Curiosity: Not always a good quality

Picture this: Beautiful piazza in Florence, Italy.  People everywhere speaking all sorts of languages.  Stars shine down to the open air restaurants that line the piazza.  Somewhere nearby there is a man playing New York New York (weird, I know) on an accordion.  The smell of fresh prosciutto, basil, and tomatoes fill the air.  Are you there?  I was.

Now, after I ate every last bite of a calzone that was bigger than any calzone I'd ever seen in the states, I needed to pee.  So, I find my way into the tiny women's restroom only to find a type of toilet I'd never seen before.  Now, side note.  This is a common occurrence in Italy, or Europe for that matter.  There are toilets of all kinds, normal ones, lidless ones, a hole in the ground (yes, seriously, a hole in the ground), and some crazy self-sanitizing lid type toilet.  This was my first encounter with the latter design.  I see the lid stuck at a 50 degree angle and my curiosity is sparked.  What is this?  How does this work?  The instructions on how to use this amazing contraption are on the wall in front of me, but I don't read Italian. 

So, I go by what the pictures are doing.  I push the lid down. Step one.  Only, I didn't realized that the lid was going to pop right back up.  So, I let go after I had bent over the torture device to get a better look.  The lid pops up so fast that I didn't have time to react, I was lucky I didn't get hit in the face.  Then, out of nowhere, blue smelly liquid comes shooting out of the back of the toilet coating the lid.....and my face.  I, of course, scream.  Then I start laughing and I cannot stop.  I'm sure that whoever was in the tiny bathroom with me was so confused about what was so funny in the stall next door.  I walked back to my table, where the sweet smells of delicious Italian food had been overtaken by the smell of sanitizer for some reason, and relay the story to my mom.  She laughed too.  The moral of the story, whenever you investigate how a toilet works, DO NOT bend down to...wait, who am I kidding.  Don't investigate toilets in foreign countries.