We Found More Glasses!

So, finding awesome stuff on the ground here is going to be a big part of our lives here.  It's official.  Many of you read how excited I was about finding this glass.  On a fine Saturday morning, we walked from our apartment to City Centre in Dublin to catch a bus going north.  Just down the block from our apartment, I saw the Heineken glass sitting on an electrical box on the sidewalk, with just a half-sip of stale (staler than Heineken usually is?) beer.  I tapped it to confirm it to be made of glass and not disposable plastic.  Nice!  We weren't sure whether to take it with us for the rest of the day or to run it back to the apartment.  Not being in any hurry, I decided not to drag a dirty, sticky, stale beer glass around all day, so I ran (skipped!) home to set down this glass for later.

I don't like light lagers anyway!

It should be noted here, for maybe the first time on this blog, that many pubs serve tap beers in glasses marked with the brand label of the beer.  Many an American bar might go for the clear plastic throwaways or the old-fashioned Lite Pilsner glasses for everything.  Here in Dublin, and the small number of pubs we've visited, the bartender carefully pours your drink from the draught into a specially labeled (and specially shaped) glass.  Different styles of beer do require different shapes of glass, according to many beer aficionados.  Just like we drink champagne out of flutes, merlot from merlot glasses, and Pilsner beers from Pilsner glasses, different styles of beer behave differently with a different surface-area-to-mass ratio and more or less head in the nose of the drinker.

Beer snobbery aside (maybe another post!) the glasses served here are marked with the logo and look beautiful.  I imagine it must be tempting to order a pint for 4-5 Euro, enjoy the drink, and slip out the door with a glass that would have cost 7 or 8 Euro at the gift shops.  Maybe tourists think that any glass bearing a beverage company logo automatically counts as a free souvenir, especially after so many ball game cup promotions.  I suppose it isn't a surprise that I find more of these glasses near City Centre after Friday and Saturday nights.  As bad as I feel for the pubs losing their property, I can't hardly think of a way to properly return these scattered glasses to the specific pubs from which they were stolen.  On the other hand, maybe I can increase my take by exploring the Temple Bar district of town early on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  That neighborhood gets pretty rowdy of an evening, I'll have to check that out...

In the meantime, I had to put a dark backdrop on the labels of the two glasses I found.  I could think of nothing better than cold Guinness, even though the shape of the glasses were fit for more lighter beers.  Beer aficionados will just have to forgive me.