Do Romanians have a small bladder?

by The Flamingo

I’m sure you’re wondering what inspired such a peculiar subject for an article and I will enlighten you immediately. 

For some time now, I’ve been traveling at the back of the airplane, just for comfort and more personal space. The airplane will be always full at the front, but on rare occasions there will be some empty seats in the back. As you may have noticed, the toilets are also there.

It’s no small wonder that whenever I see the signal for the seat belt turning off, half of the plane is rising fast and racing to get to the toilet. The first time I noticed, I didn’t linger too much on the thought. But by the time I traveled directly to Dubai from Bucharest (a five hour flight), on a plane full of Romanians, with the small corridor between seats constantly packed with people waiting in line to release their basic needs, I began to wonder and started noticing. Is it just in planes full of Romanians, or in any other plane for that matter? I couldn’t remember if it was quite the same on my longer trips to Japan or to the United States, maybe because the airplanes were much larger.

Well…guess what? After a few flights, a couple of them with no connection to Bucharest whatsoever, I reached a conclusion. As I suspected, this happens a lot more on planes full of Romanians. On other flights, no queues to the toilet, it’s a rare sight to see more than two people waiting and most of the time the corridor is empty.

So…my question is: do Romanians have a smaller bladder than the rest of the nationalities? If we were to ask a physician, maybe he would enlighten us, after laughing himself silly at such a ridiculous notion. Is it anatomically possible that the urge to pee is greater on us, Romanians, than on others? Well, each human is different and after some further research on the size of the bladders, Romanians shouldn’t pee more often than the French do, for example. So what is the problem then? After thinking long and hard I found the answer: Stress or Anxiety. You know the equation for sure...stress = loss of bladder control.

Romanians are very stressed people. Just by being in an airport the stress level rises. By the time they get through security and on the actual plane that “distonocalm” pill (a form of Xanax) is already in their stomach. That seat belt sign popping in their line of vision is saying “you are not allowed to take it off, or to stand, or to go to the toilet”. All the safety instructions in case of an accident raise the anxiety of the poor Romanian to a max, reaching its pinnacle when the plane takes off. That bladder threatens to explode and they are not allowed to do anything about it. So imagine the relief they’re feeling when the sign goes off and they are allowed to stand. That explains the queue at the beginning of the journey.

But what about the rest of the flight? The stress level doesn’t seem to decrease too much. The poor Romanian is constantly assaulted by turbulence, or the beer he orders, or by the seat neighbours wanting something or other from their bags above their seats, or by the view of other people waiting in line to pee. They’re thinking “if I don’t wait in line right now, when I really need to go, it will be a too long of a wait, so better go now and get it over with”.

And for the big queue at the end of the journey, I think you get the picture: the stress of landing, the seat belt sign again and of course all the anxiety that they can’t go to the toilet in the airport. For sure they’ll arrive late at the baggage claim and of course somebody else will have taken their bag by mistake. They’ll be left in nothing but their clothes on their backs and with the nagging thought “where can I buy another pair of underwear?”

I think some empathy is in order, I am Romanian after all and know all about the hardships in controlling a stressed bladder. 

Photo by Chris Brignola on Unsplash.