If your parking brake freezes up when you apply it in the winter, it is because you don’t use it enough. If it won’t hold you on a steep hill it needs adjusting. My grandmothers 41 Studebaker Cimmander had Hill Holder. I don’t know when they first offered it.
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I use my foot to hit the flush handle. My shoes are already “soiled” from walking around anyway, so…
+1
Just in case there are no paper towels, I always carry a couple of Kleenex in my pocket in order to open the door. This was the recommendation of my M.D.
In mainland Europe that often make you pay what would be a dime or a quarter for us to use the toilet. It covers the cost of keeping it clean.
I recall using a public loo in Paris for the first time. When I paid the attendant the required fee, she handed me ONE sheet of toilet paper.
By contrast, I was never charged a fee to use toilet facilities in Italy, and they always seemed to be spotless. In one of the rest stops on the Autostrada del Sole, I recall an elderly woman mopping the floor adjacent to the urinals where men were standing in line. My friend was freaked-out by her presence, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.
The best part of the Autostrada in Italy is the exceptional quality of the food that is served in the restaurants at the rest stops. Each one is sponsored by a different food company that wants to showcase their products, and the result is that the cooked-to-order food is among the best that you will find in that nation. Some of them even take reservations!
VERY different from the “food” that is available at US rest stops…
Usually folks provide at least a foot or two, but if there were literally up against my bumper I’d probably set the parking brake , put the emergency flashers on, get out of the car, and open the hood. Then I’d signal I was having car trouble. Safest to not directly confront other drivers.
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I always found the public bathrooms in Europe to be very clean. At a restroom in a gas station in Germany there was a sign that asked the customer to help keep it clean. It was printed only in English.
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I suppose they were reasonably well kept but just didn’t take much notice. I did like the real doors on the stalls though. In Prague though in one place the urinal were just a long troff like in a ball stadium. If you looked outside behind the building, it just emptied on the ground. Might have been a Soviet leftover.
All German boomers learned English in grade school and some from the previous generation spoke English too. My FIL grew up in Northern Germany. We visited his family in 2003. Everyone our age and younger spoke English except my wife’s cousin’s husband. He learned it but forgot most of it after grade school because his job didn’t require English. My wife’s aunt spoke English very well but she used it at work.
I wonder if a time will come when everybody on the planet speaks the same language. Seems pretty inefficient & causes confusion & mistakea to have so many languages. If so, will be a long time coming; we all can’t even agree which side of the road to drive on … lol …
Will the British ever learn to speak English?
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Ah, another teachable moment. I was taught when pulling up behind another vehicle, to stop while you can still see the other vehicle’s tires. Any closer than that and you may not be able to pull around it if it stalls… {Remember, this was the '60s…}
I’ve asked them and they will tell you they do speak English and you Yanks speak American… And I guess the old axiom is true, we are two cultures separated by a common language…
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I was following a huge bus outfitted for luxury travel one night in New England. I could see a bright orange glow in the undercarriage. When they pulled over I did too to offer help. Their emergency brake was on.
I never have. It’s the kind that sticks out, thus is obvious.
You’re welcome.
mebendazole.
I saw some Soviet leftovers when I was in the Czech Republic, namely the subways in Prague. Subways are rarely quiet, but those old monstrosities were incredibly loud. The same old Soviet subways were also used in Budapest, and they were just as loud.
My only recollection of a Czech restroom was at a rest stop on one of their “superhighways” (one of the remaining Nazi-era Autobahns). While the restroom was clean, the only way to dry your hands was by using the one cloth towel that was hanging there. As another traveled said, while drying his hands on his pants, “That will probably put more germs back on my hands than I just removed with soap and water”.
That Czech highway reststop was also a well-patronized beer garden. Since I wasn’t driving, I had a glass of that wonderful Pilsner Urquell.
My wife was a Brit, there were times I had to translate her words into American English.
During Desert Storm there were daily, televised, press briefings. Each day a very high military commander of the various allies gave the briefing. When a French General gave the briefing he was asked if there were any problems with language, he said, not with us but there might be between the British and Americans. That did get a good laugh.
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Heck I can drive 350ish miles east to the Black Mountains NC area and they almost speak a different language… lol…
The North and South talk different… So it ain’t only across the big pond, it can be a state or few away…
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When I was in college in the early 1970s we had a blues guitarist from Nelson County, Virginia. The accent there is Old English, still persisting from 200 years before. That’s probably changed now, but he was hard to understand.
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My sister in law is from Texas. Sometimes her husband has to translate for us. 
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Is it possible to put you foot sideways to step on the gas while still applying the brake? How about using a stick to push on the gas while your foot is still on the brake?
There is something to be said for the old cars that had the throttle operated by hand.
When I was doing mechanical auto inspections, I had to drive all kinds of weird things. I remember a case with a monster 12cyl bmw 750 with stick (European version), and it was literally impossible to start up the stealer’s driveway because it took L-O-O-O-NG time for the damn thing to pick up RPM so I used parking brake. Fortunately, that thing had a manual lever.
It was a striking difference between the Civic I drove at that time that had instant response… In case of some caddy with foot-operated brake, I have no suggestions other than getting rid of it.