Ireland is much more environmentally cautious than the US and to their credit, I’ve yet to see pretty much any litter. As long as you don’t care about looking stupid while trying to figure out which of the six “bins” to throw your coffee cup in, which I promise is harder than it sounds, then you’re all good. You know those pesky bottle caps on sodas and other bottled drinks? You know how they’re everywhere? Well, enter Ireland here to solve that problem. Those little caps are attached to the bottle, so when you open it, it won’t go flying. Now this seems pretty cool, and to their credit, it is, but the process of me figuring out this new cap function was one of my biggest “stupid American” moments.
So, I’ve got this bottled smoothie I bought at Tesco (update: I still have the Tesco crate I described arguably stealing a few weeks ago) and I’m eager to get into this pineapple goodness. The cap twists perfectly until I realize it’s stuck on that final little turn. Wow, this is really hard to get the cap off. Okay, let me just rip it harder and harder and harder. Now there’s smoothie on my hands and it slowly dawns on the few brain cells I have left after this week’s classes that it is supposed to stay attached. I’ll give it to them, that’s pretty clever, I think to myself, but now my smoothie needs to be mixed again. So I flip the cap back on and proceed to aggressively shake it as smoothie flies and spatters my desk, window, walls, and shirt. Turns out there’s a right way to use these caps and a very, very, very wrong way.
One of the biggest surprises for me and my fellow two American women (I made friends, go me!) was that practically every drink is carbonated here. Even sports drinks are carbonated! Unless it says “still,” go ahead and assume it’s carbonated. Oh and don’t forget, they call “still” here, not “flat,” and if you say “flat” the people here will look at you like you’re a classless piece of scum. Just a heads up so you don’t have to be the ashamed American in the restaurant. Europe likes to talk a lot of shit about our big cup sizes and all the unhealthy drinks we have, but these motherfuckers are over here chugging soda like it’s water. Fanta comes in cans packaged like a bunch of shitty beers and my roommates and their friends will hit that shit hard. In their defense, the soda actually is better here because it’s free of those ingredients that may or may not give us Americans cancer. But still (ha, get it?), I think they could roll back their judgement a bit.
I’m not normally a soda person, but I could drink Deep River Rock sparkling drinks all damn day. That’s their main water brand, like Arrowhead or Dasani, but good. I’ve yet to have a Deep River Rock drink I didn’t like, but do pay attention to the label’s fine print because there’s very little indication as to whether or not the drink is carbonated. If you find yourself in Ireland, do pick up some Deep River Rock, you won’t regret it. Now that I’ve imparted my beverage wisdom to you, I must return to the mental breakdown I’ve been having this week, hence the late dispatch.
P.S. I just tried Butler’s hot chocolate for the first time right before posting this and that is another must have drink.
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