4
April
Wordless wednesday – trip to Kitchissippi Brewery
5
March
Minnesota’d
One of the things that we knew we would do when we decided to move to India was go to visit the Taj Mahal. We were lucky, in that six weeks ago, one of my best friends, Lala, forced our planning hand by needing to be in Delhi for work this past week. She was going to see the Taj Mahal on the weekend, and wanted to know if Willy and I would consider coming with the lils. We jumped and the chance and the planning began.
The focus of the trip was the Taj Mahal, but being able to just hang out with Lala was a big bonus. She and I met when we were barely past our teen years (she was actually technically still a teen), worked together for a few years, then lived together for a few years. We lost touch for a little while in the middle, then found our way back to each other. I am never letting her go again, despite the fact that she moved to Singapore a few years ago.
One of the reasons that I love Lala, and hanging out with her, is that we laugh together. Laugh at each other and laugh at everything that happens around us. I was looking forward to a little bit of that this trip, and happy that Willy offered to watch the lils so she and I could have some cocktails on Friday night. As luck would have it, I beat her to the bar, so I sat down, ordered a pint, and was content to people watch. I made the fatal mistake of smiling at one of those people as they crossed my line of sight.
He was a middle-aged man, and he smiled back, sat down, and ordered a beer. He then proceeded to tell me all about his business trip, being from Minnesota*, what he liked and didn’t like about India, and various other trivial details about his life. I was trapped. I tried to be polite as I willed Lala to hurry up and join me. When I saw her across the room, I gave her the “save me” look. She sat down and tried, as did her colleague who joined us shortly after. We talked about things like manicures and our shared past that didn’t include him.
Eventually he moved on and we laughed a relieved laugh. There was nothing wrong with talking with a random stranger from Minnesota, other than the fact that it was digging in to our precious time together. We chatted for a little while, until Lala looked toward the seat that Mr. Minnesota had vacated. She saw this:
“Did he pay for that?” she asked. We tried to figure out when he could have, and concluded that he couldn’t have. The delivery of the bill confirmed it. No, he hadn’t. He sat, he chatted, he ordered a beer and he stiffed me with the tab. I’d been Minnesota’d. Oh, she laughed at me over this. I am pretty sure she still is laughing.
*the fact that this guy was from Minnesota is not in any way intended to reflect poorly upon all the great people from Minnesota, or indicate that I hold this beer swindling incident against them. The fact that he was from Minnesota was merely how he self defined, and thus the term “Minnesota’d” was born.*
28
February
A new haunt
I have been pretty vocal about how much I miss having a ready supply of wine. It isn’t that we drink a bottle every day, that we really need to have the top of the line selection in wine at our disposal, or that I won’t pay good money for a good bottle of wine. There are wines available, but they are limited in selection, and are easily twice the price of what I would pay for them at home. I’m frugal, so I choose to make due with what we brought, and what our guests have gifted us with. We limit ourselves to one bottle a week, and we still have a small stash, with more guests on the way!
Several people have told us that there are good Indian wines, some of them produced locally, but we have not found one that we liked (well, except the one that I had three huge glasses of on an empty stomach. I won’t be touching that again), and most have been pretty bad. So we choose beer. Luckily, our “local” brew is Kingfisher, a well-known and mass produced beer that we had found to go well with Indian food. We were amazed to learn that there are in fact seven different varieties of Kingfisher!! Only four of them are readily available, and we have had a couple of skunky batches from two of those, so we are really limited to two slightly different types of Kingfisher. Kingfisher is not a bad beer, we are just getting tired of it. We are looking for more variety in beer now too, and the imports that you can buy are less than inspiring.
We had hoped that there might be more locally produced brew, perhaps even a microbrew or two. Historically there have been a couple of hurdles to the production of craft beers; the cost of the equipment, the treatment needs and variability in the water supply, and most importantly, the fact that the laws of the state didn’t allow it. These laws changed in 2011, and several groups applied to open microbrew pubs. We began to hear about one of these from a friend, who heard from a friend that there was at least one microbrewery open. A few weeks ago he let us know that he had visited, and pronounced it worthy. There were indeed multiple beers on tap, and they were all produced in house. They didn’t even sell Kingfisher!
We went on Sunday night with some other folks from our community. Although only three of us drank beer, it was well worth the trip. We only tried two of the six varieties that they offer, but found them to be both fresh and tasty! I think we have found our local. Even if it is a forty-five minute drive from home, it’s local by Bangalore standards!