Hofbräuhaus - the famous tavern in Munich

This is the world's most celebrated beer hall, and has a very interesting history and yet again stories surrounding it.

During the early periods after the house opened, men (women were not allowed in) used to drink inside the house and had to go out to relieve themselves, a natural after effect of consuming large quantities of the golden liquid. One can still see a narrow gutter running outside the house which was perhaps being used. There were however a few problems with this solution of urinating outside, you could lose your seat inside the house and may as well your beer. To counter this problem they engineered a better solution, a gutter inside the house running right beneath the tables. All one had to do was to relieve oneself freely as and when pressure was felt, wearing the lederhosen was ideal (or perhaps invented) just for this reason. 

This solution however had a bigger disadvantage- one of splash-back which means all your mates and other people sitting around you would be soon feeling wet around their legs, which presumably was not ideal. Someone invented an idea to circumvent the splash-back problem- a stick that you use to wave around under the table just before letting yourself go so that your mates have enough warning to lift their legs up when they feel the knock of the stick on their sheens. Not the best German engineering, and it was not before someone, an old man a regular himself found another idea which could solve both the problems of splash back and getting hit on your legs the whole day. It was a novel idea indeed which he announced excitedly one day out of the blue by standing on one of the tables. The idea was that of a twirling stick that you could use to pee which would help the liquid down its way to the gutter in a more controlled manner avoiding any splash back whatsoever. 

There is another tradition which perhaps started here more out of necessity. It is that of the last bell also known as the wash. The first bell meant more as a soft warning to get your final drinks and prep to leave. The second bell was a warning because that meant you had only a minute to leave before they flood the floor to wash down all the waste out of gutters. It was meant to cleanse the place before it started all again the next day.