4929 Miles to Wall Drug

When I was a kid, my family took quite a few how-many-miles-can-you-drive-in-how-little-time vacations. On one memorable trip, we started from our home in Urbana, Illinois, and headed west, out to the South Dakota Badlands and Mt. Rushmore. That was the vacation when I got to see not only the Mitchell Corn Palace ("The World's Only!"), but also "America's Favorite Roadside Attraction" (turn left at the Jackelope), Wall Drug.

Munich is 4929 miles from Wall Drug. Freiburg is a little closer at 4811. But the point is, everywhere in Germany is a long, long way from Wall Drug.

Founded in 1931, Wall Drug made its claim to fame by offering visitors free ice water. Germany is a long, long way from free ice water. (That Germans don't put ice in their beverages is beside the point. We're a long, long way from free water.)

To drink water in a restaurant, you must order water. In a restaurant, "Wasser" usually means "Mineralwasser," which usually means seltzer--or "Sprudel" here in the south (although if you order "Sprudel," the waitperson usually asks "Mineralwasser?"). To drink non-fizzy water, you must specify "stilles Wasser." Like Sprudel, restaurant-grade stilles Wasser is gathered by hand from a pure mountain spring hidden deep in the Black Forest or high in the Alps, then gently cleansed and carefully siphoned into a pretty glass bottle anywhere between 0,2L and 1L in size. Your waitperson opens your bottle of bubbly (or stilles) for you, then pours it into a wine glass marked with a 0,2L line near the rim.

Stilles Wasser does not come out of a tap in the kitchen. Oh dear. That would be "ganz normales Leitungswasser" (totally normal tap water). Ganz normales Leitungswasser actually tastes quite good in southern Germany: cool, clean, refreshing, and chock full of chalk tasty minerals. You could order "ganz normales Leitungswasser" in restaurants, but doing so would be crass, and your unimpressed waitperson would accidentally forget you ever asked for it, so Don't Do It.