I met a former work colleague for lunch today at Remos remos-restaurants.de in Frankfurt. I really don't get downtown very often anymore, and it was nice to catch up.

I like to offer cigars in driven shoots, and had run low since the last time I bought any. I stopped at the Holtz cigar shop tabak24.de , and Romeo y Julieta Short Churchills are now €21 apiece (!). That's 2x in five years. The causes are layered: Hurricane Ian in 2022 devastated Pinar del Río (which supplies about 65% of Cuba's tobacco), COVID-era production losses, mass emigration of skilled workers, and surging Asian demand (China has now overtaken Spain as the largest importer of Habanos S.A., which is now half-owned by Hong Kong investors). Cuba is now also grappling with a severe fuel shortage due to a US oil blockade following the Trump administration cutting off Venezuelan oil supplies, which is now so serious that Habanos even suspended its annual Havana cigar festival in February 2026.

Fun fact: Since the mid-nineteenth century, Cuban cigar factories have hired "Lectores" to read aloud all day to the rollers (news in the morning, novels in the afternoon) news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/840… , and the more popular works are responsible for the names of many cigar brands: "Tradition has it that some of Cuba's best known cigar brands were named after the workers' favourite books. The H Upmann factory, for example, produces two well known international brands - Montecristos named after Dumas' book and Romeo y Julieta, after Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."

This is almost as good as this tidbit: When Fidel Castro snuck back into Cuba in 1956, it was on a yacht which had been purchased from an American industrialist who'd named it after a beloved relative ... which is why the official Communist Party newspaper is called "Granma" en.granma.cu .

There were also a lot of Land Rovers and Range Rover sightings; I must've counted over a dozen of them.