Campa Cola & Exploring :)

Today we had some things to do in the Central part of our city, so while we were there, we decided to take on some adventures :) Adventure #1 - the underground market. This market is pretty crazy. It's actually underground and has electronics & clothes mostly. They sell things pretty cheap, so it's an interesting place to go. Today we got an 64 Gig flash drive/pen drive for about $5. Crazy hunh? Here's Adam and Aashini in one of the stores. They're all REALLY small stores - about 10x10 feet I would guess (but I'm really bad at guessing that sort of stuff :)) We go here a lot to get things, so I guess it's not a new adventure, but an adventure nonetheless.
Before the next part of our adventure (the real part of our adventure) we stopped for lunch. Aashini will always eat at McDonalds, so that's where we went :) They just started selling chicken nuggets here at McDonalds, so it's super easy to get her to eat there :) This McDonald's had high chairs which made it really nice!

Here we are at McDonald's when the power went out :) It's funny because when the power goes out in stores or restaurants, I don't even flinch anymore. When we first moved overseas it was always so surprising when the power went out in a store or something, but now it's completely normal :) Most places have generator back-ups, so it's not really a big deal anyway... just takes a minute or so for it to kick in :) It was HOT today, and Aashini was sweating quite a bit - it made her hair cute and curly :)

So, on to the main part of our adventure :)

I'm reading a new book about our city. The author, over a few years, pretty much walked around the entire Capital City. He has a lot of adventures along the way, and finds some interesting things. One interesting thing he found was right around the area we were going to be today, so I wanted to check it out.

OK, so back in the 1970's, our country's rulers decided that they were on the path to self-sufficiency and didn't need a lot of foreign products and stuff. That included Coca-Cola & Pepsi and things like that. So, during that time, a company called Campa Cola became prominent. In the 1990's there was economic liberalization here and Pepsi & Coke were allowed to enter and Campa Cola went spiraling downwards. By 2000, the Campa Cola house was pretty much closed. They opened up again here and there in the years, but never permanently. So, this is the old Campa Cola building we were TRYING to find (found the pic online)...

We wanted to find it because it seemed so interesting. The Campa Cola House is closed. There is no water or electricity in the building BUT dozens of employees still go to work there each day. They don't actually work though. They sit in the ground floor rooms and smoke, play cards, eat, etc... From what I read, the "employees" are in a court case against their former Campa Cola employers and are demanding years of back pay. So, for very confusing legal reasons, they don't want to miss a day of "work" (maybe they won't get their back-pay if this happens). I was really interested in seeing that. I've also heard that you can actually buy and taste the Campa Cola outside of the Campa Cola house... so i wanted to try it :)

Well, we never actually found the Campa Cola House. We drove all around, got lost, asked for directions and ended up (on the other side of town) at the old Campa Cola Factory...

It was interesting to see, and the people around us thought we were really weird for wanting to look at it and take pictures :) There was a barbed wire fence & guards around it, so we couldn't get very close to it.

So, that was today's adventure :) Pretty interesting :) I still want to find the other place... maybe next time :)