Skip to main content

A Liquid Luxury: Water (This I Will Miss 2)

It's the simple things we miss most when we move to a different country. For me, when we leave Austria this summer, it'll be the clean, refreshing taste of unfiltered tap water. To enjoy drinking water straight from the faucet in a city as large as Vienna - what a luxury!

Vienna's drinking water comes from springs located to the Southwest of town, in the mountains of Lower Austria and Styria. It travels around 140 miles, through two large aqueducts which were opened in 1873 and 1910, both under the reign of longtime Emperor Franz Josef I. The springs are part of a water reserve, and the water is so clean, it does not have to be treated.

There is, of course, no such thing in Los Angeles. It's a desert. What runs out of the tap is ground water or water from the Colorado River and the slopes of the Sierra. In Southern California my favorite drinking water comes in plastic bottles. It's a designer's concoction, manufactured by one of the food giants of this world, H20, filtered and spruced up with minerals. It tastes almost as good as the water in Vienna - no soapiness, no hint of chlorine. What's missing is the tap experience.

Picture: Karl Gruber/Wikimedia Commons; shows the older of two aqueducts which supply Vienna with drinking water and the town Mödling

Comments

baresytapas.es said…
I have visited this blog by accident, but I found it quite interesting. You're doing a good job (and most importantly it's free). A greeting.

http://www.baresytapas.es
How kind of you. Thank you for your comment.
Unknown said…
Ah, that must be so wonderful to have tasty water coming right from the tap! I don't doubt you will miss it!
You might think about purchasing a water filter once you are back in LA. Plastic bottled water is expensive, both on the pocketbook and on the environment. And even though it tastes pretty good, more and more studies are showing that many brands actually do contain contaminants. There are lots of good and fairly inexpensive filters out there that attach to your kitchen faucet. Then you can fill your metal bottles to go and drink completely with a clear conscience!
Just had to make that suggestion!
Thanks for your comment, Sarah, and no worries. I probably should have added that my favorite L.A. water, the one in the plastic bottles, is a luxury too - ecologically and economically. It is hideously expensive. Filtered tap water is definitely the way to go.

Popular posts from this blog

Ban on Plastic Bags Bugs L.A. County

Paper or plastic? Bag from South Africa. My friend recently came back from a trip to South Africa and brought me a reusable grocery bag. It is from Woolworths, one of the largest retail chains in South Africa; it is made by a community project and serves as a symbol of the company's commitment to sustainability and social development. I will think of this whenever I use my new bag. Thank you, dear friend! The Woolworths bag is not my first reusable bag. I carry two baggies which fold up into packs smaller than a deck of cards in my purse and a bunch of bigger ones in the trunk of my car. To me this feels like an easy way of making a difference environmentally. Others seem to have a harder time. When the county of Los Angeles recently introduced a ban on plastic bags for its unincorporated areas the new ordinance was met with resistance. Shops bemoan that paper is more expensive than plastic. They charge customers ten cents for every paper bag. Shoppers complain about the t

Passionate Nerd, Dull Date: Encounter With a Stamp Collector

"Their album - it's an excuse." Stamps from Austria Last week I received a packet from Austria. It came with two old fashioned looking petit point stamps. I do not collect stamps and would not recognize a Blue Mauritius if you sent me one but the stamps from Austria caught my interest. As my fingers were running over the stitching I couldn't help but wonder: does anyone still do petit point? Are young people here in L.A. or even back in Europe still acquiring the craft? I learned to stitch, sew, and knit in elementary school in Austria but handiwork was not my forte. On the contrary. Crafts used to be the one subject I loathed - though I believe that my mother still keeps the red and blue pot holder I crocheted in second grade. (It was supposed to be a square but ended up an irregular trapeze.) The other thing I was wondering about when the packet arrived is whether young people still collect stamps. When I was in high school I knew a guy my age with a collec

Casual Spirit, Egalitarian Touch: the American Potluck

"Meal at which all people present share dishes they brought"? Po tluck. Today being Labor Day some families in our neighborhood decided to get together for a potluck: grilled chicken and salmon, home made potato salad; a salad of spinach, blue cheese, and pears; a fruit platter, brownies... I like potlucks, their casual spirit, the egalitarian touch. Very American. Everybody pitches in, no one has to feel bad because one family or even one person had to do all the work. In Austria potlucks are not really common; there is not even a German word for the concept. It could be   Kesselglueck -  literal yet somewhat charming - but that term doesn't exist. On the web I found "Potluck: großes Abendessen, bei dem sich alle Anwesenden selbst mitgebrachte Speisen teilen" (translation from  Reverso ). This describes the idea accurately but it is a bit long. For those of you who don't speak German, here's a re-translation, phrased as an invitation: "P