Culture on the Rocks.

Culture is pretty amazing. You can take the simplest of things and find huge variances across different cultures.

Take for instance, water. Here in the U.S. we dress our water up like crazy. There's ice to make it oh-so-cool. There's a lemon - sometimes for garnish, sometimes for a subtle citrus shock in an otherwise tasteless medium. And there's the clear glass we drink it from. Usually medium in size and wet with condensation.

But when you step outside the borders of The United States, it all changes. Hardly anyone serves water with ice. I guess it's catching on now as the entire world becomes The Wild West. Even so, you'll still have a hard time finding Americanized Water in other countries.

I went to Spain a few years ago. We stayed in the Basque parts of Northern Spain in a little town called San Sebastian. (It had some of the best steaks, chocolates, and sunsets EVER. And a Basque Party street riot to boot!)







We went to a tiny restaurant during our time there and dug into some tasty tappas. They served us water with our meal. Tasteless, iceless, lemonless water. So I asked, in the best mexi-spanish I could muster, "Can I please have some lemon for my water?" Something like "Limon para mi agua, por favor?"

And with a few swift movements, the sharp waiter returned from the depths of the kitchen with a tall glass of lemonade. Shit.

So I quickly learned the word for "slices" ("rebinadas") and from there on out asked for "rebinadas de limon." It worked. Sometimes.

The reason all this comes up is because my Boy's parents are in town from Bombay, India. They hate ice water with a passion. And our glasses? Waaaaayyyy too big. They prefer smaller, metal glasses to our clear, giant glasses. And lemons? Are you kidding me?

We just spent the last week traveling across the southern states of the US (more on that later), Indian parents in-tow, and you would not believe the difficulty of ordering plain, iceless, lemonless, warm tap water in a Cracker Barrel. Try it. And don't be surprised when you get the weird look. You're in America, after all. The most "cultureless" place on earth. But they can't take away our ice, damn it! Not without a weird look, anyway.