Soft drinks can be real fun

Posted on August 28th, 2007 in Food & Drink, Funny, Trips & Travel by michele

No, I’m not saying that Coca Cola or Pepsi are better than a good measure of Whisky :-D But all the same…

As you may already know from previous rants, I love to travel. It’s all about curiosity. A funny thing is browsing what kind of food and drinks are on sale when I’m far from home, and soft drinks proved themselves amusing on several occasions.. :-)

Definitely worth mentioning is Scottish IRN-BRU, that comes from “iron brew”. This should give a hint at the colour of the stuff ;-)

IRN-BRU

The taste is, like I’ve read in my tourist guide, “sickingly sweet”. I managed to drink a whole can the first time, and after that I didn’t feel the need to taste it any more… :-D

IRN-BRU was claimed to be the top selling in Scotland, making Scotland itself one of the very few countries in the world where the most popular soft drink is not Coca Cola neither Pepsi.
Well, I’ve personally seen crowds of people drinking huge bottles of it, and found it on sale even in Ireland (picture was actually taken in Ireland last year).

Back to most recent trips, on our way to Romania we found another interesting specimen… Advertised in Croatia (we saw delivery trucks on the highway), we got a bottle in a gas station in Serbia…

Multi-SOLA

A bit of explanation is needed on why it is so amusing. In Rome a “sola” is a bad transaction, a cheat, so couldn’t resist to get a bottled, multiple one! :-D Taste is a generic orange-lemon, or ACE , Arancia-Carota-Limone (Orange-Carrot-Lemon) as it’s known in Italy.
Well, I’m considering importing it for distribution in Rome… ;-)

Romania

Posted on August 18th, 2007 in Trips & Travel by michele

Romania in Europe

Here I am, back from a very interesting trip to Romania. We traveled around the country for a dozen days, by car. There are many different things that strikes you while moving from one part to another in Romania…

The roads are, on some main routes, quite good; but most of them are still very difficult to use. The stress on the car and on the driver can be very high. I remember a single stretch of 30 Km than drained my energies more than the final 1100 Km day on the way back to Italy.

Landscapes are wonderful and quite different in the different areas, ranging from Carpathian Mountains to great plains to endless hills.

Some parts are wonderfully rural. You can see people living quite well, just on a different technological pace. And you wonder if they’re not living somehow better than you do in your stressing “civilized” home town :-)

Some other parts are just plainly poor, and make you think how lucky you are to live with “problems” that are definitely on a different (much smaller) order of magnitude.

99% of drivers in Romania are just crazy. Dangerous. Outrageously so. We neatly risked our lives more than once.

People are everywhere very, very friendly, eager to give you the info you need, even when no common language is spoken :-) And yes, many of the girls are strikingly beautiful, especially in the west part of the country. My girlfriend judged men to be definitely not that appealing :-D

I’ll probably write some more in the future about this trip… that’s enough for today ;-)

Travelling time, Quiz time

Posted on August 1st, 2007 in Music, Movies & TV, Trips & Travel by michele

Yes, travelling time. I need to recharge my batteries, so don’t be surprised if the post rate subsides a bit. Well, I guess you may even appreciate that :-D

I’m not telling you right now where I’m going, nevertheless I’m going to give you this clue:

Think about it, and the first one (if any) to guess will win… well… OK, actually no prize, but we’re talking about pride here, aren’t we? ;-)