People of London and Paris: Where are your drinking fountains? I just got back from visiting those two cities, and I saw a combined total of one drinking fountain. No drinking fountains in museums, airports, parks, metro stations, department stores. In America, you’ll find drinking fountains in all of those places, and they’ll be as common as restrooms. Yes, someone has to clean the fountains, but the convenience to visitors is surely worth it. And no, I don’t want to pay for overpriced bottles of mineral water every time I’m thirsty.
Forget that E.U. constitution business for the moment, and get on the drinking fountain problem!
Don’t pay for overpriced mineral water - drink some before you leave the house. And drink tap water with meals. And drink tea in between
No statistics, but I’m fairly confident to say that America is the exception here. As Shalmanese points out, Mediterranean cities often have fountains in the streets etc. But you won’t find them all over the place as you describe. And I don’t think any more northerly European cities are different from London and Paris.
It’s (AFAIK) because the have bottled water. One of the reasons bottled water became popular is because (from what I’ve heard) when it was first marketed, municipal water suppleis were not that great. So why put in a fountain if the water might make you sick? The water now is perfectly fine, but bottled awter is so ingrainedi n the culture that there’s no reason to stop.
Then again, I could be completly wrong, but since this is MPSIMS, not GQ, I cn go ahead with my possible BS answer, .
Nope, bottled water’s common presence is a recent development in many places. And certainly in Britain - much more recent than universal drinkable water supplies.
There was always drinking fountains in London Museums when I was alst there (5 years ago) but drinking fountains were never popular, everyone thinks of them as being a little unhygenic. I guess they have dissappeared due to lack of use.
In America, you’ll find drinking fountains in all of those places, and they’ll be as common as restrooms.
Funny you should put it that way. 'Cause I would guess what would shock a visitor to America from Paris or London would be the lack of public restrooms (that is, truely public restrooms where you’re not expected to be a patron of a given establishment). Pretty cruel really, particualrly with all those water fountains everywhere.
Been awhile since I’ve been there, but them damn Yurpeans are generally stingy with the liquids. What is that? You want water with a meal? It comes in bottles. No water fountains, so you buy bottles when you’re out on the town. Of course, my experience at least was that the tap water, while obviously safe in Western Europe, didn’t taste all that great. Perhaps they just don’t like to drink their groundwater. But it sure is weird, coming from the Land of Free Refills and going to a place where each Coke at your meal costs money, and the water ain’t free neither.
Maybe it’s related to the lack of public restrooms. I guess the goal is to prevent folks from needing 'em.
You are not the first to notice, and the same problem holds true in Germany. One thing I noticed was that newer buildings (at least in Germany and Switzerland) are starting to have drinking fountains now.
I once worked as a waiter in Berlin in a touristy section of town, and when I knew I had a table with Americans, without asking I would bring a pitcher full of ice water from the tap, and some glasses. I had one woman almost break out in tears for joy and I always got a nice tip for doing it!
One word for that: sucker. Sorry, but if you don’t learn to ask for tap water in the local language, expect to pay a premium.
I’ll agree that some regions’ waters taste awful, with London being notorious. But often the ‘bad-tasting’ water is from underground sources - although we have a lot of rain, we don’t have the room for reservoirs. Nor would building a reservoir to replace a functioning underground source purely on the grounds of taste be an easy thing to justify.
In the UK, if you’re thirsty, just tip your head back and open your mouth; it’s always raining.
Anyway, why are you thirsty? It’s not as if the sun is beating down on you while you’re here.
"And no, I don’t want to pay for overpriced bottles of mineral water" Of course you don’t, but we still want to charge you for them; installing municipal drinking fountains is therefore bad for business and we can’t have that
Anyway, it’s not as if you can protest this pro-business stance by tactical voting - you’re a visitor. Bwahahaha!
Mangetout has it, at least for the UK. It’s never generally hot enough for people to be wandering around gasping in the hours between cups of tea. Besides all of us have been scarred by the nasty gobful state of drinking fountains at school, and that how if you ever actually went up to one to get a drink, you’d be liable to get a kick in the arse for being such a saddo.
Gob = mouth although as a verb it can mean spit and therefore it can also mean saliva - therefore I would take gobful to mean rendered unusable by saliva.
Saddo = ‘sad’ person - idiot, dweeb, what-have-you
At one time, of course, the UK was replete with drinking fountains. Victorian philanthropists would install them in market squares for the refreshment of the working poor, and to discourage them from falling into the evils of hard drink. They would be erected by public subscription as war memorials or to commemorate famous men. Town councils would place them in municipal parks, in town squares, and on seaside promenades as a public amenity. In my childhood in the sixties and early seventies, many were still there and in working order.
And then came the late seventies, and the eighties; recession, unemployment. Disaffected youth with spray cans and bovver boots, councils with more to do with their money than maintain public drinking fountains. Most were lost – damaged beyond repair or removed.
Now, even though regeneration is all around us, it seems that drinking fountains are just one of those things that no-one thinks to include. Perhaps we should start a campaign? Or start a fund to have one built – I can see the inscription now: “This fountain was built by private subscription as a tribute to Cecil Adams – Fighting Thirst Since 1973.”
As a slight hi-jack, the same Victorian philanthropists installed a vast network of horse troughs to provide a source of drinking water for the thousands of horses that thronged the streets in those times. Some of these can still be seen , usually converted into flower containers.
