Michael In American rental apartments and cheap hotels, the bathtubs are often ridiculously small. Our tub, for example, is 134 cm long, 58 cm wide, and 30 cm deep. Someone like me, who is 1.85 m tall, has to contort quite a bit to fit in. That wouldn't be so bad, but to make matters worse, there's a lever (illustration 1) that opens and closes the bathtub drain, and its metal cover has an emergency overflow hole at the bottom. As a result, in a bathtub that's only 30 cm deep, the water can only rise to 21 cm before it drains through the emergency overflow!

That's obviously madness; only a trained yoga enthusiast could stay underwater with all body parts like that. When we were recently in a specialty store for bathroom supplies ("Bed, Bath and Beyond"), I noticed a new product at the checkout: the bathtub drain stopper. It's a cap made of soft plastic that you place over the overflow drain and attach to the edge of the tub with suction cups on the back (see illustration 2).

The bathtub drain stopper has a hole at the top, through which water can seep in during an emergency and flow out through the emergency drain of the outlet lever. The advantage: the water level can now rise to a full 29 cm instead of 20 cm, which is 50% more delightful hot bath enjoyment! Hot water is already included in the rent for us, as in many apartments, which is why the bathtub drain stopper is surely on the hit list of all landlords and hotel owners in San Francisco. It will probably be banned soon and only available on the black market, so quickly buy one for your next USA vacation! It costs 6 dollars at "Bed Bath and Beyond," a sky-high price for a piece of plastic, but I'm happy to pay for the idea.

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Gold Rush In the Klondike
  	Arnie in Not" translates to "Arnie in Distress" or "Arnie in
  	The translation of "Amerikaner bloggen über Deutschland" to
  	The telephone monopoly
  	The translation of "Deutsche Spezialitäten in USA" to English is
  	Wahlkampf
  	Generous Americans