RamblinMan

I trudge down the long main avenue, engaging in my favorite pastime of exploring a city on foot, getting lost in its streets, spending hours soaking up local color. However, such bold exploration comes at a cost: blistered feet, aching lower back, and severely parched throat. I need something to restore my vitality, to uplift my body and spirit, to rejuvenate me.
I'm in Aktau, Kazakhstan, and here rejuvenation can be bought from an old babushka in a faded blue apron. She dispenses a half-liter of her wondrous elixir from a spigot protruding from a massive yellow barrel on wheels. The brew flows dark brown and mildly bubbly into an ordinary plastic cup. Just before raising it to my lips, I murmur the elixir's name, as I would that of a lover I have dearly missed: Kvass.
Twenty years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, as the newly independent nations forge ahead along their own paths, there are still ties that bind them to the past, and to each other. A slightly fermented rye drink, Kvass is a traditional beverage of the east Slavic heartland that has survived the modern onslaught of foreign cola imports. It may be purchased from supermarkets in two-liter bottles, or ordered in glass mugs at restaurants. Yet Kvass is most properly enjoyed on the street. Whether in Odessa, Riga, Tashkent, or Dushanbe, Kvass has been my trusty ally on a hot summer's day.
I allow the plastic rim of the cup to brush against my parched lips. I inhale deeply of yeasty, fizzy glory before tilting back my head and gulping the cup's contents. Images rush through my rapidly cooling brain: Tolstoy's mowers with their scythes working the boundless Russian meadows. Ukrainian grain fields stretching gold beneath a clear blue sky.
The cup is empty. My eyes are closed. I feel the rejuvenating powers of Kvass coursing through my body, restoring my soul. I breathe deeply, once again at peace with the world, and open my eyes.
One more, please.