Driving to one of my various places of work, there is a brewery by the side of the road and the lovely malty smell from it ALWAYS reminds me of a breakfast cereal that used to be my FAVE when I was a wee kiddie growing up in South Africa!
(Any South Africans on the board? Remember ProNutro [sp]? I used to LOVE that!!)
And fresh bread: I have a bread maker at home and the smell of lovely hot fresh bread (esp my raisin and cinnamon loaves) make me go positively gooey eyed!!
The scents of honeysuckle and wisteria mean “home” to me. The sides of the little country road leading out to the house I grew up in are rife with honeysuckle, and there’s a big wisteria arbor in the yard. You could smell the flowers even with the windows up and the vents closed. When I came in exhausted, late at night, the scent meant that I could rest soon. I miss it–I sometimes time my visits home to make sure I’m there when they’re blooming.
I live round the corner from a yeast factory.
(I can’t think that factory is the right word, but it’s a place which grows yeast and sells it)
Depending on which way the wind is blowing, and which species of yeast they are dealing with, by the time I get to work, I am either ravenously hungry, because of the bready smell or slightly tiddly from the beery smell!
There’s a lilac bush right outside the front door of my apartment building, and it takes me back to Saskatchewan when I was growing up. There were lilacs all over, but on one block nearly every house had two or three, and one had the yard nearly full.
Out here in the Vancouver area they’re not nearly as common, but at work we’d get horse barns, sewage, or fresh-cut lumber, depending on the wind. At home I sometimes get a whiff of skunk from the woods half a mile away - quite nice as long as it’s faint.
I used to drive past a potato chip factory on my way to work. It caused a major munchie attack. The folks at the convenience store look at you funny when you stop in for a bag of potato chips every day at 7:30 a.m.
cabdude, was that the Weston’s factory at Camperdown? To think the bloody yuppies that moved in and “gentrified” the suburb complained about the smell!
I like underground railways’ smell. Also, the mix of salt water and diesel fuel you get at the quay. Certain books smell unbelievably wonderful too. The interior of cars built before about 1975. Steam locomotives. Newly spent gunpowder.
You’ve obviously never been in the London Underground.
mmmmmm, urine.
This is when you know you have a place on the boards, when someone starts a thread based on one of your own. I’m so proud.
My favourite smell has to be at the moment a shop in Norwich that sells smelly soaps. Just as I walk past to go to the mall, I catch a whiff. I wouldn’t go in though, just so I don’t disappoint myself with what I would find.
I work in downtown Chicago, just north of the river. When the weather conditions are right the whole area smells like brownies because of the Blommer chocolate factory! There’s nothing better, when you’re dragging your butt into work, than coming up out of the stinky El station into a chocolate-scented breeze.
My grandmother used to live just down the street from the McCormick plant in Dundalk (East Baltimore). I used to love going to visit her just for the smells.
