Photo for May 16, 2006.
Here is a typical cafe table in Yerevan, Armenia. Noy is bottled spring water, Jermuk is a bottled mineral water. The green thing in the bottle at the center is a 'Tarkhoun' soda. It's basically carbonated water full of artificial color and sugar, and a little bit of artificial flavor. It's a quite deadly looking drink.
5 comments:
Yes, things are changing. The typical cafe table in Yerevan in old times would never feature any of these. People used to drink water from water springs (pulpulak). Mineral water or soda would never be served in a cafe. It was kofe, kofe and more kofe. Well if there were women (girls) present may be an ice cream. In special ocassions it was a glass of champagne and by glass I mean 200 gramm "grannenni stakan".
Heh, never had that drink, what is it tarkhoun? But the NOY bottling is impressive (unlike the Jermuk bottling - I don't like the Jermuk glass bottles). NOY is really good (yes, there is a difference in the way water tastes heh).
I am pretty much against the plastic bottles. The glass bottles can be washed and re-used at very little cost - both monetary and environmental cost. The plastic bottles end up dirtying up the country. Wherever you go, you see old Noy, Coke or other bottles littering the environment. When people have very little sense of personal responsibility in caring about their surroundings, you end up with a lot of garbage.
The only positive aspect of having homeless people in Armenia is that they collect the plastic bottles and recycle them. I don't want to know what they are recycled into but my suspicion is that they are refilled.
Was the tarhoon soda any good? When my husband tried some last year in Yerevan, it was made with some nasty artificial sweetener, probably Nutrasweet (cheaper than sugar). On the other hand, he had some delicious tarhoon soda at Old Tbilisi restaurant that had been made in Georgia.
I write about Armenian food and drinks and other good stuff in my blog: www.armenianfood.blogspot.com. Please come visit sometime.
Irina, it was a nasty drink. I don't think it was artificially sweetened. I get problems with artificial sweeteners but that drink did not cause any.
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