When traveling, the language barrier can be an obstacle. Especially when you have violent diarrhea.

This was the case during a semester I spent in London. For the Easter weekend, two friends were going to Spain, a trip I could not afford. And then one got really ill and couldn't go. This left already-paid-for tickets in my hand and a Catalonian holiday in future.

And then it happened.

The exact moment was on the ferry from Dover to Calais. It was a 2 A.M. boat that would put us on the continent in enough time to catch a 5 A.M. train to our youthful destiny of self-discovery. All was going well, we even met a fellow American student whose many backpacks and braids told us we were going with God.

The warnings of exactly what what lay inside my self came early. The flow was substantial, but seemingly nothing beyond your run-of-the-mill loose stool. It was a deceptive crawl towards full blown digestive revolt.

Once on French soil, a shuttle bus took us to the train station. I can remember the feeling quite well, as if I were trying to digest a spiked metal ball the size of a grapefruit. And as I sat on this bus, pounding my fist on the seat for power and justice, I knew my anal resolve was crumbling.

We got to the Calais station with under an hour until our train was to take us south. Whatever the French word for "shitter" is, I couldn't figure it out, only remembering that "toilet" means "perfume" or something. I find the proper restroom door only to see it is closed and out of order in some way. I hop around a bit before being forced to kick in the door.

What I find on the other side is one toilet with no seat and one that is not even attached to the wall. Both have a bowl of pitch black water in them; the smell is intense.

I puked in the one without a seat and went atomic all over the other one with a raging tidal wave of harm. I had no time to put down a toilet paper ring to sit on.

I thought this would clear things up, as you say, and time was at issue. I would have to endure 11 more hours on train without being able to say "doctor", "Imodium" or "raging diarrhea" to anyone. Rob stood at the ticket window as boarding was announced, waiting for my answer.

Just when I thought I could muscle through it, another flex of pure heated pain came on and I was lost. He and the train left and I went back to the broken toilets.

I made it back to London some hours later, my health restored, my holiday missed and the knowledge that I had seen my stool bloodied orange for the first time in my life. It seems the world is full of foreign wonders of human waste.

-- and Mark