canned lunacy
When I was lurking about at Rio airport desperately trying to spend my last few reals, I bought what I assumed was a Brazilian alcopop; a can branded with the local premiere brand of cachaca. It was only a couple of real, and so I shoved it in my bag and forgot about it. Tonight the Nottingham correspondent expressed an interest, so we found an appropriately frivolous glass and I opened the can. To our slight horror, it turned out to be neat spirit, just the thing for a lunchbox. Fortunately we had limes, sugar and ice, so I was able to make the nottingham caiparinha, not bad even if I say so myself.This put me in mind of a similar experience I had when on tour in Russia, we were staying in Volgograd (aka Stalingrad) in a hotel of monumental greyness, said hotel didn't have a restaurant and we were bussed out for breakfast each morning. They would, for a fee equivalent to a pound, provide a packed lunch; this consisted, without variation, of two sandwiches, one of pink on grey bread and one of yellow on grey bread. This was accompanied by an apple and for some inexplicable reason a Wagon Wheel (bizarre halucinogenic chocolate biscuit laden with e-numbers). The latter were curiously ubiquitous in Russia, as the Russian railways also fed you them as a part of your dining experience. To help wash down the your hotel packed lunch you were given the choice of half a litre of vodka, or the same quantity of Russian brandy.
We didn't actually see that many chronically drunk people when we were out there, although I did see at least one corpse, but it was never a good idea to get into competive drinking. One of our turns (all of five foot four in height) when we were making the return 23 hour train journey to Moscow, was foolish enough to get into a drinking session with a load of cossacks (average height six foot four), these guys were drinking brandy in half pints, and our poor little dancer never stood a chance, at around 2.00 am, when he had run the length of the train screaming 'I need a woman' for the fifth or sixth time, the train guard locked the connecting doors and he spent the night with a load of snoring babushkas in third class. He didn't look so good the next day, despite having been force fed sweet tea by the aforementioned babushkas, with whom you do not mess. One would have hoped that he'd learned his lesson, but of course he hadn't.
posted by Lampy @ 10/30/2006 11:18:00 pm
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