Eric Aigner, that local restaurateur with a face as unforgettable as his establishments, has certainly done a bit of traveling in his life, and his stints as a tourist seem to have made him into one cheeky businessman.
For instance, how else to account for pint glasses at his eponymous Eric’s Bierstube bar that bear his signature caricature on it framed by the words, “Stolen from Eric’s Bierstube� Aigner knows such items often disappear, destined to become unique souvenirs, and by making light of the fact, he’s secretly promoting his businesses while also admitting that one of the costs of doing business as a pub manager is that beer glasses get broken – or go missing.
With tourists often come sticky fingers – fingers sticky for travel souvenirs; there’s a whole culture built around collecting unofficial bar or restaurant souvenirs. As the old saying goes, “The map is not the territory.â€
I remember a decade ago having nicked a menu from the Hofbrauhaus – the Munich beer hall made famous by Hitler’s infamous and ill-fated putsch. I didn’t want a postcard or a cuckoo clock. I wanted something real and tangible. It came out, while talking to a friend about the heist, that his parents had also grabbed a menu from that storied bar while backpacking through Europe in the late 60s. I suddenly felt part of something far larger than myself, having simply contributed to a clandestine culture of which Aigner, it seems, is very aware.
As it stands, menus are just one of many established “must have†items of the modern traveler, and though Kyiv remains far from a Mecca for tourists, the slowly increasing trickle of them here has doubtless created a growing list of “must have†items.
Aside from an Eric’s glass, what else could count as cool? More than likely, the Arena entertainment center has seen items go missing, ranging from salt and pepper mills to ashtrays, napkin rings and more – not that I had anything to do with any of this. The allure of Arena items stems from its wide assortment of one-of-a-kind items, including its beer glasses.
The city’s ex-pat watering holes have also become targets. The Drum long had nameless CDs stuck in the walls above the toilets in the bathroom for decoration, but those slowly disappeared, the gaps where they once were stuck now covered by paint and poly filler. And notice how the menus at O’Brien’s never seem to get terribly dog-eared?
What else? It goes without saying then that, in Ukraine, any beer glass with a local beer label on it is as golden to tourists as its erstwhile contents – ditto for any ads and logos produced here in Cyrillic. Ukrainian beer glasses, from Lvivske steins to spiraled Chernihivske wheat beer flutes and the unique beer glasses from the Chateau brewhouse on Khreshchatyk (as unique as those at Arena) – could well become the Coca-Cola bottles of our generation from Ukraine, symbols of how Ukraine mixes global branding with local culture.
As for “trophy†items – things deemed impossible to nab – frat boy types take note: Kyiv likely has a growing list of these, too. The notorious showerhead at PaTiPa nightclub comes immediately to mind…
by Paul Miazga,
Kyiv Post Staff Writer
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