I live with a german, it’s what they serve, don’t know why.
My wife calls it sprudel. I like “water with gas.”
From my experience living there, carbonated water was far, far more popular than still. If you bought bottled water, it would almost always be carbonated, and the still water you did find would often have an odd, slightly salty minerally taste (like sparkling mineral water gone flat). I developed quite the sparkling mineral water habit out there, but I haven’t found a sparkling water here I like quite as much.
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I can’t drink it. It bugs me, makes me feel queasy. My trip to Germany last year was painful, because I love plain regular water. The colder, the better.
In US restaurants, a glass of ICE water is free, they usually bring it to you without asking, and they refill your glass frequently. I took all that for granted before my trip.
First, I had to order water, and specify “no gas.” Not that big of a deal, because I am used to asking for “no lemon” here at home (why spoil a pure glass of water with a sour slice of fruit?). Since I was the only one drinking it, they would bring me a cute little 375ml bottle of Pellegrino, or Vittel. Joy. I could polish off a couple magnums of water, if they had them. I am sure those tiny little bottles cost a fortune at the restaurants we were eating at, so I politely rationed my drinking, and only drank two per meal.
My brother advised us not to drink the tap water at the hotel, like it was third-world Mexico or something. By the end of the trip, I just said fuck it, and binged on nasty German tap water all night. I could live without the ice cubes, but damn it, I wasn’t about to die of thirst in an industrialized nation.
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Lemme guess, Saarlander? Or Rheinland-Pfaltz?
There are places that don’t sell carbonated water? I get a liter or two a day when I’m at work and it costs less then a buck. The local Giants here in the DC area have their own brand and it’s cheaper then plain water. I’m off to get myself some now.
Here in the Northeast, you can get seltzer water at the grocery stores easily. Polar is 1.10/2liter bottle, and the store brand (Hannaford) is .99/2liter. We drink a lot of it at my house as well.
We also have the ISI, but the bottle size is so small, it’s really not worth it once you add up all the little CO2 cartridges, etc. I’d rather just buy it for .99/2liter, flavored or unflavored, and go that way.
I don’t really like soda, so if I want something fizzy, seltzer water or beer are pretty much my only two options. And drinking 2 liters of beer would make me slightly tipsy and is certainly more expensive.
Missed the edit window.
Sams Club here in the NE has Polar selters 12oz variety pack cans for 6.12/24 pack. So you can bring cans with you if you want, and it’s still cheaper than soda.
Just for the record, I also drink a lot of “water with gas” (love that phrase!) .
My favorite is to put a few drops of angustura bitters into the glass before pouring.
Because I love vintage things, I splurge on Stewart’s Soda , it comes in those nifty glass bottles.
Close-Hessen
Another funny thing, over there you can by different gas. So you can often get Sprudel brand X in extra carbonated, regular or less carbonated.
Here in Michigan, it seems the only mineral water available is in the mixers section of the supermarket, and then only in 1 liter bottles, only Canada Dry. There are smaller bottles of Perrier, and it’s roughly the same price as the Canada Dry. Yet there’re many, many bottles and cans of quinine water.
Hmmm… how to make that?
Got news for you: Europeans aren’t homogeneous at all.
In Baden Baden, my all-Spanish team (12 people, nobody ever drank “gassy water”) learned to ask for San Pellegrino because the restaurants would simply refuse to serve us flat water. The San Pelli was less gassy than the German waters.
I worked in Basel for a year; the office was about evenly divided between the “flat” and “carbonated” crowds.
Ok since I am utterly without anything constructive left to do at work here is an interesting page which rates mineral waters, lists there content and sorts by country.
C’mon up to the UP. We get cans of LaCroix and Mendota Springs brands of plain-ol fizzy water in just about all the grocery stores I frequent.
It’s extremely popular here and in Germany, but in my experience less so in the UK. In the Republic of Ireland every or most newsagents/restaurants/supermarkets/grocery stores will have bottled water of the carbonated and non-carbonated varieties.
Damn,
All I know is that when I lived in Saarland, I was told that the name Sprudel is pretty particular to that region. I’m pretty sure they don’t use it in Bavaria, Berlin, Hamburg, etc…
I used to drink Gerolsteiner. Anyway yeah, I don’t drink so much of it anymore. I should probably take it up again, as it’s better than coke.
I live in the mid-Atlantic region, too, and regularly buy Zazz, the Giant Foods generic seltzer. Dirt cheap, and it comes in bottles and cans.
When I feel fancier, I buy Pellegrino or Gerolsteiner. Few chain grocery stores don’t carry both.
In Raleigh, we have LaCroix, Vintage, Kroger and Lowes Food brand seltzers for sale.(I drink 3-4 cans of the Kroger a day). You can also get an assortment of sparkling mineral waters.
Well, it’s weird. Some of my most thoughtful and heartfelt posts have drawn one or two replies and a few recent ones have drawn zero. I should have whined about buying seltzer before, but had no idea it would go over so well.
The latest news:
The local liquor store has given up and removed all Canada Dry products from the store.
The local rep for Pepsico insists that “tonic water” and “seltzer” are the same thing.
Mrs. Napier has brought home a few Zazz seltzer bottles from the Giant, and they are fine, but it’s not a practical way of purchasing in the quantities we want. She goes shopping about every 3 weeks. We actually consume more weight in seltzer, I am pretty sure, than in all other grocery store products combined - and that includes nonfood items like cleaning supplies.
I made inquiries and discovered that the next distribution region to the south, the border of which is actually only a couple miles away, is served by a nasty and unhelpful sales rep for many mixer products. I guess this is just one more thing about the booze biz that comes as a surprise to me.
But, the human spirit always keeps trying, doesn’t it? The local liquor store got in three cases of Vintage seltzer to try, and only one bottle was flat (and it was only partly full, too). I think I’d tolerate a failure rate of maybe 20% or so, maybe even 30%, because the product is cheaper than what I’ve been buying. So, who knows…
I think the answer to your question lies somewhere in the dichotomy of wholesale vs. retail. You’re obviously in an area which has traditionally not consumed fizzywater, and where the beverage industry has streamlined its distribution channels to the extent that procuring fizzywater is prohibitively difficult, not only for individuals but for small businesses like your local likka sto. It’s a law of the market: if lots of people want something, everyone can get it, but if only a few want it, nobody can get it.
Certainly not common here (France). The best I can tell is that I know carbonated water exists and can even name a brand because there used to be adds for it.