Mildly Infuriating

I've heard that was rooted in the aftermath of WWII, infrastructure was destroyed and acquiring clean drinking water was difficult, so people started having a large reservation against tap water, sticking to bottled water, and it just stuck. Word-of-mouth history though, so grain of salt and all.

If you sit at a table in Australia they will bring you water and glasses when they come to give you menus (at a mid-expense cafe/restuarant).

At a low expense resturant/cafe/pub the water will be available in ready filled re-usable bottles on a table/fridge with stacks of glasses and you grab bottles and glasses for your table as needed.

In higher end resturants the waiter will seat you then ask if you would like any water and offer "tap, sparkling or still". "Tap" in this case will be chilled and served in a nice caraf or jug, poured by the waiter. And the sparkling or still options are 'brand name' bottled water which you pay for.

Water is legally required to be served upon request in any food/drink serving establishment and you will be served immediately and without judgement just as if you were buying any other drink.

I've got an RO filter for my drinking water at home. I haven't tried a bottled water that I like as much as my RO tap water. I suspect that even if I filled a plastic water bottle with that water and let it sit for the expected duration a bought one would sit for, it would also not be as good. I don't think plastic is as inert of a material as we like to pretend it is, or that BPA is the only bad plastic chemical to avoid.

A lot of the mineral water you buy is tap water. It's the same water the people in the area where the water is bottled drink. It even says so on the bottle sometimes.

Tap water is good here in the Alps.

If your in the mountains, the tap water is better than most bottled water.

The water was still.

assuming we're not talking about sparkling water, which some people call mineral water: Is it really that common outside of america for tap water to not taste fine?
I've never had bottled water where the taste was in any way remarkable, except from some brands that just taste like stale water where the plastic bottle leeched into it..

It depends on the tourist place. Europe is very stingy with water, but other tourist parts of the world aren't.

That's also the case in a lot of north american cities. If you're pumping your own well out in the country, then it's "free" (plus costs of running the pump and any well maintenance you need, also depending on availability in your water table), but if you're in a town or city you have a matered water line that gets charged to cover both the clean water supply and waste management (at least that's how it works in the Canadian town I live in, maybe other locations meter the waste side, too).

My water bill gets lumped with my power bill but they are itemized seperately with usage graphs for each of them.

If someone needed water, I'd give it to them without even thinking about the cost because my whole month of water use is only like $50 (and the metered bit is only $20 of that, though that does imply the lighter users are subsidizing the heavier ones, but that's a seperate issue).

It's literally less than a cent (euro or dollar) for a whole bottle of tap water.

Out of curiosity I checked the price I pay for tap water in Portugal and 1 m³ (1000 l) costs around €0.5, so a 2l bottle of tap water contains all of 0.01 euro cents worth of it.

If you haven't been to Italy, there are quite a few cultural differences to be aware of. One of them is generally you don't make demands, dinner is an experience that you are there to have and they want to give you their experience. So it's at least worth calling out that it could be part of the experience they want you to have.