Wiener Wasser

Throughout areas of heavy pedestrian -- especially tourist -- traffic, one can find aluminum cylinders about three feet in diameter with the Viennese state seal and the words "Wiener Wasser" printed on the sides. These are public drinking fountains, which otherwise appear to be very uncommon in Austria. My professor tells me that these were recently installed because tourists were fainting in the street from heat exhaustion a little too regularly. The Viennese summer heat is generally considered to be quite oppressive, particularly when coupled with the region's high humidity, so I consider myself lucky that I was able to experience what my Viennese penpal called a summer of "most peculiar weather."

Something apart from the mildly humorous company name "Wiener Wasser" stands out about the water here: it is of outstanding quality. There was even a sign above the sink at a hotel I stayed at that read -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- "This water is from the mountains; it beats the tap water you're used to by a mile. If you drink the water, you might not want to ever leave Vienna because of how badass our water is." As it would turn out, Vienna has a long-standing history of high-quality spring water going all the way back to the city's Roman precursor, Vindobona. Around 1553, the city's first documented pipeline was constructed. This pipeline originally served the imperial palace, but eventually also served a communal well in Margaretenplatz. Today Vienna's water supply is based from two main source lines which can be read about here.

The people of Davis, although blessed with a wonderful public transportation system, are cursed with terrible tap water by state standards. The exception to this is if you live on the UC Davis campus, which draws it's water from a deeper aquifer than the city does. Drinking Vienna's water reminded me of Tap'dNY a bottled water company that got it's start by bottling water straight from the tap from the founder's New York City Apartment. I could certainly imagine something similar happening in Vienna.

The picture below is of the water fountain at Heldenplatz, directly in front of the Hofburg. The lighting in my original picture wasn't that great, so I decided to take a picture from the internet.