Jak je to v zahraničí
AUSTRALIA
Ulrich Janecka – Melbourne
„I can confirm that in Australia it’s normal to receive tap water for free when you sit down in a café, restaurant or ask for it at a pub. In a restaurant or café it’s quite common that you will be given a jug of water without asking for it and be free to serve yourself as you please, without being expected to purchase another drink. The quality of water is also very good and difficult to distinguish any difference from bottled water which, in my opinion, is overpriced. The sooner this custom is adopted here, the better, especially since so many foreigners visit Prague every year.“
NEW ZEALAND
Andrew Barton – Dunedin
„It's quite normal to ask for tap water in New Zealand restaurants and it's always free. Usually a restaurant or bar will makes glass jugs of water with slices of lemon or lime available to all customers. Serving tap water in NZ restaurants is absolutely normal. Even Mike Egan, the National President of the Restaurant Association supported the Tap movement – http://www.restaurantnz.co.nz/Story?…. There have been some controversies with NZ drinking water in the past however, including fluoridisation in some regions (for making teeth healthy).“
USA
Victoria Hiles
„In American restaurants they sometimes ask you if you would like tap or bottled water. Although if you just ask for water and they bring it to the table it is usually from a dispenser. This is plumbed into the tap water but then filtered and cooled in the dispenser machine before being served. It is the same in the houses most people won't drink straight from the tap but from the water dispensed from their big fridges which again is chilled and filtered tap water. I think the quality of tap water depends on where you live such as in the mountains it is purer then in say Florida where is can sometimes be cloudy. In summary Americans will buy bottled water but the water they drink from the dispensers in restaurants and at home is filtered and cooled tap water.“
Spain
Albert Enrique Amores – Barcelona
„Until a recent change in the law restaurants had to, upon request, serve tap water in a jug to their clients. But it has never been frequent, people just order water and the waiters assume it is bottled water. If someone asks for tap waterin bars and pubs, waiters are going to serve it for free, just for politeness and for treating well the costumers. In clubs, however, they charge for the service. The habit of drinking tap water really depends on where you live. For example in Barcelona nearly everybody drinks tap water and I think the quality is good. However it tastes better if you have a softener.“
Turkey
Ekrem Alpaslan – Adana
„Drinking water is so popular in Turkey that there is a special word in the – “susadim”, meaning “I’m in need of water”. In larger, industrialized and more populated cities like Instanbul, problems with water quality have occurred due to industrial pollution. However Turkish water authorities constantly invest in building new treatment plants and updating their existing ones. In mountainous areas water sources are very good and people drink tap water commonly. Also numerous fountains, fed by old wells, are scattered throughout towns and villages and are very popular. In restaurants, waiters serve both. Many traditional drinks, like ayran and lemonade, are made of tap water. When customers ask for bottled water, it is not because of water quality, they just want to be more hygienic.“
Russia
Elena Efremova – Saint Petersbourg
„In Russia, we usually don't drink tap water unless we have very strong filters in our flats. Only if a filter works, we drink tap. As for the restaurants, they serve bottled water and I don't know anyone who ever asks a waiter for a glass of tap. It only can be a bad catering company that can serve tap while the customers don't know about it and think it is clean water. It happens because the cleaning system does not work properly here in Russia and we have old water-pipes.“
Hungary
Erno Muzamel – Budapest
„In Hungary a lot of people drink tap water at home. In offices there are "water machines“ which distribute either mineral water or cleaned tap water. In self service restaurants, at schools universities etc there is always tap water available, but not really in usual restaurants."
