When I was living in Germany no one drank the water. We were briefed when we entered the country to not drink the water too. In fact, when I first arrived, taking showers gave me a rash everywhere because the water was so hard. It took a few weeks to get used to it. All of my German friends never drank water either. Water is so hard in Germany that it can create problems with dialysis machines if a good reverse osmosis system is not used:

http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/7/1925

Germany also uses alot of surface water in their taps which is surprising and scary. You've heard of the Messel lake deposits? Who knows what else in the water... :o)



>>Last Saturday I was going to an all-day choir practice and it really bugged me that there weren't any empty water bottles around (the kids lose them all) for me to fill up from the tap (faucet) and take with me - and I had to buy one from the shop. I don't know about Germany but here the tap water is as good or better generally. Some waters don't taste so good to some people though, esp. those from chalky and limestone alkaline sources - "hard" water. But I don't mind them and one can get used to a local water.
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>Actually one of the first things I heard about Germany, as a kid, was a story brought by the Gastarbeiter in the neighborhood that the tap water is so bad there nobody drinks it - they drink beer or gassed drinks.
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>Years later I visited and... well, the water depends, not too bad in most of the places, but didn't taste great either.
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>As for the bottled water, I've read recently that someone managed to sell sand to the Saudis.