When we started this blog more or less one year ago we were in the middle of a euro-softdrink research tour…Chinotto Neri, Gazosa Bellinzona, Cockta, Club Mate, Bionade…
This is why this symposium poster “20 years later – how does the German unity taste?” has been chosen as the post of the day…
Poto: Frank Heckel, © NORDSONNE IDENTITY, Berlin
A very packed week, but filled with interesting meetings and impromptu social clips and plenty of food of thought beyond the bread and butter rat-race…witty discussions, clever views, that’s one of the pleasures of Rome in June: friends but also business partners flock to Rome and make it more exciting!
It’s friday night. The Monocle copy is under my arm. This one is a gift by an Aficionado (or addicted, just like us) to both the magazine and Berlin. So even more appreciated! The weekend starts and a light breeze is mitigating the baking-oven heat. The groceries will be delivered on our doorstep by the e-shop. Jazzanova is spinning the records. Perfect…
We are going to take it easy in Rome, which is something quite unheard of for locals during the week. We morph in tourists for the weekend, and like them, we are not commuting to Tuscany in tight air-conditioned car-sauros wearing Tod’s loafers but rather seize the best of Rome in Birkenstock style. We’ll be spotting the first cinema en plein air venues, and we planned brunches in the shade for today and tomorrow.
Friends in Berlin and London: please send us a bit of proper rain showers and we’ll give you plenty of sun we can part with. Reading the morning papers in yet another good cappuccino place with the metallic smell of dust being moist by the first fat drops of rain is a pleasure in the summer.
And yes, we are reading this issue’s Editorial by Tyler Brulé, “Observation” with a connoisseur’s smile…in August we’ll be at our buen retiro in Berlin…can’t wait…
So here we are, teasing you with the preface and a nice illustration from the Editorial, tempting you to discover why Brulé is now observing “love at the second glance” Berlin…
“What would win your heart - an alluring first impression or a tempting parting glance? For Tyler Brûlé it was the latter that had him dreaming of relocating the Monocle team to Berlin and bagging a summer retreat”.
Source: picture and quote = Monocle
“Sunday morning, the 5th, we meet at Necci for breakfast”. Well, we didn’t. The Necci was a victim of arson. Maybe some people were disturbed by the friendly traffic of pedestrians around the cafe’. The once cosy atmosphere is now covered in black dust. How sad. Only the portrait of Pasolini remained intact…We hope they will re-open soon…we can’t live without their fabulous croissants and witzig foto-montaggi…
Well, it’s bloody cold outside – also in Rome, not only in Bavaria and Austria Felix yesterday! – so to talk about regional soft-drinks seems a bit odd. Still, it was a pleasure anyway that I could order at the Bistro on my Munich-Wien train not the usual uber-sweet multinational softdrink, but the mythical and definitely healthier Bionade!
The Bionade story is quite interesting, you can browse it on their web site...I meant to write something about it just after Amarena, Chinotto Neri, Cedrata Tassoni and Tessin’s Gazosa but then time flies…
I like the metal cap, it reminds me for some reason of Style Council…If you look at the pavements in Berlin it happens sometimes to see the target-like blue/white/red metal caps without any logo…after a few days in Berlin you will know where they come from!
If Triest is the northern-limit of the olive-tree, Lugano is the southern-limit of the Bionade: you can still find it in the stores. But I never saw it in other locations this side of the Alps. That’s good. Too much globalization kills the charme and the sense of place! Be it gazosa in Ticino, Bionade in Germany and Chinotto in Rome!
(To be honest, there had been reports, that Bionade would be on sale at McDonald’s…I never saw it, but it’s also true that I hardly go to McDo. I will investigate…)
Why not further extending to other blogs the softdrink euro-tour? Have a look on Balkan-crew, reporting on the Cockta, and at Firstwetakeberlin’s favourite, Club Mate…
The european tour of regional soft-drinks continues, with two black beauties…stay tuned!
You may have heard that not only in Tibet but also in Italy we now have soldiers on the streets.
I hadn’t the chance to see one single soldier during my daily chores in Rome this week. But this morning as I woke up I heard bangs and noises coming from our street. I looked down and…they were shooting in the street!!
This is one of the most enjoyable activities in Rome: stopping in the middle of the road and gazing at a movie troupe shooting something. A hollywood big production blockbuster? a racy independent film? Even the dumbiest fic’scion (tv series) becomes suddently interesting when you are watching it on the street, in the making, rather than in the domestic appliance called tv. In this case, in between the Ambasciata di Calabria students’ sandwich shop and the lovely chinese-managed Alimentari (selling Chin8!).
BerlinRomExpress goes on holiday together with AFlatinBerlin… ICE trains and books.
Will be back in September!
August, Rome.
I love staying in the office in August. I have then Rome all to myself. The city is baking under the sun but its silence makes her magic. In the morning, no fight at the counter for my cappuccino tiepido. Waiters are kind and share the gossip of the day, we’re survivors after all. Empty buses. And on time.
No motorini around. The full potential of the mighty piazzas is unleashed. I can hear the echo of my sandals on Piazza del Popolo.
In those who walk to the office, from June onwards the shadow radar sets in like a navigator. Between point A and point B it’s not about speed or distance, but shadow.
But this year I had to give up. It’s August, and I have to take all my holidays, all at once, all now. There, a very roman thing to do. Very italian. But I want to have the town to myself for a couple of days still.
So, getting up early for Repubblica and breakfast before it gets too hot. A round of vegetable and fruit shopping at the mercato. And, coming home, I see them. In an old-style window display of a grocery store. The taste of our summers when we were kids. Sciroppo and chinotto!
Amarena syrup, diluted in water. Liquid garnets swirl in the glass. Back then we kids we made our softdrinks. As much as I was fascinated by the mischievous Menta, I feared aunts offering the opaque Orzata.
Give me Rubys, Garnets and Emeralds …milky quartz no thanks (is this the reason why my husband proposed with a beautiful garnet ring?)
For him, born and raised in Rome, the taste of summer was different. No cherries for boyz in the neighbourhood, but naughty chilled chinotto made in Capranica.
The packaging is gorgeous…
I now realize that when I met mein Mann he only weared black. A childhood chilled in chinotto…?
I found myself thinking that the Chinese would love to drink Chin8 on 08.08.08…chinotto, freedom and human rights. They fit.
And in Berlin? Last summer we discovered our share of interesting soft drinks during our Prenzl’berg marathons and in our favourite Biergarten…but wait…it’s still a few days before we go to Berlin. Stay with us in hot Rome a little longer.
