How the wasser flows (and other travel notes)
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Drink up: The clever Vienna method for filling up your water bottle.
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Usually the end of summer brings an end to our family's travels, but this year that's when it started.
All the traveling this month has brought more information than I've been able to process. Sifting through random observations, I find that Pittsburgh is my point of departure in more ways than one.
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I got to join my husband for the middle week of the Pittsburgh Symphony's three-week European tour, and I'm still thrilled by that truly good fortune.
I picked that week because I'd never been to Austria before. It was a great choice. I expected the delights of musical history -- Mozart's house, Beethoven's favorite cafe, statues of composers everywhere -- but my imagination was more fired up by watching how people live now.
I laughed the first time I spotted the gleaming metal kiosks around Vienna topped by the words, "Trink Wasser!" "Drink water!" As if the idea had never occurred to anyone before. [Image here from a tourist website.]
Except it hasn't -- not like this. The 9-foot-tall water fountains stood everywhere from palace courtyards to busy intersections. People lined up, many looking quite delighted.
Americans may have the rest of the world beat at providing drinking water inside public spaces -- from government buildings to department stores -- but having these fountains outdoors around town would be a huge boon.
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A few days later I spotted a very colorful public fountain in Lucerne, Switzerland, that appeared to be at least a couple centuries old. So someone has thought of this before ...
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Making it easy to refill water bottles seems to be part of enthusiastic recycling campaigns. I'm not sure I saw a single outdoor trash receptacle in Austria that did not also have a chute for plastics and glass.
Back in the U.S., on the Indiana Turnpike, the gleaming, identical rest stops stocked hundreds of bottled drinks, none cheaper than $1.99. But the first thing encountered inside the front door was a drinking fountain with a faucet for easy refills.
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Anyone who complains about the condition of the Pennsylvania Turnpike hasn't driven on the Ohio Turnpike lately -- specifically, the section between Toledo and Cleveland. Dear Buckeyes, you pay for this?
Maybe not. Maybe you avoid it and let us unwitting out-of-staters subsidize the god-awful mess.
First Published September 26, 2011 12:00 am
