Plantaze Vranac 2004, and Riko from Toulouse

Last night on the way to Germain's for dinner, I decided to buy a bottle of wine at a store that imports products from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. I picked one more or less at random, which I don't like doing, but I was kind of at a loss since I can't read Polish or Romanian. Come to find out I had bought a wine, year 2004, from Montenegro. From my class with Professor Taras, I remembered that this country had more or less recently become its own state. After taking an initial taste, Germain and I decided to Wikipedia it-sure enough, it gained its independence from Serbia in 2006. I noticed that the bottle had obtained a label upon its arrival in France stating 'Made in Montenegro' despite its fabrication two years before it shed its former recognition as Serbia-Montenegro. The bottle must have been exported after the country's independence...the wine was called Plantaze Vranac.

In other news, I bought a homeless man named Riko some yogurt the other day, and he gave me his business card. He apparently used to be a painter from Toulouse in the south of France, and after tragically losing the love of his life he let go of everything and hit the streets. He said that in Paris, unlike in the south, you can live fairly well as a homeless person. People who walk by will just give you anything--and he even admitted that no woman has ever refused to buy him yogurt. I thought it was a strange request when he first approached me in the grocery store, but this guy was an experienced hobo and knew how to play on people's attributes to get food. Think about it: would a woman be more willing to buy something sweet for a homeless man, or something less healthy and less appealing like greasy potato chips? His 'business card' was in fact his portrait drawn by a well-known satirical cartoonist named Cabu, on the back of which he wrote his cell phone number in crayon. I'm not sure how he obtained a cell phone, but he said he'd be in the area for a week or two, so maybe I'll get to check up on him again before long.