Quick, name three beers from Italy…
I got you, didn’t I? Maybe you came up with Peroni, or Moretti if you’re really good. And why have we not heard of the fantastic beers that just have to be pouring out of this country and into our living rooms? It’s because they don’t really drink beer in Italy, that’s why. Why would anyone other than an uncultured swine (i.e. me) want to drink beer in a place where wine is cheaper than bottled water? I don’t know, but I haven’t given up yet, and that’s why I bought this beer today. That, and the fact that its name exactly describes my feelings about the beer here… slightly better than eternal damnation, but a bit worse than not very good.
On another beer-related note, Hannah and I were planning a trip to Belgium for some bar hopping over her Spring break when we discovered that renting a villa on the Amalfi Coast for a week was $500 cheaper than slumming it in the cheapest hotel in Brussels. So, I guess I’ll suffer through more wine. Life is not hard here.
And just for fun, here’s a picture of the Hell Bier with his friend Mr. Dunkel, which I’ve taken to calling Skunkel… but I drink it anyway.
Picture yourself sitting in your kitchen about to have dinner. Maybe you’ve cooked up some lovely fish item. It’s the end of the day (and you’re in Italy), so you’re relaxed, things are going well. Maybe you’ve even had a glass of wine or two… what the hell, it’s $3 a liter. Then, picture yourself, poised to take a bite, looking up and seeing this:
Egad! This is what happens when you live in a city where the humidity is almost always %98, except for when it’s raining, and its name in Italian is extra-fearsome-sounding - muffa (pronounced moo-fa). For full disclosure here, I want you to know that I’m basically writing this whole article simply as an excuse to say that word a few times. In any case, after about ten minutes of broken Italian at the hardware store, we discovered that we had a muffa problem and were provided with a product having a seemingly inconceivable name. I bring you the Smuffer!
The Smuffer is basically just bleach in a spray bottle (spruzzatore, also funny), but it leaves the muffa begging for mercy, and now that our whole house has been properly smuffatized and we’ve learned some muffa-prevention tips, we’re hopeful that the situation is under wraps. Four muffas in that last sentence alone… I’m good.
