>>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:
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>>http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/7/1925
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>>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)
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>Germany is big enough to have diverse geography. I've been around Düsseldorf and Stuttgart mostly - the water there wasn't too bad, just didn't taste great. Coffee did :).
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>I've seen one faucet with a huge lump of white sediment grown around it... in a water quality testing laboratory in Hungary. Now that was a water which tasted great, but if you didn't wipe the glass immediately after washing it, the water drops would leave white outlines.

We have hard water here on the chalk south coast. Even the rain (mixed in with salt sea air) leaves white marks on you windscreen. When I go back up north visiting, when washing I always end up with too much lather as I'm used to vigorously agitating the soap down south. :-)