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
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
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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!