‘Why did you leave us a two-star review?’ It was the bar I’d visited the previous night in Tallinn, Estonia.
They can reply? I thought this was a one-way street for me to fight back and vent, but now my microphone-dropping moment to reverse the tide had lost its teeth.
I rolled my eyes. Call me petty, but I hate penny-pinching businesses.
I also hate fighting with internet strangers, especially while I’m on holiday. So, despite how much they deserved it, I deleted my review.
I rarely visit bars in London, so I thought I’d have fun exploring Tallinn’s nightlife.
After buying two drinks at the establishment in question, a Devil’s Margarita and a Sex On The Beach, I thought I’d get a third before the music and dancing really popped off. Maybe a Skinny Bitch or a Sloppy Kiss – it was nearly midnight after all. Before that though, I needed some water.
‘Still or sparkling?’
‘Just tap water is good. Thank you.’
The bartender turned around, grabbed a plastic cup, and spun back to face me.
‘You can go downstairs and get water from there.’
Downstairs? I spied the faucet behind him, puzzled.
‘What? Where do I have to go?’
‘Downstairs. On the left.’
Now dear reader, it just clicked for me what was waiting for me downstairs and on the left. It was where I had just been. It was the toilet.
‘You want me to drink from the toilet?’
‘Yes, you can get water from there?’
‘That’s disgusting. Can’t you just give me some water from that tap?’ I gestured to the sink that was an arm’s length away.
‘No’.
The stench from the toilet was still burning my nose, so my choice was to return to the place where breathing is for the brave and deal with who knows what nastiness fondling drunks had put on the taps, or cough up another €5 on top of the €20 I’d already spent.
The situation was made stupider by the bouncer who had objected to the bottle of water in my bag.
‘You can smell it if you like. It’s not alcohol’.
He shook his head and tapped the sign behind him.
‘You can check your bag in for €3.’
I didn’t fancy paying a water tax to enter a bar I’d never visited before. What if it was crawling with perverts, Jack Daniel’s whiskey, and was truly a front for organised crime with a hot and heavy dungeon in the back?
My first night in Taiwan flashed into view. Fool me once.
‘Can I just throw the water out?’
The bouncer rolled out his bottom lip and shrugged.
I found a spot a few paces back from the entrance and started emptying my bottle between the cobblestones.
The water pooled and weaved; I wondered if the bouncer also thought the policy was shortsighted. How many other handsome punters renounced their water only to drink too much alcohol without any hydrating buffers, have it rush to their heads, and then become hazards he had to “deal with”?
Perhaps that’s how he got his bloody lip. It did seem only a few days old.
Now looking at the bartender and the plastic cup in front of me, I decided I didn’t need their water or their Skinny Bitch. I left.
Maybe I was being rash, but I was irritated by what had happened earlier that night during dinner, especially because Estonia never used to be like this.
‘It’s like in the UK. All venues will give you tap water if you ask’. That’s what my Estonian buddy had told me when I first visited just over a decade ago.
I felt vindicated knowing cultural norms were on my side and – I realised while ranting to my friend – so were the human rights declarations.
The manager at my favourite restaurant seemed to have forgotten that.
‘Would you like something to drink?’
Before the bar, I went out for dinner and ended up sat at the same table I was given the last time I visited.
‘I’m still deciding from the menu. While I figure it out, could I just get some tap water?’
The waitress’s face turned grave, like I’d ask her to enter a blood covenant with me that could only be broken by the sacrifice of her firstborn.
‘I’m sorry. We don’t do tap water anymore.’
‘But I had some last year when I visited’.
‘The manager told us we had to stop,’ she trembled. She then looked around, her face turning conspiratorial, and whispered.
‘I will try to get you a glass from the kitchen.’
She disappeared, leaving me worrying about her safety. When did tap water become something you needed to smuggle past the cooking staff and the secret police?
She returned with a glass and a look.
‘Don’t tell anyone.’
I thought about the vice grip Big Water and Big Bottle must be closing in on the country.
It’s ridiculous, and someone needs to push back before the country starts to look like Germany, where the people brag about the quality of their drinking water, but refuse to serve it to you in restaurants. Instead, you have to buy a bottle sourced from some unboastful spring.
Yeah, I can’t let them win. I’m going to undelete my review.
