Slivovitz

The spirit called Sirmischer Slivovitz is met with at Trieste. It is distilled from fermented plums, and is made in Sirmia near Belgrade. This kind of spirit is also in use at Vienna and Prague.

Four fairs are held at Pest annually; and while they last, it is calculated that 20,000 strangers and 14,000 waggons pass the outer lines. 8000 large barges unload at the quay in the course of the year: the principal trade lies in wines, raw hides, honey, wax, and a vile spirit, called Slivovitz, made from plums.

There is a great abundance of all the necessaries of life and even many of its luxuries, as game, fish, very good wine, tobacco, plum brandy (‘slivovitz’), an excellent spirit, and silk in considerable quantity.

"There is a flask of slivovitz (the plum brandy of the country) underneath the seat, if you should require it."

We went in the hotel bar, sat down and proceeded to order some Slivovitz. When I first tasted it I thought that it was nice, but it tasted so much like apple cider that I said to myself, "This stuff ain't so bad," and, before long, I had ordered many of these bad drinks.

[W]hen I reach the bridge and begin to run across it, I will pray that the sniper who killed old man Samir yesterday and little Lejla the day before, is looking the other way, or moving position as the snipers do, or warming his fingers round a mug of hot coffee, or glancing up and downing a slivovic.

It is almost impossible to attend a meeting, visit someone at home, or even call upon the sisters at the monastery and not be offered slivovic. Morning, noon, or night … it doesn't matter. When my meeting with the pcelari ended, Mesam presented me with a gift. It was a bottle of slivovic.

Jacek turned his back to the streetcar, from the yellow windows of the restaurant the lament of an accordion and near the door the sad figure of his neighbor Mestek in his green windbreaker with a hood sitting over a melancholy plate of kipper and a glass of stale beer, Jacek downed two double slivovitzes, tripe soup, herring and onions, ten ounces of sausage, and three beers, and quietly returned home.

They were in Vienna for an evening, and after dinner and a couple of slivovitzes, he watched through the hotel room window as snow began to gather on a statue of Johann Strauss.

Perhaps the Viennese didn't have a flair for beer. I drank a slivovitz. The slivovitz was bad, too, but when drunk in tandem with the bad beer it was almost good again.