For those interested in the drink covers
Yeah, they're absolutely fabulous! Here's their story.
I first spotted them sometime in the late 2010s when @petermorwood and I were passing through Freiburg im Breisgau—that queen among medieval cities in southwestern Germany. I can't remember why we were there on that particular trip. It's a place we've both been often: occasionally on our way to Somewhere Else, sometimes specifically to go there and stay a while for the terrific yearly wine festival, or for Freiburg's own sake. (I've been there two or three times when I needed to get away and do some writing. The usual plan is to rent a holiday apartment for a week or so and buckle down: but even on such trips you get to know the city around you pretty well as you do your food shopping, etc.)
This one time we were there together, in the summertime. All the shops were full of cool summertime things that were making us salivate. And we passed by the well-known cutlery (and cookware, but mostly wonderful knives, ooo, kniiiiiiiives...) shop Ramsperger, and saw the drinks covers above in the front window, along with various picnic stuff.
As too often happens, we didn't go in and buy them right then. But a couple of years later I remembered them, and said to Peter, "We really need those, if we keep getting this good barbecue weather. I'm tired of wasps and things falling in my rosé." And he said, "Well, go find them!" So I went hunting.
Generally, because I am a persistence shopper, what I hunt I find. Eventually I tracked these guys down at Amazon.de. (There may be other sources for homeXpert goods, but I stopped there, as amazon.de happily delivers to us.)
Here they are:
Amazon.de: Küchen- und Haushaltsartikel online - homeXpert 3065170706 Glasabdeckung Trinkglas-Deckel Schirmchen, Ø 11,5 cm (Farbe zufällig),
"Trinkglas-Deckel Schirmchen" is more or less "Little 'Brolly' Drinking Glass Covers." They're stiff heavy plastic, and you can see how the concentric ribbing inside them will help them snug down onto just about any size of drinking glass.
At €16 for a set of six, which would probably turn into sort of $20 at the moment, I wouldn't call these cheap. (It's worse in the UK. Amazon.co.uk will charge you £23 and change for the same item.) ...Yet at the same time, if you were to buy them, you wouldn't need another set any time soon. They're solid and well made, even heavy-duty. As an anti-bug measure, they work way better than the kind of cardboard beer mats you get from bars: they're heavy enough not to blow off your glass. And the shape of them means that if it suddenly starts raining, none of the water will get in your drink.
So: 10/10, would buy again if necessary (though I can't think why that would be). And I heartily recommend them for those of you who like the look of them, and for whom the price isn't a problem.
