The smell hits you before the sight does: day-old urine saturating every crevice of the open-air stalls (why aim when you’re not the one cleaning up?), the door to the modern-looking enclosure jammed open, its lock mechanism blinking sadly, one or two bodies hunched over inside and a perfectly-placed pile of excrement at the door.
Finding a public toilet in Berlin is one thing, but using one is an entirely different challenge, one that might have you questioning the city’s commitment to what the UN has mandated as a right to “safe, hygienic, secure” sanitation with “privacy” and “dignity”.
Finding a free, usable public toilet can feel as rare in Berlin as spotting a wild lion.
Berliners’ propensity for long walks during the Covid lockdown era may have highlighted the city’s need for more public restrooms, but construction of 216 public toilets in the years since – bringing the total number up to 475 – hasn’t necessarily provided more places to pee as much as it’s created somewhere sheltered to shoot up.
Safe, clean places for both of these activities should be provided, and it’d be great if they weren’t in the same room. In addition, using the public toilets for activities outside doing your business often leads to the maintenance-driven shuttering, which means that people who need the bathroom might find the nearest one unavailable in their hour of need – or only the urinals open.
Berlin’s public bathrooms – their small number, varied upkeep, cleanliness and intermittent lack of availability – have become a paragon for some of the city’s most visible problems: an unhoused population that’s likely upwards of 26,000 people, according to 2022 estimates, and drug addiction issues, making areas like Kottbusser Tor and Görlitzer Park visible hot spots. They’re also a symbol of the city’s willingness to ignore half the population’s biological need to pee a handful of times per day.
Loo-natics tackle misuse
Since 1993, the private company Wall GmbH has been operating more than 300 of the public toilets on behalf of the city; capitalism won the Cold War, peeing is privatised. Wall is responsible for the cleanliness of the public toilets under their purview (some fall under the district government or other companies). But in the case of a pilot project in Görlitzer Park that began in August this year, they’ve been relieved of that duty.
The €1.6 million project, headed by the Senate Department for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection and Environment (SenMVKU) and slated to run until 2026, aims to reduce “misuse”, which has reportedly increased since 107 of the existing public toilets in Berlin were made cost-free to enter in the last two years. So-called “mobile teams” monitor the public toilets in Görlitzer Park and the surrounding neighbourhoods. Two shifts of four people not only remove waste but implore misusers to leave the toilets (right now five of them, as part of phase 1 of the project) and if that doesn’t work, a “third party” is called in and the misusers “directed to alternative locations”.
For folks who can pee standing up, the bushes of Berlin provide seemingly never-ending opportunities.
If you’re thinking this “third party” is probably the cops, you’re right – but they’re called only after all other options have been exhausted, according to Michael Herden, press spokesperson for the SenMVKU. “It has not been necessary to involve the police to date.” The project is also supplemented by the local Kiezhausmeisterei (“neighbourhood caretaker”) and social work organisations, says Herden. Anyone in need of emergency services are referred to nearby emergency overnight accommodations, consumption facilities, or to the counselling and mobile drug testing units operated by Fixpunkt e.V.
So far, the pilot project is regarded as a success: “The usability of the toilets was increased by reducing misuse and a subjective improvement in cleanliness was observed,” says Herden. Usage of the facilities has gone up and the number of complaints has gone down, which is why the route for the mobile teams patrolling Görlitzer Park has been expanded.
Sounds promising, although some critics argue the programme is letting Wall off the hook instead of forcing the company to properly maintain the toilets. Die Linke’s Katalin Gennburg, the party’s urban development spokesperson, derided Berlin’s CDU-led government for continuing to waste money on a private company that isn’t doing what they’re contractually obligated to do, instead of investing in outreach for the homeless – and a properly staffed network of quality municipal toilets.
No more pisscrimination
There are myriad reasons why finding a free, usable public toilet can feel as rare in Berlin as spotting a wild lion. Paris is a city of 2.1 million compared to Berlin’s 3.78 million people, but it has 435 public toilets to Berlin’s 475. That’s 6.72 toilets per square kilometre, unlike our measly .73 for a much larger urban area (892 square kilometres in Berlin to Paris’s petite 105 kilometres squared.) The process to even get to this number has been long and arduous, though the first public toilets in Berlin were constructed in 1876. Colloquially known as “Café Achteck” due to their octagonal shape, they only consisted of pissoirs, natürlich.
Still, for folks who can pee standing up, the bushes of Berlin provide seemingly never-ending opportunities to whip it out whenever nature calls – something so normalised that there’s even a word for it in German: Wildpinkeln. For those with different bits, popping a squat in between two parked cars isn’t nearly as easy, nor is it as socially acceptable or physically safe. Not to mention trying to change a tampon or sanitary pad during that time of the month, or dealing with any other medical needs.
Of the public toilets in Berlin, 368 still require payment to enter the enclosed sit-down toilet. Obviously, that’s less than ideal for the many Berliners who cannot use a urinal – whether it be because of their anatomy or accessibility issues (although for a small fee, people with disabilities can receive a key that grants access to public toilets EU-wide).
In spring last year, the SenMVKU launched another pilot project with 24 climate-friendly public toilet units that include free access to squat toilets, conceptualised by the Berlin-based company Missoir. The detailed survey results have yet to be released, but the initial response to the facilities – only available until March 2025 – was positive: on average, each toilet was used about 70 times a day, and of the unisex standing and squat urinals, over 90% responded that they were very or somewhat practical.
In addition to reducing the average waiting time for sitting toilets – six minutes, compared to 11 seconds for urinals – these toilets also operate entirely without water and harmful additives, and the contents of the toilets are also processed into fertiliser. This is especially helpful in areas like parks and recreation areas, where all-too often the necessary plumbing infrastructure does not exist to build more flushing toilets.
Living in Berlin can come with its fair share of crap, but it’d be worth harnessing this small push towards progressive peeing alternatives and keep the focus on safe, clean, reliable access to public toilets that are sustainable and inclusive.
