Germans don't seem to mind being ripped off

Most of the time, I gloat about how much higher my standard of living is in Germany and about how much cheaper things are here.

My flat is twice as big and twenty times nicer than the one I had in London, at half the price.

But all this smugness evaporates as soon as I begin my journey home.

I have this slightly OCD fear of being de-hydrated on the plane, so I have to fly with a bottle, but to do so at Cologne-Bonn airport requires me to swallow my Yorkshire penny-pinching pride and be totally ripped off.

The last time I flew, I went around every shop to figure out what's the best deal. Incidentally, staff at the restaurants were generally quite embarassed about the high prices and were fairly encouraging about me making a complaint.

"German customers don't like it either," one cashier told me. "But they just get grumpy and do nothing about it."

For anyone who's interested in getting a bargain, here's the result of my research. To make it more useful I've written in brackets the cost for the average mouthful, which is apparently 30 ml.

Sion
1 litre Volvic: EUR 4.25 (13 cents)

Leysieffer
1 litre Volvic: EUR 4.95 (15 cents)

CAFETIERO
0.5 litre Gruene Quelle: EUR 2.90 (17 cents)
0.5 litre Evian: EUR 3.20 (19 cents)
0.5 litre Bonaqa: EUR 3.40 (20 cents)

Travel Bar near gate B50
0.33 litre Bonaqa: EUR 3.20 (29 cents)
1 litre Volvic: 4.25 (13 cents)

Vending machines and on Germanwings flight
0.5 litre Bonaqua: EUR 3.00 (18 cents)

So if you want to get your money's worth on a per mouthful basis, you have to spend over four euros for a bottle, which to my mind is excessive.

I wondered if I was slightly blowing things out of proportion, but the WH Smith's at London Stansted in the UK offers two 0.75 bottles for £2.20. If you convert this into Euros, it works out as a bargain 5 cents per mouthful - almost three times cheaper than the cheapest gulp at Cologne-Bonn airport.

So why does the water cost so much? I wrote to all of the above establishments asking them and only received two responses.

"We can assure you that the higher pricing structure for CAFETIERO at German airports is not on an "exploitation" of our customers, but is primarily due to the the airport-specific cost structure which is imposed on us. This results in all of our airport locations having a higher price level than, say, our inner-city locations," explained Frederic van de Loo from Controlling in HAGACON GmbH & Co. KG, adding that airports tended to demand higher rents.

Well, this is all very good, but it still doesn't really explain why water costs over six times more than in supermarkets, where a 1l bottle of Evian is typically around 1 euro.

"These prices are normal for gastronomic establishments, compared to retail outlets like supermarkets," Christina Maier, Manager at Woellhaf (which manages Leysieffer and Sion) told me.

Why is that, I wondered, that restaurants and bars charge more than shops? Do they pay more tax or does the water cost more. "No, it's just normal across the whole of Germany for them to cost more," Maier replied.

Maier said she'd review the costs this week and see if they could introduce a 0.5l Tetrapack of water for 2.50 euro (15 cents per gulp), which actually does not reduce the per gulp cost at all!

On the plus side, if you don't mind drinking tap water, you can ask for a glass at either Sion or Leysieffer, Maier assured me.

It seems that as well as well as sky-high water prices, Travel Bar has no interest in customer care.

In an airport where there are no water fountains (as far as I can tell) I wonder, what Cologne Airport is planning to do to protect their customers from being held hostage to parting with up to 29 cents per gulp? It's not like we can bring water in from the outside, after all.

Well, apparently they're quite proud of the fact that they've managed to keep prices to such a level:

" On the air side (past security), there are significantly higher expenses for personnel, logistics, etc. Nevertheless, the airport is of course trying, together with the caterers, to keep the prices for mineral water in a certain range, for example, 1 liter of Volvic costs 4.25 euro including deposit and 0.5 l for 3 euro including deposit," said Hanne Dickmann, from the central complaints department at Cologne Bonn Airport.

Is this really something to be proud of - I don't think so! My point was that these prices are ridiculously expensive. Even buying from a vending machine costs 3 euros. Am I the only one who finds this insanely expensive?

And why aren't there any water fountains? Ms Dickmann assured me she'd ask the responsible department at the airport to look into it.