Traveller discovers the purpose of 'mysterious string' found in hotel showers
The high-end shampoo and conditioner, the dual shower heads and plush towels; my Italian hotel room came with all the bells and whistles. Plus a mysterious string attached to the roof.
Dangling next to me as I washed, the string became saturated, sticking to my skin as it flapped back and forth between droplet strikes.
Like the mouse with the cheese, the toddler with the marshmallow, I found the string too tempting not to yank.
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Stephen Heard was perplexed by the 'mysterious string' in the hotel shower. Stephen Heard/ Stuff
So I pulled the string. A phone rang in the bathroom next to the light-up vanity, as did another one by the bed. I quickly towel dried and picked up the restroom receiver. There was no one there. The sound of silence.
Later that morning at reception I asked the staff about the string and they confirmed my hunch that the bathroom feature is, not a novel way to flush the toilet, but an emergency cord to be pulled in the event of a slippery incident.
You may have noticed similar strings hanging down over bathtubs, showers and toilets in bathrooms across the European nation. They are required by law in the national building code to be installed in public facilities that need to be accessible for disabled visitors – like hotels.
They are deliberately long so they can be grabbed on the way down, or pulled from the floor if you've fallen and can't get up.
They are supposed to work in the same way as panic buttons found in restrooms on aircraft or in hospitals by sending an alert to a master panel. In ideal circumstances, a member of staff will arrive, open the door and rescue you from disaster.
As I apologised to the staff for my false alarm, they insisted that they hadn't even received an alert. They also couldn't explain why both phones rang in my room, suggesting it may have been wired up incorrectly.
After pulling the string, Heard discovered it was an emergency cord. Stephen Heard/ Stuff
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In the US, Federal law requires that emergency cord systems must work properly. In Italy, it appears that things are far more relaxed.
The Northern Hemisphere is known for its pull-able bathroom cords that might confuse travelling Kiwis.
I encountered another string in a different hotel room on my journey which could be extended and then locked into a socket. The in-shower clothesline proved convenient for steaming a wrinkled shirt.
Elsewhere in Europe, strings or cords are commonly used as mains switches for electric showers. Pull cord light switches are also found throughout UK bathrooms due to the risk of electrical shock when touching an outlet when wet.
To avoid wasting resources and time, you should only pull an emergency shower string if you are in need of assistance.
This article was originally published on Stuff NZ and has been republished here with full permission.
