Meet Widar & the Mug

Over the years I've been collecting various sorts of things, some more practical than others. One of the less practical things are mugs - mainly from places I've traveled to - since they in the end tend to really, very much overflow the kitchen cabinets. So I've most definitely stopped collecting mugs, of any kind. Period.

Well, there's always an exception to even the strictest rule, isn't there...? My exception - and it's not as if I very much look for it everywhere I travel, I more like stumble over it really... - is mugs from places of interesting, memorable in one way or the other, coffee. If they sell their own mugs as souvenirs that is, which is far from always the case.

A place, a chain, of reasonably good coffee - which for some extremely odd and unknown reason still hasn't open up a branch in Stockholm... - is Starbucks. So whenever I travel abroad, and there's a Starbucks I stumble over I both get a pretty decent latte - apart from the one I got in Barcelona, which was some strange, watery excuse for a coffee... But that's another story... - and a mug to come home with me. So far I have only a few Starbucks souvenir mugs, but they make me happy whenever I look at them and remembering the lovely travels...

My latest addition to the smallish collection is not from a travel of my own, but from M's latest Chinese adventure - if you need to refresh your memory as to what oddities he brought home with him the last time before that, here it is - something I think is actually pretty unique to have.

A Starbucks mug from Dong Guan, China - with quite a pretty photo of a Chinese bridge much resembling San Fransisco's Golden Gate one. But the prettiest thing must definitely be the thing inside the mug, not from China, much more of a British thing really. And not tea, but a totally adorable sweetie named Widar. Cheers!