The exceptional heat wave during the second half of July added a surprising challenge to our 10-day bike tour in Western Estonia: on the small islands we were traversing, many of the stores had run out of bottled water. Smaller village shops in particular often had nothing else than soft drinks to offer.
As we stopped at the small grocery store in Risti, half way on the rail trail between Haapsalu and Riisipere, we to our great joy found several bottles of a reasonably priced carbonated water.
The first taste however left us no longer wondering that there was such a fair amount of these bottles left on the shelves: we had just bought the most salty water imaginable – probably, the surprise made it even more intense, but it literally tasted like bottled sea water.
Only a few days later did we find out that Vytautas is actually a famous source of mineral water in Lithuania (“The biggest amount of useful minerals”), with a very particular mix of minerals that makes it both very salty, but – supposedly – also very healthy.
And, it turned out, we were not the only ones to have made fun of it – as we found this hilarious fake advertisement video, which had apparently been a great viral hit in 2012:
Click to view video from YouTube
The raw asomeness of minerals …and no fish have pooped in it!