This is the entrance to a public bathroom in the main train station in Krakow, Poland. That turnstile is there to prevent people from entering without paying.

“Enter without paying?!” you might be thinking.

That’s right: many of the public bathrooms in Poland are accessible only after paying a fee, usually two zloty, which would be about $0.60. When I first arrived in 1996, all public bathrooms were fee-based. There was a little window by the bathroom door where a janitor sat and collected money.

These days, most public restrooms are more Westernized, i.e., free. Most of the restrooms I saw in Warsaw, for example, were free. (The one pay restroom I saw was in Warszawa Centralna, the main train station — must be a train station thing.) Still, it was a little jarring to see a pay toilets again.