I like the look of the shower in my Vienna hotel. It is one where you run the bath water over your feet until you get the temperature right. Then you press down, or lift up the plunger, or perhaps rotate a wheel, and the shower takes over from the bath.
我喜欢我在维也纳住的那家酒店的浴室。你可以先在脚上试洗澡水，直到水温合适。然后按下或抬起龙头阀门，或许还要转动一个轮盘开关，洗澡水就会从浴缸的龙头切换到花洒。
Except I cannot find the plunger or the wheel. It is not between the bath taps. It is not on the wall between the bath and the shower. It is not attached to the shower head. I give up and decide to have a bath. Turning the bath tap that little bit more releases a storm from the shower. That is how you work this shower. You overdo the bath.
只不过我找不着阀门或轮盘。浴缸的水龙头之间没有。浴缸和淋浴处之间的墙上没有。花洒上也没有。我放弃了，打算泡个澡。浴缸的水龙头刚被我稍稍拧过了一点，花洒里的水就劈头盖脸地浇下来了。淋浴龙头原来是这么开的。把浴缸的水龙头拧过一点。
Why are hotel showers so unfathomable? Far from home, probably jet-lagged, and in my case almost blind without glasses, travellers try to solve the bathroom designer’s latest puzzle. Hot on the left, cold on the right, or water pressure on the left, temperature control on the right?
酒店的淋浴开关为啥要搞得如此暗含玄机？离家在外，可能还在倒时差，而我离了眼镜几乎就是个睁眼瞎，在这种时候还要摸索着解出浴室设计师们出的最新谜题。是左边热水、右边凉水，还是左边调水压、右边调水温？
Then that fraught transition from bath to shower: even if you work out what to do, the result may not be a sudden scalding or freezing torrent from the shower above. The additional and increasingly common hand shower, lodged in its bracket at eye level, may instead deliver a blast of water to the face.
浴缸这儿好不容易搞明白了，淋浴那儿同样不好对付：即使你摸清怎么操作了，结果也可能被头顶花洒里突然喷出来的滚烫热水或刺骨冷水浇一脑袋。额外的手持花洒现在越来越普遍了，一般架在与视线齐平的支架上，用这个花洒倒是避免了前一种情况，但是会喷你一脸水。
Some seem to revel in shower complexity, willing the hotel designers to even greater convolutions. A 2011 Wall Street Journal article reported on Amanda Witman, who spent her wedding night at the Wyndham hotel in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which boasted a “cavernous, 43-square-foot shower with five shower heads. Two are mounted on opposing walls at thigh level, two more heads at chest level and a fifth overhead”.
有些人似乎对浴室的复杂设计特别着迷，希望酒店设计师们搞出更多的花样来。2011年，《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)上一篇关于阿曼达?威特曼(Amanda Witman)的报道说，威特曼在宾夕法尼亚州葛底斯堡(Gettysburg)的温德姆(Wyndham)酒店度过了自己的新婚之夜，这家酒店号称有一个“洞穴般的、43平方英尺的淋浴房，配有5个花洒。2个安装在相对的两面墙上对着大腿的高度，2个安在齐胸的高度，第5个在头顶上。”
Initially daunted, Ms Witman declared the five-head shower “very relaxing, almost therapeutic. It was something special and different that we’ll always remember about our wedding night”.
这间有5个花洒的淋浴房一开始把威特曼吓着了。不过她最终发现这间淋浴房“令人身心舒展，几乎有治疗的功效。这间淋浴房非常与众不同，将永远铭刻在我们对新婚之夜的记忆中。”
The same report referred to a hotel in Miami where “the shower head protrudes from the bottom of a hanging crystal chandelier” and one in Mexico City where the showers have “hammocks that guests can lounge in”.
这篇报道也提到迈阿密一家酒店，这家酒店的“花洒从水晶吊灯的底座向外伸出”，还提到了墨西哥城的一家酒店，该酒店的浴室里有“可供客人们休息的吊床”。
I would settle for a set of instructions on how the shower works, or better, count on it working in a similar way to other showers, wherever I am.
如果给浴室配一套使用说明就好了，或者不管在哪，浴室的使用方法最好都差不离。

This is not one of the world’s most urgent problems, but it does raise a question. Most products tend towards greater uniformity so that we are not flummoxed when we move from one model to another. Cars have their accelerator pedals on the right and the brake pedals to their left, not switched around randomly to create more excitement.
这并不是当今世界最紧要的问题之一，但它确实引发了一个疑问。大多数产品都趋向于越来越统一，这样即便换一个类型我们也不会不知所措。汽车的油门在左边，刹车在右边，它们的位置并不会为了让用户感到更刺激而随意切换。
When we get into a lift, whether in Brisbane or Bogotá, we know that we have to press a button, not stamp a certain number of times to indicate our floor number, or headbutt the mirror. Why then have hotel showers diverged rather than coalesced around a common standard?
不管在布里斯班还是波哥大，当我们走进电梯，我们知道得按一个按钮，而不是要到哪层就跺几下脚，或用头撞镜子。为什么酒店的浴室就非得花样百出而不是大体依照一个共同的标准？
Alex Kravetz, hotel designer to establishments from London’s Dorchester to the Baku Sheraton, told me that the huge variety of shower controls resulted in part from divergent plumbing standards at different times and in different countries.
亚历克斯?克拉韦茨(Alex Kravetz)是一名酒店设计师，设计了伦敦多切斯特(Dorchester Hotel)、巴库喜来登(Sheraton)等酒店，克拉韦茨告诉我，浴室控制装置的多种多样部分是因为在不同时期不同国家管道的标准也不尽相同。
Added to that is hotels’ desire to innovate. Hotels have always been pioneers. “Remember the first en-suite bathrooms at the end of the 19th century,” he says. Devising increasingly dazzling showers is no different.
除此之外就是酒店的创新欲望。酒店向来是创新的先行者。“回想一下19世纪末第一间套房内卫生间。”他说。同理，淋浴装置设计得也越发眼花缭乱。
Bathroom designers understand the complexity problem. “We as designers are constantly challenged to keep it simple,” he says, but hotels’ enthusiasm for novel devices (think of all those shower heads) complicates everything again.
卫生间的设计师们理解这种复杂。他说，“为了让设计简洁，作为设计者的我们不断受到挑战”，但是酒店对新奇设备的狂热（想想那些花洒）让一切重新变得复杂起来。
Relief is coming, Mr Kravetz insists. “Voice-controlled devices, from televisions to showers, will be preprogrammed for your arrival,” he says. “The confusing controls will be gone forever.”
一切就快好了，克拉韦茨坚称。“从电视到淋浴的一系列声控设备将会在宾客们下榻酒店前预先设定好。”他说，“那些令人费解的控制装置将会一去不复返。”
I hope he is right, and I am trying to picture the result. We will presumably, as with Google Translate, enter our desired language on booking, whether English, Hungarian or Urdu. Then, I imagine, we will tell the shower what to do.
但愿他是对的，我试着想像那个画面。我们可能会，就像使用谷歌翻译(Google Translate)一样，输入我们想要使用的语言，英语、匈牙利语或是乌尔都语。然后，我想，我们将告诉浴室做什么。
“Turn the shower on. Not the thigh-level one, the overhead one. Good. Hotter, hotter, hotter. Enough! Are you trying to kill me?”
“打开淋浴。不是对着大腿的这个，是头顶上那个。好。热点，热点，再热点。够了！你想烫死我？”
I can’t wait.
我已经迫不及待了。