7.25"
Plastic & Rubber
ROMANIA

Booze was a-plenty in Romania in all shapes and forms - everyone is homebrewing something made from apples or plums. Called tuică, it is clear in color and lethal! This little object goes onto the top of the home distiller to create a vacuum. We had the great pleasure to visit a "community" distillery. This "center" had not only the local "whirlpool" (an outdoor facility operating similar to a water mill) where you wash your rugs annually, but also a leftover from the Communist-era wheat husker and it housed the local distillery. All of these things are hard to imagine, but a community distillery may be the most difficult to picture, so let me describe it for you. Follow your nose and soon you will see the various plastic vats of plums and apples fermenting - it looks like something maybe one might feed the pigs on the farm but rather, this is the basis for the booze. No worries about the dirt and grunge around the top, you're distilling this stuff for days and soon enough it will be alcohol. Walk into the adjacent building and you'll see a giant copper distiller that looks like something from a Terry Gilliam film. You may be confused as to why there is dry dough around the top of it, that is the seal...okay, moving on. Stand and watch a round Romanian woman with an apron and headscarf turn the knob endlessly with confusion and amazement. Be offered a glass of the stuff - do not sip! It only makes it worse! Kick it back. Repeat. Talk. Repeat. Walk outside for air, walk back in and wonder if you have ever been there before. Offer to stoke the wood fire. Pass out. Pretty simple to picture. You can read about Marco's tuică story when you read about the glasses.