Wo ist die Toilette?

Ok, I understand that in Germany and a lot of Europe you have to pay to use public restrooms. (The musical Urinetown must not have the same affect in Europe.) I've actually only had to do this once my entire 6+ months here and that was this past weekend in the Dresden train station. It was 1 € which is ridiculous, but I had been holding it for the entire 2 hour car ride, so I was willing to part with it. But what I don't understand is the number of people who publicly urinate on Bismarkplatz. Today was the third time that I came upon someone releiving himself in the bushes around UBA. I thought Grunewald was the nice part of Berlin. Maybe it's foolish of me to translate 'nice part' into 'you won't see people peeing everywhere'. Today as I was biking into work, right as I turned past this group of three old ladies out walking their dogs, I was faced with a backpack, that was strapped to a man facing the bushes, legs slightly wider than shoulder width apart, and sure enough, graciously draining his kidneys on the lawn. I wanted to ask him if he was aware that it was 10:30 in the morning and that he was in plain view of the relatively heavy traffic, but I didn't want to miss my green light.

It did, however, conjure up memories of the other times I had stumbled upon other men in similar positions. The first time, I was legitimately frightened. This was in the pre-bike days, so I was leaving work and heading toward the S-bahn. I wasn't even off of UBA's property yet. I was beginning to pass through the small walkway as usual, when I stopped myself, and quickly changed directions because I spotted a man creepily standing half-in the bushes. I wasn't in the getting-abducted-by-a-strange-man mood, so I decided to steer clear of the situation. It dawned on me later what he was doing in there.

The second one was kind of my fault. I was going someplace besides home after work, so I was waiting for the bus on the other side of the street than usual. I had to wait like 8 minutes and it was a bit cold, so I decided to walk laps around the little sausage/coffee shack that was by the bus stop. I wasn't exactly walking on a road or really anywhere that would be heavily traveled. Sure enough, on my first time around there was a man peeing. This was the most embarrassing one, because he really was trying to be discreet and he picked a better spot than the creepy guy at the entrance of UBA. And I was just moseying around trying to stay warm. Apparently we were participating in a twisted version of hide-and-seek and neither of us knew it.