THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part two.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part two.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

The story began yesterday, as I explained how two hicks from somewhere near French Lick (Roger and Barrie) toured the USSR in 1987 and made the acquaintance of two Danes (Kim Wiesener and Allan Gamborg), who began conspiring to introduce us to their friend, Kim “Big Kim” Andersen.

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Once the canalside vodka bottle was emptied, we stumbled back to the hotel, which was a tall concrete monstrosity located in a 1960’s-era suburb of Leningrad. One of the tour participants named Nick had packed a full-sized American flag, which we proceeded to unfurl on the building’s roof after bribing an elevator attendant to take us there, against the dictates of common sense and all prevailing regulations.

Miraculously, even after it flew in full view all night, we were able to reclaim the flag without any difficulty, and there were no disciplinary repercussions. In fact, Nick subsequently traded it to a Soviet railway employee in return for a huge tub of first-rate Black Sea caviar. Still, when I recall allowing vodka to dictate my behavior while passing through a totalitarian country, shivers go down my spine.

Brief stays in the oppressed Baltic lands of Latvia and Lithuania followed, and then the group proceeded to Warsaw and Krakow in Poland.

There are too many anecdotal tales to coherently relate: An elderly fellow tourist mistaking the liquid in our vodka bottle for mineral water and gulping it down on a scorching hot day at the Polish-Soviet border as we waited for the train’s wheel carriages to be changed … building the “Leaning Tower of Pivo” from empty export Carlsberg cans in a Riga hard currency bar … the well-endowed Danish lass Metta’s provocative push-ups at a meet-and-greet with Lithuanian students … wild going-away parties in Warsaw, where Barrie and I drank Bulgarian wine with Bozena, our leggy blonde Polish tour guide, alongside a few of the tour group’s stragglers … and a cab ride to Warsaw’s cavernous train station and desperate, futile foraging for food and drink prior to the long overnight ride to Prague and our ultimate redemption, otherwise known as Pilsner Urquell on draft.

Kim Wiesener, an amazing, hyperkinetic tour leader, was right in the thick of these occurrences, and a sort of wartime kinship was born. At the conclusion of the Soviet bloc tour we exchanged addresses with him, promising to keep in touch. Barrie and Kim agreed to meet later that summer, when Barrie would return to Copenhagen for his flight back to the United States. You can bet your last black market ruble that even then, Kim’s cerebral wheels were spinning: What could be done to bring Barrie and Kim Andersen together in Copenhagen?

In the meantime, Barrie and I embarked upon the beer-based itinerary we had plotted far in advance for the remainder of our time in Europe, first traveling from Prague to Munich, where we met Don “Beak” Barry and Bob Gunn for three epochal days of Bavarian beer hall carousing, and then pressing on with Bob to Paris and the D-Day beaches. After Bob’s departure, Barrie and I crossed the sea to Ireland aboard the “Guinness ferry,” meeting up with Tommy, a newspaperman and good friend of Don’s, and later watching U2 perform at the Cork soccer stadium, before experiencing the operatic wonders of Brian and his “High-B” Hibernian Pub, also in Cork, all the while marveling at the classic pleasures of the Irish countryside.

As the revelry continued, I didn’t think there would be enough time for me to accompany Barrie to Denmark and then double back to Brussels for my own return flight, but at a pub somewhere in Ireland, after my tenth pint of Guinness, I changed my mind. I had a rail pass, after all, and what better was there to do with it?

We began concocting a plan to surprise Kim Wiesener with my delightfully unexpected presence, refining the insidious plot over smoked salmon and Bailey’s Irish Cream (both charged to ever-groaning credit cards) while aboard the ship back to Cherbourg. Once in Paris, we hopped an overnight train to Copenhagen, and contrary to so many failed plans made over the years, this one came perfectly to fruition.

Soon after debarking in Copenhagen we were reunited, burrowed safely in Kim’s tiny apartment with chilled Tuborgs in hand and Monty Python songs in our hearts. Following opening toasts, our devious and conniving host divulged his own surprise: An evening with Big Kim already had been arranged, and so finally, Ottersbach would meet Andersen.

Fortunately, so would I.

The world was advised to forget Ali’s and Frazier’s “Thrilla in Manila.” Instead, onlookers were to gird for the “Battle of the Titans,” to be held in the quaint beer venue called the Elephant & Mouse, or Mouse and Elephant, where we were informed there would be copious quantities of draft Elephant beer, Carlsberg’s fine, sturdy and strong lager.

It was to be our first visit to the M & E, a small and dignified pub near the main square, where the only sign of identification above the front door was a small sculpted plaque depicting – what else? – a mouse and an elephant. In the wake of the pub’s sad closing in the late 2000s, let’s hope the plaque now resides in a museum of cultural history somewhere in Copenhagen.

On the second floor of the pub, up a narrow flight of ancient steps, a handmade elephant head adorned the wall behind the wall. Draft Elephant Beer poured from the snout, powered by a clever tusk acting as the tap handle.

Big Kim arrived along with Graham, a British friend who chose to follow the lead of Kim Wiesener and me, nursing just a couple of half-liter glasses during the session. At $7 a pop, these were somewhat financially burdensome at the time, and anyway, we wanted to watch the spectacle unfold with faculties intact. As predicted, Big Kim and Barrie proved to be perfectly matched humans, perhaps separated at birth, both with a fondness for alcohol of any sort, hot and spicy food in large quantities, impossibly tall tales and jokes, and endless, infectious tsunamis of irresistible laughter.

Big Kim and Barrie approached the high-gravity Elephant Beer at full throttle, and much merriment ensued. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth one, Barrie stumbled; accounts vary, but we can gently infer that some of the Elephant Beer didn’t stay entirely down.

Advantage, Andersen.

After several hours of Elephant consumption, and with monetary reserves reaching dangerously low levels, we decided to continue the match at a nearby establishment where Metta (of Lithuanian busty push-up fame) worked as a bartender. As we stood on the street corner contemplating taxi strategies, Big Kim suddenly broke free of the group and staggered wildly into the middle of the street in a doomed effort to hail a taxi home. We quickly subdued him, dodging passing bicycles and cars, and loading Kim into our own hack to proceed to the next planned stop.

With this unforced error of Big Kim’s, Ottersbach had pulled even.

Now this Battle of the Titans devolved into a brutal battle of attrition, with the clock ticking and everyone involved thoroughly drunk and fatigued. Both Barrie and Big Kim made it through big export bottles of Pilsner Urquell at the second bar, after which we returned to Kim Wiesener’s apartment for obligatory nightcaps, the outcome still very much in doubt. Barrie and Big Kim both opened their green label bottles of Carlsberg. Barrie finished his, but Big Kim stole away, ostensibly to use the toilet, and was found a short time later sleeping on the host’s bed.

Seemingly, it was a last-gasp victory for Ottersbach, but as all those involved were physically unable to tally points in their besotted condition, the Battle of the Titans was fittingly declared a draw and passed into legend.

29 years have passed since that epic summer of 1987 and our first meeting with Kim Wiesener, Allan and Big Kim. Certainly all of us have changed, but the friendships carries on, and I cherish them. We five have met many times, in many places, and they’ve all been special.

Just like the next one, whenever and wherever it may be.

(The Curmudgeon's spring break starts NOW. I'll be back some time before Derby)

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April 25: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: The mouse, the elephant, and a clash of nonpareils ... part one.

April 4: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Birracibo’s local/regional “craft” beer percentage rides the bench.

March 14: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Two decades of Beer Corner barrels.

March 7: THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Can I get a “do-over” on Naughty Girl?

_

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Twenty-third in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

In reliving the past, I’m increasingly aware of how much of it has been lost. This chronicle has obvious gaps, and it’s nobody’s fault but mine. I began the 1985 trip with the best of intentions and kept track of daily events for a while, but these notes began dwindling after the first few weeks, and then disappeared entirely.

Was I lazy, or overly confident about my powers of recollection? Either way, waiting decades to tap them wasn’t the best idea. In retrospect, it would have required a far better writer – not to mention a more rounded and experienced human being – to do justice to what were daily sensations of wonderment and awe.

In the end, what is truly worth remembering about Europe Chapter One is that in the most scrupulously literal of senses, everything about it was an incessant sensory overload. Days were a daze of emotions, amid throngs of people, with a constant accompaniment of languages, cultures and currencies, and an ever-changing kaleidoscope of sights.

No one could absorb all of it.

Each stop on my travel itinerary looked, sounded and smelled different from the last, perhaps never more so than when pole-vaulting by overnight train from the haphazard French-Flemish urban tableau of Brussels to Copenhagen’s orderly northern waterside serenity.

This journey poses another subtle challenge in the retelling. What were my impressions of Copenhagen the first time I went there, before all the other times?

I never thought there’d even be subsequent travels, but they happened, and during these trips Copenhagen became a place I went often. By the early 1990s, it probably would have been easier for me to find my way around Copenhagen than Louisville. This said, here are my first impressions of Denmark’s capital city during two fast-paced days in July of 1985.

Bricks
Sea
Carlsberg beer
Girls
Bicycles
Girls on bicycles
Efficiency
Tuborg beer
Friendliness
Hot dogs
More bricks, more beer, more bikes

Detailed observations were to follow, but make no mistake: Copenhagen was love at first sight.

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When boarding the train in Brussels, it never once occurred to me that Copenhagen is located on an island, Zealand. To this very day, Zealand is the only part of Denmark I’ve ever visited.

When the train halted around 6:00 a.m. in Puttgarden, Germany, and the conductors began rousing passengers, I groggily started to grab my bag.

“Not necessary,” I was informed in English. In fact, the entire train was about to roll onto a ferry boat with its own tracks built into the hold. Passengers were required to exit the rail cars and walk upstairs, where they could have coffee, beer and breakfast while viewing the 12-mile crossing to Rødby in Denmark.

Following border pleasantries there, we reached Copenhagen in about an hour. As usual, my first order of budget travel business was housekeeping, which began at the train station’s change counter, where a few traveler’s checks from the rapidly depleting stack were swapped for Danish Kroner.

Moments later, some of the Kroner were dropped at a kiosk to purchase coffee and a pastry. It was not a “Danish” as such, although this familiar baked goodie genuinely originated in Denmark before being brought to America.

Next, it was off to a newsstand to buy a strip ticket good on public transportation, followed by a bus ride to an ice skating rink.

Huh? Anyone who ever watched me trying to skate in any fashion should be doing a ferocious double take right about now.

The skating rink beckoned because a man’s got to sleep somewhere, preferably cheaply.

I’ve never been a camping enthusiast, much preferring the view of the campground from the pub’s rear patio, and so with this bargain-basement option eliminated in 1985, bricks and mortar accommodations for quasi-youthful budget travelers were a bottom-line priority.

These came in a variety of forms, ranging from permanent year-round hostels affiliated with the International Youth Hostel Federation (the card was always on standby in my pouch) to others operated independently to varying standards of cleanliness and efficiency (most were quite good and had fewer rules).

In summer, there were seasonal lodgings, generally located in university dorms, and logically coinciding with academic breaks.

Still other creative ways could be found to house peak season tourists existing on the cheap, hence the ice skating rink in Copenhagen, which bore the name Sleep In. Of course, the ice was removed, and the expanse of the floor divided into multi-person pods with bunk beds.

There was a luggage check prior to the official late afternoon opening time. I registered, dropped off my bag and started wandering. It was a sunny summer Sunday, ideal for aimlessness.

The bus took me back into the center of town, and my orientation stroll began at the Rådhuspladsen (City Hall Square), all crimson-bricked and bedecked with advertising signs. From here, the Strøget pedestrian shopping street extended for almost a mile to Kongens Nytorv (King’s New Square), the gateway to Nyhavn (New Harbor).

Just understand that by Danish standards, “new” indicates a construction date in the late 1600s.

A narrow man-made inlet designered for small wooden ships, Nyhavn had long since ceased being a commercial harbor. Rather, quaintly lined on both sides by brightly colored old commercial buildings and residences, it had been improved, though perhaps not yet fully gentrified. Most of the buildings had been scrubbed, restored and painted, including one where Hans Christian Andersen once lived.

There were many taverns, some reputed to be off-color, and quite a few people lined the former docks. Many of them were drinking Carlsberg and Tuborg from bottles, while taking great care not to break them – as would have been the societal fear back home.

As I was soon to learn, there were no open container laws in Copenhagen, and drinking in the street was permissible. Canned beer was rare, and the bottles were returnable, with deposits sufficiently hefty at about 20% of the purchase price to encourage care in handling.

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It was time for a snack, and perched on a sidewalk by a corner of Kongens Nytorv was a pølsevogn, or hot dog stand. This was no mere weenie wagon, but a mobile kitchen – almost a food truck.

As a devotee of the novel “A Confederacy of Dunces,” I imagined the Danish words translating as Paradise Vending, or at the very least, “mogul of meat.” Then again, Nyhavn wasn’t New Orleans, and no pirates were visible.

I subsequently became quite fond of the long and thin red-skinned wieners called rødpølser, and a pølsevogn always seemed to be somewhere near. You might even carry a beer around, and walk to one of them. Such remarkable, civilized institutions in a beer-drinking town. Would a sane person willingly return to Bud Lights and White Castle?

I eventually would, though not just yet.

Temporarily fortified like the fictional Ignatius, I walked back down the Strøget in the opposite direction and kept going toward the train station, ultimately landing at Tivoli Gardens.

Opened in 1843, and one of the oldest “theme” amusements parks in the world, Tivoli was among the inspirations for Disneyland. A vaguely Oriental motif formed the setting for rides (including a huge wooden rollercoaster), games, concerts and various party tricks. Admission was inexpensive, but food and drinks quite pricey. Consequently, people-watching (read: “How could there be this many beautiful women in one place?”) sufficed for me.

By now it was early evening, and time for the day’s solid meal. Heeding the advice of Arthur “$25 A Day” Frommer, I found the Vista Self Service Restaurant at Vesterbrogade 40 opposite the train station, mounted the stairs to the second floor, and experienced throwback dining. The author’s description is classic.

The Vista serves the largest food portions I have ever seen in preparing this book. On a recent summer evening there … a trio of British rock-and-roll types ordered one plate of fried potatoes with fried eggs on top (22 kroner), picked up the unlimited servings of fresh Danish bread that the Vista offers free, split the mound (it looked a foot high) among them, and still weren’t able to finish their meal … be prepared, of course, to encounter large, lively crowds – including every itinerant hippie and aspiring Rolling Stone from across the continent, who seem drawn to the Vista by some ultrasonic homing device, and whose presence adds to the fun.

Aspiring Rolling Stone?

In 1985?

Frommer’s reference may have been dated, but his assessment of the Vista was accurate. It pleases me to report that because trenchermen are born, not made, I finished my $3 plate of potatoes and eggs easily – and did it again the following evening.

Vesterbrogade was a key street. It linked the Rådhuspladsen to Tivoli and the central station’s transit hub, but it was important for another reason, because it led the way west through the Vesterbro neighborhood to a must-see shrine: Carlsberg.

Brewery tours resumed on Monday, and I intended to be there for one of them.

(to be continued)

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Previously:

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

That's not your Danish grandfather's lager, is it?

Yesterday I braved the snarling backhoes that are preparing the foundation for the gleaming new Keg Liquors and shopped for a couple of bottles of beer of the sort that owner Todd Antz stocks, but we don’t carry at the Public House. Rest assured, there are plenty. Todd’s been doing a better job of staying abreast of bottled beer, while my focus has been on draft for dispensing on premise.

One of my two final choices was North Bridge Extreme by the Norrebro Bryghus in Copenhagen, Denmark, a city that once was a frequent haunt of mine back in the day when the only beers available were narrow product lines of (mostly) lagers produced by the combined might of Carlsberg and Tuborg, and a few others from other Danish locales. My, how things have changed …

In fact, my old friend Kim Andersen has long urged me to make a return visit to Copenhagen (I’ve failed to do so since 1999), and as much as there’d be no reason whatsoever to doubt the sagacity of Kim’s intimate knowledge of the explosion of craft beer and brewing in his hometown, there simply hasn’t been the chance to go back. This oversight may soon have to be rectified.

Allowing for my small overall sampling, surely Norrebro’s version of a California-style Double IPA is the best I’ve tasted from a European brewery. At 9.5%, it hovers on the edge of barley wine. English malt gives it the richness that I believe is necessary in such a well-hopped beer. Delicious, complex and damned near thirst quenching … and mind blowing to contemplate it being brewed in Copenhagen.

If my recollection of the city is correct, Norrebro means “North Bridge,” presumably in reference to the moats and waterways once ringing the center of town, and if my fuzzy math is right, the brewery is producing about 2050 barrels a year in the American sense. To compare, NABC will brew roughly 500 barrels in 2008, and BBC (Main & Clay) I’d guess to be above 5,000 (corrections appreciated).

Now I’m researching Mikkeller, a roving duo of former homebrewing Danes turned professional, who brew American styles at various places in Denmark, Belgium and perhaps elsewhere. Both Mikkeller and Norrebro come to you courtesy of Shelton Brothers Importers, and the available styles are rare, indeed, so be sure and make friends with Todd.