The best gin here used to be at Lidl. Their own blind test prize winner at impressively low price. May still be but we haven’t been because Lidl is the opposite direction from everything else we want to do and it’s been too hot for midday walks for pleasure. Have found that the Elephant store has nice German beer for a euro a (500 ml) tin, though. And 500 ml tins are big enough to split. Actually there is drinkable Cypriot beer as well. Breweries getting sneaky though. Spot a tin labelled Krauzer Bräu. Sounds German enough. Small print on side of tin extremely small. Well, it has been getting smaller every year, possibly even for young people, but in the EU there’s a particular problem. Like Canada, but more so, unilingual labelling is rare. (Although not all that rare in Cyprus so maybe it depends on whether a product is for domestic consumption or export. So squinting at labels I’m hoping first for English. Failing that French, Polish, German, Spanish - pretty well in that order. Greek would be last because of the letters, and it does come after Russian, but Arabic is dead last - at least among the labels we encounter here. So squinting reveals that Krauzer Bräu is brewed in the EU. Hmm, sounds like deliberate obfuscation. The German beers we’ve been drinking have been proud to announce they were brewed in Germany. Resort to Google, and sure enough discover that Krauzer Bräu is brewed in Cyprus.
And then there’s water, which is actually what we drink the most of. Took us years, literally, to establish that tap water in the Republic of Cyprus is potable. It tastes like chlorine. That’s obvious and unpleasant, but not an answer to whether one can drink it. The answer was always that everyone here buys water. And initially we did, though not happily. It comes in endless plastic bottles and they’re heavy to carry home if you buy in any quantity as well as being environmentally unfriendly. Then we talked to John - then working at one of the charity shops. He explained that the nasty chlorine taste dissipated, along with the chlorine itself, if you let the water sit in the sun for a day. We had two large jars and began to produce water that you not only could drink but would want to. Have learned a little more since. Sitting for 48 hours better than a day. Sunlight not necessary but does speed things up a bit. Boiling for fifteen minutes can substitute for sitting for a day. No longer have the jars but do have a very large pot and can then decant into empty wine bottles and refrigerate. The water was always disinfected - that was the problem - but now it tastes good.