were literally hundreds of these dumped on the floor which had become mildly damp which all felt slightly sub-optimal. Sanifair didn’t really trouble themselves with cleaning their expensive toilets so it’s not entirely clear to me where all this money is going.
To be fair, the facilities were functional and not entirely filled with railway-station despair, so this slightly undermines the full force of my grievance. But they were also not so luxurious that I emerged feeling I had been treated to an experience. And the disabled facilities were entirely out of order which is sub-optimal, but so is much about Hanover railway station. As I’m quite petty, I decided against spending any money at the railway station and instead went to the Aldi in Dortmund where the financial transaction didn’t end in mild resentment.
And since I paid €1.50, I wanted to at least get a blog post out of it in an attempt to turn a basic inconvenience into content. Right, that’s enough moaning for the moment.