“Wander, wander, onward lightly, so that rightly flow the torrent, and with teeming waters yonder, in the bath discharge its current” we read in Goethe’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. And the water certainly is flowing! Not just at home or in swimming pools, no, indeed in the halls at the ISH trade fair in Frankfurt. Everywhere it rushes and trickles, spouts and flows, rains, gushes, drips and roars. Nothing but rivers without banks, a momentum that has been set free. If paradise ever did exist this lush garden must never have been short of water. However, if the water swells too high, it spells disaster. Nowadays, too, there are floods a-plenty.

Of course there is none of this on view in the trade fair halls in Frankfurt. The water here is never really cold either, and certainly not threatening. Pleasant sensations always go with the flow. All they have to contend with is the technical features: giant equipment, in which water is heated, as well as tiny bright washers, all manner of containers, pipes and tubes, muffs, filters, de-scaling agents, dirt separators ... there’s just no end. All so that the clear warm holy sobering water may purify our body and soul.