I reproduce this from the Witold Gombrowicz thread, as it really belongs here:
Quote:
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When I opened my copy of Ferdydurke just now, I found a rather crumpled invitation addressed to "Witold Dickens" where the postgrads I mentioned earlier invited me and others to what was termed a "Garden Party Extravaganza", i.e. glasses of self-supplied white wine on a lawn. I'm afraid I have no recollection whatsoever of the party, if indeed I ever went. But it's the thought that counts, even 33 years later. This event of no consequence was planned for Tuesday 17th June 1975 "on the lawn between the Barn and the river at 3.30 p.m.".
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Fausto:
Rosé comes in many shapes and forms. It can be watery and light, or dark and almost strawberry flavoured. There are both sweetish and dryish types. Some of the absolute cheapest South African stuff you can get here in Holland,
Kaapse Vreugd, and the more expensive Chilean
Undurraga, are good
. The French
Listel isn't what it was. But I find that even the one-litre plonk bottles of rosé are better than their price-equivalents for white and red.
Times have changed politically. No one would have been seen dead drinking South African or Chilean wine 20-30 years ago.
As for Belgian beers, we could start a whole thread devoted to them. They mostly come in three types: blond, dark and tripel. I tend to drink the tripel, but the blond if I'm thirsty, the dark in winter. Belgium has a fabulous beer culture as does, nowadays, Sweden, believe it or not. I've not drunk very much German beer, although that is the world's biggest beer country. Swedish beer was awful 30 years ago when I first visited: mostly insipid canned lager. But with the liberation of the brewery rules recently, whole new ranges of real ales have blossomed. If I hadn't beer-browsed in the Systembolaget alcohol monopoly shop in Stockholm and Visby this year, and spent time in the
Man in the Moon pub in Stockholm, I would not have believed this sea change either.