花樣百出的酒店浴室

I like the look of the shower in my Vienna hotel. It is one where you run the bath water over your feet until you get the temperature right. Then you press down, or lift up the plunger, or perhaps rotate a wheel, and the shower takes over from the bath.

我喜歡我在維也納住的那家酒店的浴室。你可以先在腳上試洗澡水，直到水溫合適。然後按下或擡起龍頭閥門，或許還要轉動一個輪盤開關，洗澡水就會從浴缸的龍頭切換到花灑。

Except I cannot find the plunger or the wheel. It is not between the bath taps. It is not on the wall between the bath and the shower. It is not attached to the shower head. I give up and decide to have a bath. Turning the bath tap that little bit more releases a storm from the shower. That is how you work this shower. You overdo the bath.

只不過我找不着閥門或輪盤。浴缸的水龍頭之間沒有。浴缸和淋浴處之間的牆上沒有。花灑上也沒有。我放棄了，打算泡個澡。浴缸的水龍頭剛被我稍稍擰過了一點，花灑裏的水就劈頭蓋臉地澆下來了。淋浴龍頭原來是這麼開的。把浴缸的水龍頭擰過一點。

Why are hotel showers so unfathomable? Far from home, probably jet-lagged, and in my case almost blind without glasses, travellers try to solve the bathroom designer’s latest puzzle. Hot on the left, cold on the right, or water pressure on the left, temperature control on the right?

酒店的淋浴開關爲啥要搞得如此暗含玄機？離家在外，可能還在倒時差，而我離了眼鏡幾乎就是個睜眼瞎，在這種時候還要摸索着解出浴室設計師們出的最新謎題。是左邊熱水、右邊涼水，還是左邊調水壓、右邊調水溫？

Then that fraught transition from bath to shower: even if you work out what to do, the result may not be a sudden scalding or freezing torrent from the shower above. The additional and increasingly common hand shower, lodged in its bracket at eye level, may instead deliver a blast of water to the face.

浴缸這兒好不容易搞明白了，淋浴那兒同樣不好對付：即使你摸清怎麼操作了，結果也可能被頭頂花灑裏突然噴出來的滾燙熱水或刺骨冷水澆一腦袋。額外的手持花灑現在越來越普遍了，一般架在與視線齊平的支架上，用這個花灑倒是避免了前一種情況，但是會噴你一臉水。

Some seem to revel in shower complexity, willing the hotel designers to even greater convolutions. A 2011 Wall Street Journal article reported on Amanda Witman, who spent her wedding night at the Wyndham hotel in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which boasted a “cavernous, 43-square-foot shower with five shower heads. Two are mounted on opposing walls at thigh level, two more heads at chest level and a fifth overhead”.

有些人似乎對浴室的複雜設計特別着迷，希望酒店設計師們搞出更多的花樣來。2011年，《華爾街日報》(Wall Street Journal)上一篇關於阿曼達?威特曼(Amanda Witman)的報道說，威特曼在賓夕法尼亞州葛底斯堡(Gettysburg)的溫德姆(Wyndham)酒店度過了自己的新婚之夜，這家酒店號稱有一個“洞穴般的、43平方英尺的淋浴房，配有5個花灑。2個安裝在相對的兩面牆上對着大腿的高度，2個安在齊胸的高度，第5個在頭頂上。”

Initially daunted, Ms Witman declared the five-head shower “very relaxing, almost therapeutic. It was something special and different that we’ll always remember about our wedding night”.

這間有5個花灑的淋浴房一開始把威特曼嚇着了。不過她最終發現這間淋浴房“令人身心舒展，幾乎有治療的功效。這間淋浴房非常與衆不同，將永遠銘刻在我們對新婚之夜的記憶中。”

The same report referred to a hotel in Miami where “the shower head protrudes from the bottom of a hanging crystal chandelier” and one in Mexico City where the showers have “hammocks that guests can lounge in”.

這篇報道也提到邁阿密一家酒店，這家酒店的“花灑從水晶吊燈的底座向外伸出”，還提到了墨西哥城的一家酒店，該酒店的浴室裏有“可供客人們休息的吊牀”。

I would settle for a set of instructions on how the shower works, or better, count on it working in a similar way to other showers, wherever I am.

如果給浴室配一套使用說明就好了，或者不管在哪，浴室的使用方法最好都差不離。

This is not one of the world’s most urgent problems, but it does raise a question. Most products tend towards greater uniformity so that we are not flummoxed when we move from one model to another. Cars have their accelerator pedals on the right and the brake pedals to their left, not switched around randomly to create more excitement.

這並不是當今世界最緊要的問題之一，但它確實引發了一個疑問。大多數產品都趨向于越來越統一，這樣即便換一個類型我們也不會不知所措。汽車的油門在左邊，剎車在右邊，它們的位置並不會爲了讓用戶感到更刺激而隨意切換。

When we get into a lift, whether in Brisbane or Bogotá, we know that we have to press a button, not stamp a certain number of times to indicate our floor number, or headbutt the mirror. Why then have hotel showers diverged rather than coalesced around a common standard?

不管在布里斯班還是波哥大，當我們走進電梯，我們知道得按一個按鈕，而不是要到哪層就跺幾下腳，或用頭撞鏡子。爲什麼酒店的浴室就非得花樣百出而不是大體依照一個共同的標準？

Alex Kravetz, hotel designer to establishments from London’s Dorchester to the Baku Sheraton, told me that the huge variety of shower controls resulted in part from divergent plumbing standards at different times and in different countries.

亞歷克斯?克拉韋茨(Alex Kravetz)是一名酒店設計師，設計了倫敦多切斯特(Dorchester Hotel)、巴庫喜來登(Sheraton)等酒店，克拉韋茨告訴我，浴室控制裝置的多種多樣部分是因爲在不同時期不同國家管道的標準也不盡相同。

Added to that is hotels’ desire to innovate. Hotels have always been pioneers. “Remember the first en-suite bathrooms at the end of the 19th century,” he says. Devising increasingly dazzling showers is no different.

除此之外就是酒店的創新慾望。酒店向來是創新的先行者。“回想一下19世紀末第一間套房內衛生間。”他說。同理，淋浴裝置設計得也越發眼花繚亂。

Bathroom designers understand the complexity problem. “We as designers are constantly challenged to keep it simple,” he says, but hotels’ enthusiasm for novel devices (think of all those shower heads) complicates everything again.

衛生間的設計師們理解這種複雜。他說，“爲了讓設計簡潔，作爲設計者的我們不斷受到挑戰”，但是酒店對新奇設備的狂熱（想想那些花灑）讓一切重新變得複雜起來。

Relief is coming, Mr Kravetz insists. “Voice-controlled devices, from televisions to showers, will be preprogrammed for your arrival,” he says. “The confusing controls will be gone forever.”

一切就快好了，克拉韋茨堅稱。“從電視到淋浴的一系列聲控設備將會在賓客們下榻酒店前預先設定好。”他說，“那些令人費解的控制裝置將會一去不復返。”

I hope he is right, and I am trying to picture the result. We will presumably, as with Google Translate, enter our desired language on booking, whether English, Hungarian or Urdu. Then, I imagine, we will tell the shower what to do.

但願他是對的，我試着想像那個畫面。我們可能會，就像使用谷歌翻譯(Google Translate)一樣，輸入我們想要使用的語言，英語、匈牙利語或是烏爾都語。然後，我想，我們將告訴浴室做什麼。

“Turn the shower on. Not the thigh-level one, the overhead one. Good. Hotter, hotter, hotter. Enough! Are you trying to kill me?”

“打開淋浴。不是對着大腿的這個，是頭頂上那個。好。熱點，熱點，再熱點。夠了！你想燙死我？”

I can’t wait.

我已經迫不及待了。