Non-travel related questions about Paris and Rome
 

I keep remembering things we wondered about in Paris and Rome and thought maybe somebody on here might have some ideas.

The water in Rome - How can those drinking fountains just be ON all the time? Where is it coming from? Where does it go? How come it doesn't have to go through purification? Or, does it?

We saw so many police in Rome (all different kinds, too) but virutally NONE in Paris. What's up with that? Not even one security guard on the subway. How can that be? Surely, they can't all be plainclothes.

Why do both Rome and Paris have such superior produce to ours here? It was beautiful!

I know the police one. Boys in Italy have to do some mandatory military service after high school. You can choose to do it as a police officer. Hence the high numbers of them with nothing to do. Did you notice they were all young boys that smoked a lot?

As for the fountains, I really hope someone has an answer! My husband always turns the water off on me while I'm brushing my teeth to conserve water and I keep telling him those fountains in Rome are still running. I even tried to do an internet search once to no avail!

kelliebellie:
That's funny about them being young - becaue yes they were! In fact, we saw the funniest thing in Campo de Fiori. Every night lots of cops would set up there (probably because so many kids congregate there). I noticed one young guy sitting in his police truck with a plastic cup of beer on the dashboard (!). He took a sandwich out of a bag, folded the bag flat and stuck it between the cup and the window so you couldn't see the beer. Meanwhile, yukking it up with his buddies! They all thought it was funny!

They were probably hanging out at the place with the young people because that is where all their friends were!

That is funny about the beer. We had a great tour guide and his son was doing his mandatory police service at the time so he told us all about it.

Aqueducts supply Rome's water from the mountains. Rome's water is the subject of H.V. Morton's excellent book "The Waters of Rome" 1966. In it, he states:

"In spite of pressurized supply and modern methods, the hydraulic engineers are controlling, as their predecessors did, continuous streams of water that flow in and out of Rome without previous storage in reservoirs, and, again as in ancient times, the water is not mixed, owing tothe different characteristics and qualities carried by the various aqueducts. No other great city is served in a similar way; and it is ony now, with the enormous growth of Rome's population, that the ACEA (water agency) is contemplating a break with ancient practice by the building of storage reservoirs."

Since Morton wrote that passage, Rome has built storage reservoirs, but the water in them is set aside for emergency use and for non-drinking purposes.

It's funny, because a Chilean friend of mine who was visiting Paris two weeks ago was shocked by the amount of police he saw on the streets. Different perspective I guess.

As for security guards on the metro, there are some, normally riding in the cars, with uniforms and, sometimes, dogs. But it's true it's been a while since I haven't seen any.

So I guess unless they build an aquaduct to Detroit, my husband is going to keep turning off my water when I brush my teeth.

Where does the water go after it comes out of the faucet? Do they reclaim it or just let it seep into the ground?