Chapter 13: The Bathroom and the Bar
The government requires residents to hire toilet workers to clean up and divert waste for their private toilets on a regular basis. But unfortunately, not everyone will follow the rules strictly.
After all, the toilet worker charges 1 halso for every toilet he cleans, which is a cost to poor families!
An expert once pointed out in the newspaper:
"Most of the city's sinkholes are brick-turned, about a metre square. However, most of them are not lined and there is not even plaster between the bricks. As a result, sewage seeps into the soil. Eventually, the toilet workers cleaned out only solid substances, and the sewage had already entered the soil......"
As towns expand and populations grow, this environmental pollution problem becomes more and more intractable.
In areas where no one can afford to clean the manure pits, sewage from private ponds is flowing freely, pooling into small water fills up everywhere on the ground.
Similarly, stingy landlords are reluctant to spend too much on these slum-based properties. Shared toilet facilities exacerbate the problem.
Arnold the Great once invented a flush toilet, but because of its complex shape and high price, it was not developed among the basic masses.
With the innovation of technology, several different shapes of toilets have appeared on the market. All of them are simplified on the basis of Arnold the Great's toilet.
Of course, it's not just the engineering design that's different, it's also the social groups it targets.
Although it cleans up waste quickly, this simple flush toilet leaves much to be desired. Many flush toilets simply direct excrement into former sumps, and some even go directly to roadside drains.
Because this kind of flush toilet mainly uses some valves and pipes of different specifications to remove the excrement from the urinal, and then flush it with clean water.
This means that water and excrement go directly from the toilet bowl into the sewer, which also contributes to the pollution of the sewer.
One of the most troublesome things is that the underside of the urinal can't be cleaned. The water from the toilet flush couldn't reach it at all, and if you wanted to clean it manually, you had to remove the entire device.
Therefore, many people think that this new flush toilet is not as clean as the public toilet built next to the garden.
For the aristocracy, there were no such problems, most of them used the expensive Arnold toilet, which was cleaned regularly by servants every day, and the bathroom was filled with flower arrangements and fragrances from different seasons.
Chris sat on the toilet in the lavatory and pondered the current situation.
The boss Daniel promised to eat a piece of rye bread and a bowl of vegetable porridge from the steward every morning and evening, and as for the rest, he had to pay for the rest.
He is in the important stage of growing his body, and even if Chris saves more, daily vegetables and fruits are essential, which is also his main consumption.
Immediately returned to the room, climbed to the top bunk, and carefully took out the books to look through.
A couple of roommates who weren't a few years older than him were usually playing cards or drinking in bars outside, and of course, the cheapest beer.
Chris was once dragged by them to a nearby bar.
The bar was in the antechamber of a house, with simple furniture and a blazing fire.
The floor of the bar's common areas is paved with stone, and one of the walls is embedded with a 6-foot-tall wooden board painted white. At the edge of the room there is a built-in wooden bench with several simple wooden tables and chairs in front of it, which can accommodate a dozen people.
Beer and gin are brought out of the small door of the warehouse or in the pantry by the bar owner or hired waiter.
At the end of a long workday, mud-drenched people slump on benches while drinking wine.
The men largely choose which bar they choose based on the people who often drink there, and each bar is essentially a small club......
Workers start their day socializing here after a tiring day, so the people at each bar know each other very well.
Although the size of such bars is small, there are many of them. In the human class ghetto, there is one such bar in almost every 30 houses.
It's a necessary mental need, as extremely crowded family housing can turn the bar into a popular place to relax.
After a tiring day, people can get away from the crying and screaming children in their homes, leave the cold room, temporarily escape from the housework, and relax their tired body and mind.
After all, they don't have the opportunity to go to other social places and entertainment.
Of course, not all bars are so plain.
When Chris was courting customers in the middle class South and East Districts, he saw many bars that looked grand and spectacular from the outside, and could be called folk palaces.
These bars are resplendent in gold, beautifully tiled and lavishly equipped.
Because the wineries that have the money to invest will do everything they can to make their bars look luxurious and decent, so as to attract those who have the money to potential customers.
Not only is their bar decked with brightly colored tiles, but it is also equipped with large windows, bright lighting, gleaming metal accents, and highly polished woodwork.
The bar is located in the center of the room, surrounded by a series of cubicles, each with a large convenient fireplace.
The bar itself is an enclosed space with several small windows on the walls from which drinks are delivered.
In addition to pure drinking, this type of bar has a number of social functions:
It is a club for sports lovers, a base for literary debate clubs, a meeting room for gardening enthusiasts, a leisure place for the rich to sign a contract, a place for government officials to relax and entertain, and even the birthplace of various savings plans.
This bar is full of ornate decorations: frosted glass, delicate tile patterns, crystal chandeliers of various colors.
Some of the larger bars even have billiard rooms, rooms for drinking and tea, rooms for playing cards, and places for well-dressed girls.
Of course, according to the spending power of the consumer, there are also ordinary rooms, silver rooms, gold and diamond rooms here. Different sizes, different treatments.
In the Diamond Room, there are not only beautiful servants waiting on the side, but even wine glasses made of gold. Naturally, the consumption of one night may be comparable to the salary of a civilian for a year or even several years.
By contrast, informal, family-based bars are located in the West End, where poorer workers live.
Because only the guests who came out of the bars in the South and East Sides would be willing to pay for Chris's carriage, he often squatted near the bar in the cold wind, and when he saw the drunken customers coming out, he would run to ask if he needed a carriage.
Because the East Side is farther away from Chris's West Side, more often than not, he is soliciting customers in the South Side.
As for the northern district, where the nobility lived, since they all had their own private carriages, there was no need for such free carriages.
Most of the people at the bottom here don't read books, and the books here refer to serious books. Even the daily Federenburg morning and evening newspapers were only affordable for the wealthier workers and middle classes.
This is also the biggest reason why most of the poor people are vulgar, without knowledge and culture, they can only blindly believe in the blessings of the gods.
Therefore, not only the way to dress, but also to look at a person's language and demeanor, you can see the living environment and which class he is in.
The other roommates were only amazed by Chris's use of reading books in his spare time, but they didn't say much, after all, everyone has their own things to do.
At this time, the Lord's Earl's Palace in the eastern district of Federenburg, an architecturally lavish mansion.
In the elegantly decorated dining room on the first floor, the floor is covered with ornate stone slabs carved with intricate patterns, and the roof is hung with bright crystal chandeliers.
On a long table with food and drinks, there are delicious dishes such as pan-fried foie gras in red wine, roasted veal steak with black pepper, pan-fried sole, pan-fried keelfish, baked Olawe lobster with cream cheese and creamy bisque.
There are also champagne and Ormere wines from the Callod estate, which give off an alluring colour when illuminated.