Ukraine EUROPEAN UNION

 carpetblogger

It's summer in the big city and that means one thing in Kyiv: It's time to take your shirt off and break out the Kvas!

Kvas is a mildly alcoholic drink made from fermented brown bread (the only thing that could possibly be more Ukrainian is fermented mayonnaise). It reportedly can cure anything from a hangover to scurvy and is indisputedly the best way to cool down on a hot day. It's been made for hundreds of years, and every family has its own preferred recipe.

But if you're living a frenetic big city life and haven't got time to ferment your own bread, you can turn to blue and yellow wheeled tanks installed at every street corner. It's another one of the great equalizers in Ukrainian life -- oligarch and proletariat alike drop their 55 kopikyas and wait for the server in a blue apron to fill their cup at the spigot.

I had always imagined that every morning, trucks pulling yellow and blue Kvas tanks would leave a factory somewhere on the outskirts of Kyiv, like ants leaving the hill, to drop all that Kvas-y goodness to good little malkychys and devushkas throughout the city. Turns out, that's exactly what happens! I ran across the Kvas plant, which is out by the old Bolshevik factory, and there were all the trucks, hitched up to a tank or three, headed out in neat columns. Cool!

I've always been somewhat off-put by the fact that everywhere else I've been in the FSU, there's been a communal cup chained to the side of the tank. Now I know Kvas is reputed to have antiseptic qualities but there's plenty of other ways to pick up rot mouth that are probably more fun, so 'til now, I've declined to participate in the ritual.

In Kyiv, though, you get your own plastic cup. With the increase in cleanliness comes a corresponding increase in used plastic cups littering the streets, but that seems a small price to pay.

When you didn't want to taste fermented mare's milk, who was there for you (cheese mixed with cider)? When you wanted to know what yak butter tea tastes like (sour milk, salt and soap) but couldn't get off work, who was your gal? That's right. Kvas tastes sort of beery, a little like a fizzy, wheaty sweetened iced tea.

Of all the aforementioned speciality beverages, Kvas is my favorite, with Kumys (fermented mare's milk) a respectable second. Yak butter tea tastes like ass.