All the calories, none of the fun

You can buy alcohol-free beer in lots of places in the world. Here is the only place I know where people actually drink it. They call it zero-zero, or zero-comma-zero (damn Europeans switching the periods and commas in numbers), as in zero percent alcohol, and it comes in several different brands and is advertised all over the place. I get that drunk driving is a problem here, but you're not really allowed to drink and drive anywhere -- only here do the conscientious drivers drink alcohol-free beer instead of water or soda or something. Anyway, one of my excuses for drinking too much here is that beer is usually cheaper than water. I don't want to pay two stupid euros for a little bottle of sparkling water just so that I can sit at a bar and read the paper or write or eat jamon. So I drink beer. But I'm going running later today so I thought I better not drink beer for lunch. And suddenly zero-zero made a little bit of sense. It wasn't even that bad. I felt like such a local.

Speaking of drinking, there is a Basque drink that I somehow missed out on during my previous trips to the Basque country. It's a liquor called pacharan, or patxaran if you're speaking Basque, and it's made from berries called endrinas which I think are the same as what they use to make sloe gin but maybe they are slightly different. Pacharan is reddish and sweet and not bad, although sometimes it's a little more anise-y than I'd like. It's no sidra, but in the world of liquors that are sometimes homemade by someone's uncle or grandfather (think rakija), I'd say it's among the best.