I recently look a little trip to Bucharest, Romania. I didn’t have time to hit up a local corner store, so I had to make do with whatever snacky snacks were available at the airport. Interestingly, the terminal housed a number of small shops to buy periodicals, but none of these sold any snacks or sundries, unlike American airport shops where you can buy every flavor of Combos, a NASCAR-themed neck pillow, and a book on leadership lessons from Lord Voldemort.

At the Bucharest airport shops, you can buy a wide range of magazines or a book about Dracula or Stalin but don’t you go trying to find refreshments.

Given that the airport shops encourage actual reading of books and literary magazines, if you want a little processed nosherei, you can pick your poison from a vending machine:

Note that none of the savoury snacks are actually very naughty. The selection basically consists of distant relatives of the pretzel family.

I assumed these were olive crackers based on the package, although upon further inspection, the English translation says that these are pretzels with olives. I’m not sure I’d describe them as pretzels because they don’t really have a pretzel’s characteristic contrast between the interior and the exterior, but I’m not going to push it on their choice of translation.

My first impression was that I’d love to try to make these myself as an appetizer. Let me rephrase that- I’d love to try to make these as an appetizer for guests, and then taste them, decide that they’re too dry, and spend 30 minutes apologizing about it.

They’re not quiiiiite as olivey as I’d like. I can taste a slight pickled savoury flavor but it could be stronger. The wheat flour taste needs to be better balanced. However, I will concede that this is only my opinion and I could understand if others prefer a more subtle olive taste. Not everyone has my taste for pickles. Most people can buy pickles and eat them over a period of say, a week, rather than, oh I don’t know, 24 hours (*cough, twelve, cough*).

All in all, 8 out of 10 would eat again. May try to make my own- will report on success of said venture.