Drive like a maniac. Try to run
down pedestrians. Ignore all rules of the road. Bill Bryson
once wrote “You turn any street corner in Rome and it
looks as if you’ve just missed a parking competition for
blind people”. How true this is; the Italians park at all
angles including 90º perpendicular to the street. They
double park and even park down the centre of the wider
streets. Traffic wardens don’t seem to exist and every
other car has a dent or a scratch or a smashed headlight.
They just don’t care.
Neither it would appear, do they care much for beer
(birra). There are precious few bars (what there is tend to
be ‘British style’ bars) and getting a beer can be a
drawn out affair. Most beer selling establishments are cafés
and restaurants where you sit down and wait to be served.
When you want to leave you have to get the bill. A pub-crawl
could take all day!
No swift halves here. Mind you it was too hot to do anything
swiftly. |
In most café-bars there is only
one beer on offer so it’s just a matter of shouting
‘Birra’ and holding up the requisite number of digits.
When you have such a vast choice however, things can get a
little confusing especially when they haven’t got the one
you want. There were several slurred attempts to recite the
Monty Python cheese shop sketch, alluding to the lack of
beers available.
We did however hunt down a little place in the Piazza
Testtacio called L’Oasi della Birra which boasts no less
than 500 beers on it’s menu along with several hundred
wines, several hundred cheeses and dozens of types of ham.
The beers are from all over the World including the UK, but
many of them weren’t available. The disappointment was
short lived though as our very accommodating hosts would
always offer up the nearest alternative.
As the evening wore on the language barrier proved to be
more and more of a problem as we struggled to even
understand ourselves at times.
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Some of the
many brews that our little crowd did enjoy though were;
Polar (5%) from Venezuela, Ceres Stout (7.7%) from Denmark, Barbar Blonde
(8%), St Feuillien (7.5%), Chapeau Peche (3.5%) and Afflieem
Dubble (6.8%) all from Belgium, and not forgetting the host
Country; Baladin Issac (5%), Baladin Wayan (5.8%) and a very
popular one G. Menabrea C Figli 150 Year Anniversary (4.8%).
I
think the latter’s popularity was down the fact that it
came in huge bottles. Needless to say we all had a wonderful
time.
The highlight of our time in Rome was sitting in a beautiful
little square in front of the Pantheon under a scorching sun
drinking a nice cold glass of the aforementioned 150 Year
anniversary birra. One of
those moments that you wish could last forever and makes you completely forget the fact that you have to go home soon to
what turned out to be a very wet England.
Feb '04
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