Post photo: Pixabay
It wasn't that long ago, maybe a few decades, that you could find public toilet facilities in all of the city's major squares, underpasses, and even in the pedestrian zones themselves. They are still a must-have in every major city, especially for foreigners, tourists and pub tourers.
Even then, many toilet facilities were a nuisance if they were not staffed or maintained by friendly kiosk owners - but at least they could be reached and used in an emergency.
Some of these toilet facilities even achieved cult status, not only the ones at the Bahnhof Zoo in Berlin were meeting places for people who didn't really fit into our society, or even saved some people's lives when the temperatures were below zero.
Today the public toilets have disappeared from the cityscape of Heilbronn, only those on the market square or the avenue are still well known. Those who walk around the former BUGA grounds will recently find one at the old shipping company's playground - but this is more due to the fact to prevent the BUGA lakes from becoming pee pools.
The toilet facilities that still exist but have long since been shut down, such as those in the Old Cemetery or on Silcherplatz, still bear witness to the fact that Heilbronn was once aware of its municipal tasks and duties.
As an alternative to the city's public toilet facilities, the city launched an initiative that simply declared toilets in restaurants, cafés and other companies to be public toilets and these on the Heilbronn website - which is of little or no help to those groups of people who are dependent on public toilets and do not know any Heilbronn internals.
In addition, this Heilbronn solution has the problem that these "public" toilet facilities generally have very restrictive opening hours and are not accessible at all, especially in these pandemic times. Ergo, this Heilbronn toilet solution is a bad plan from the start, which also has serious consequences.
On the one hand, those who urgently need a toilet, e.g. B. children, foreigners, pub-goers or even night walkers, no way to relieve themselves in a civilized manner, and on the other hand, the owners of buildings and gardens in the city alone bear the consequences of these defecations.
As a Heilbronner who the wine village grew up around, I've known from my youth about the excesses of peeing and heaps of wine lovers, but I also knew about the time limitations of this fifth Heilbronn season.
In the meantime, however, the whole thing has developed so far that those who still take care of the city are fed up. I also don't feel like regularly rinsing out and rinsing out cellar shafts or house walls so that the smell of urine doesn't bother the house community and neighborhood and I certainly don't want to remove the excrement from the house entrances and recently also from a cellar - the door was probably open.
You can no longer expect this from tenants and you have to be able to afford professional cleaning staff first.
Without any ifs and buts, the following applies: ownership obliges! But also that a job on the municipal council or even a job with the city of Heilbronn also entails obligations — I don’t mean visiting the wine village by that — and the city of Heilbronn finally has to take account of the fact that people also have needs.
In the short term, the city of Heilbronn must ensure that sufficient TOI TOI or DIXI toilets are set up; You can also place these directly in front of the closed "public" toilets, which then also increases awareness.
In the medium to long term, the city should install new public toilet facilities - the often criticized inner-city vacancy offers good and attractive locations. And not every building owned by the city has to come up with a municipal desk workplace on the ground floor - here too it makes sense to establish attractive toilet facilities, which e.g. B. in cooperation with SANIFAIR.
Definitely belong open public toilet facilities add to the cityscape of every big city and also increase their attractiveness, especially if they are inviting and not deterring most visitors. The Heilbronn toilet question would thus also be a task for city marketing.
"How long a minute can be depends on which side of the toilet door you are on."
Anon
