These requests from abroad, volume five: "I collect souvenirs from various beer companies and brands."

If you own a brewery or work for one, you've probably fielded e-mail inquiries from overseas asking for beer labels, crown caps and the like, as destined to become cherished keepsakes of private collectors who've heard of your beer, even in far-off Albania or Singapore.

To me, there is something compelling and yet haunting about these foreign requests, which tend to come from Central/Eastern European locales, places of longtime personal interest to me historically and geographically. They speak to my inner melancholic. Lately, I've been pasting their addresses into Google Map and seeing what their places of residence look like.

We begin today in Italy, a booming "craft" beer producer in its own right.

Granted, the northern Italian city of Bologna is not so well known for beer. Rather, it is famed for its mortadella.

Confused? Don't be. It's all a bunch of bologna.

MORTADELLA DI BOLOGNA: DON'T CALL IT BALONEY!

You may have seen it at the supermarket, packed in individual slices next to the other pre-packaged baloney products. Sadly this is what most Americans think of when they hear the word mortadella. However real Italian mortadella, the pride of the city of Bologna is more than just fatty baloney. Either served in a sandwich, as an appetizer or part of the main course Mortadella di Bologna is yet another delicacy coming from the bountiful region of Emilia-Romagna.

Mortadella hails from the food rich town of Bologna, aptly nicknamed "la grassa," meaning fat.

Bologna also is the home of Germano, who lives in the house I want, and gets it.

I would like to enlarge my collection. Would it be possible for you to send me by post some labels and mats or caps of your beers? If you agree I can send you a self addressed envelope with prepaid postage. Please inform me by return E-Mail.

This I will do, and look forward to filling his order.

From sunny Italy, we shift far to the north, from Romance to Slavic. Yekaterinburg is a thousand miles to the east of Moscow, and is the fourth-largest city in Russia, now boasting 1.3 million inhabitants and a skyscraper-filled city center. You may remember Yekaterinburg as the place where the Romanov dynasty came to a barbaric close.

Oleg lives in one of the classic "rabbit hutch" blocks of flats constructed during Soviet times.

I collect souvenirs from various beer companies and brands. I'd love to get some items from you, if it is possible. I am interested in labels, stickers, crown caps, beer mats, openers, lanyards and other branded items.

Ironically, given that I only recently name-dropped Klement Gottwald (the first Czechoslovak Communist kingpin), Oleg lives on Gotvalda Street.

Is there a Tsar Nicholas II Street in Yekaterinburg?