ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to traditional Danish lunch in Copenhagen, September 1989.

There was a faint glow, and an aura of something flickering amid the barely discernible sound of people conversing in an alien language. Apparently a herd of elephants reposed somewhere to the rear, occasionally bellowing fair warning.

Flat on my back and shirtless, but providentially still wearing pants, I felt sore all over, like I’d just finished running a marathon or boxing a couple rounds with Mike Tyson.

It seemed I was marooned in a foreign land, emerging from a mysterious coma, but in fact the coma was self-induced and the destination purposeful, even if the precise whys and wherefores remained elusive.

24 hours earlier I’d spent a final evening in rigid East Berlin, drinking voluminous quantities of Wernesgruner Pils with my friend and workmate Jeff prior to departing on the overnight train to Copenhagen.

In the company of a few dozen westerners, we had spent three weeks in the German Democratic Republic (otherwise known as East Germany) working as employees of the East Berlin parks department, followed by another week of quasi-touristic revelry in Rostock and Dresden.

Now it was September 2, and I’d been in the East Bloc for the better part of three months, first in Czechoslovakia, then the USSR, and finally East Germany. Experiencing communism in these places was like taking a graduate-level university course in sheer weirdness. It was exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure, and I was ready for a wee bit of exuberant capitalism in Copenhagen.

Up to this point, my 1989 travels had been largely routine given their specialized locale, and nothing had gone seriously wrong, but the law of averages was about to catch up with me over the three-month coda to come, and it all began that final evening in East Berlin.

I’d sensibly checked my backpack at the rail station’s left luggage desk, all the easier to drink beer unencumbered until the time came to reclaim the bag before boarding the train for Copenhagen. It was a tremendous buzz kill to return to the desk at 21.00 and discover that I’d lost the claim ticket.

If you think the TSA’s invasive bureaucracy is bad here in L'America during these times of permanent terrorism alert, try imagining the 1940s-era, by-the-book-you-idiot-foreigner approach to verifying one’s identity and ownership of belongings amid Stasi-infested East Berlin, on top of being royally intoxicated and on the verge of missing the train.

When did my entry visa expire, anyway? If I didn’t leave the country ahead of the deadline, there might be … shall we say, difficulties.

It worked out, but only after somersaulting through numerous hoops and signing one document after the next to the dull accompanying soundtrack of cascading rubber stamps. Sweating, I regained the bag and boarded the train on time. It was a few hours north to Warnemünde, then onto a rail ferry across the Baltic to Gedser, Denmark and the final link to Copenhagen.

East Germans may have been dirty rotten commies, but they hadn’t neglected the utility of a profitable duty-free shop on the boat. I took the fateful opportunity to score an inexpensive bottle each of Zubrowka Buffalo Grass Vodka, an infamous Polish treat, and Korn, the latter a colorless moonshine from East Germany made not from corn, but rye and wheat.

I’d be an American bearing gifts.

Drinkers learn early that it’s challenging to move directly from inebriation to hangover without the grace period of intervening sleep. Absent sleepers or couchettes, my “bed” on the East Berlin-Copenhagen route was an upright 2nd class seat in a cramped compartment, and shuteye was hard to find. Naturally the timetable refused to acknowledge the condition of my condition, and I was released into Copenhagen’s spacious central station at 8:00 a.m.

The adrenaline kicked in. The first priority was to change money; purchasing coffee with my fresh kroner, I found a pay phone to call Little Kim for instructions. Unexpectedly a disembodied voice answered in what sounded like Boris Karloff’s dialect of English.

He turned out to be the chosen representative of my friend’s answering service. Remember those? Stammering, I identified myself and was told to relax; I definitely was expected, but because Mr. Wiesener had an “emergency” the plan had been changed. Rather, I was given the number of a bus and a street address, which brought me to the apartment of Allan Gamborg, who laughed when I asked the nature of Little Kim’s emergency.

“He has a family gathering, and he’ll come by later. We have more important things to do, because (Big) Kim Andersen is coming for lunch.”

He paused: “For Danish lunch.”

The slightest curl of a tiny smile could be detected on the infamous sandbagger Allan’s face. Much later, when it was far too late to escape my fate, I understood the nature of their planned ambush.

It was 9:00 a.m. at the latest, and I had no idea what was about to happen, although it all began gently enough. Allan and I went to a bakery down the street and bought pastries, returning to his flat for more coffee. Big Kim phoned, and Allan issued foraging orders.

Looking around Allan’s pad, food could be seen stacked in all corners of his tidy, small kitchen, or at least in those spaces not otherwise filled with bottles of beer, liquor and more bottles of beer, to which my two doses of liquor were gleefully added.

We were expecting a huge crowd, right?

---

It was my third visit to Copenhagen in 1989, and it was gratifying to have befriended these three wonderful fellows, all of whom lived there at the time. However the concept of “Danish lunch” was as yet unfamiliar to me. To better explain it, here’s a random 2019 offering from the Restaurant Kronborg.

The “Traditional Danish Lunch” is the classic Danish lunch menu, like the one your grandparents would eat (had they been Danish), pure comfort food and a great way to experience the intangible Danish concept of ‘hygge’ (best translatable as ‘coziness’).

The lunch is served on platters in three servings

• Old-fashioned pickled herring with onions and capers
• Curried herring with ’smiling egg’, onions and capers
• Pan-fried fillet of plaice with Greenlandic shrimps and ‘dillnaise’
• Kronborg’s gravlax with fresh herbs and lime crème

xxx

• Liver paté with bacon, beetroots and mushrooms
• Roast pork pickled red cabbage and cucumber
• Roast beef with ‘remoulade’, crisp onions, horseradish and pickled cucumber

xxx

• Very mature cheese served with rum, meat jelly and onions

Includes rye bread, white bread, butter and duck lard

That’s a solid and delicious overview, indeed.

In 1999, a decade after today’s tale of Allan’s home-cooked version of traditional Danish lunch, Barrie Ottersbach and I were joined by "Boris" Lawrence as Big Kim took the four of us to Danish lunch at a local joint near the harbor.

In my memory the eggs, fish, and beef were raw (not a complete exaggeration, by the way); most other items were pickled or adorned with horseradish; the beer and schnapps were consumed with an atypically judicious temperament -- we were older by then -- and the early afternoon hours soon passed into late evening, enlivened by a long chat with a pair of crusty ancient Danish merchant mariners.

In its more respectable form, Danish lunch surely is a civilized institution, 1989’s affair notwithstanding.

---

The American and Big Kim.

Sunday, September 3, 1989.

Big Kim arrived bearing even more food and alcohol, and it was determined that Little Kim would drop by later in the day. I may have been sleepless and a tad hungover, but I was looking forward to the mounting spread.

Allan’s Danish lunch began with salty snacks and a crate or two of serviceable mainstream Danish lager, including Tuborg Gold and perhaps Carlsberg’s Sort Guld (Black Gold). Allan didn’t stick to the exact script, but offered multiple courses of fish, eggs, meats and a main course of chicken.

As the meal escalated, so did the consumption of alcohol, which soon shifted from beer to “the hard stuff,” beginning with akvavit -- was it the Aalborg brand? -- before moving to my bottles of Korn and Zubrovka,

Remember, there were only three of us.

The vodka came last, as a chaser for chocolate ice cream. It was dark outside at this juncture, and I’d surrendered any concept of time. I was stuffed full of food, beer and booze, and the ice cream played the role of Monty Python’s wafer-thin mint.

I recall the room spinning, and being helped to the orange-upholstered couch in the living room of Allan’s small domicile. There is a vague recollection of becoming violently ill, miraculously keeping the vomit off Allan’s furniture by keeping it on me – hence the severely soiled shirt. The necessary purge lasted quite a while, and I apparently returned to the couch to become unconscious. Allan and Big Kim fell asleep soon after, hence the elephantine snoring.

I awoke around 9:30 p.m. to the faint glow of the television set, flickering amid the barely discernable sound of talking heads on a Danish current events show, with Little Kim calmly seated in a nearby chair, slightly wide-eyed, surveying the unwashed dishes, chicken bones and empty bottles as though he’d wandered into a war zone.

As he wryly noted, it seems he’d missed the party. Little Kim had arrived, although the lunchers had long since departed, especially me.

In the 30 years since that day, stories of my epic Copenhagen arrival have not abated. It took multiple washings to get the smell out of my shirt, and a full clip of Tums to calm my innards.

Several years later, when the FOSSILS homebrewing club was established and my official title was “President for Life (PFL), Allan sent a postcard and asked if the acronym wouldn’t be more accurate if it stood for “Puking Fountain Lurcher.” He was promptly knighted as Keeper of the Couch. It was a sad day in the 2000s when he finally ditched it.

September 3, 1989 was the metaphorical halfway point in my six-month-long journey through Europe, which began in late May peering across the Berlin Wall at East Germans with guns, and ended in November on the very same orange couch in Copenhagen, in the company of the same good friends, watching on television as East and West Berliners came together to tear down that wall.

I came home anyway, and I’ve never understood why.

---

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Copenhagen's bike lane success is about more than bike lanes.

"Public policies that ask car owners to take greater responsibility for the cost of roads and emissions, and the conscious decision to build housing at much higher densities, make cycling in Copenhagen more attractive and feasible than car travel for many trips."

All of which reinforces a point to be made about New Albany's shambolic and purposefully short-sighted "commitment" to bicycles and similar alternative means of transport.

A bike path or lane cannot be a success when it isn't connected to anything. As with Cortright's comments below, the objective should be creating systems.

In Nawbany, the Democratic ruling elite simply isn't bright enough for THAT.

Copenhagen: More Than Bike Lanes, by Joe Cortright (Strong Towns)

Strong Towns member Joe Cortright runs the think tank and blog City Observatory. This post is republished from City Observatory with permission.

 ... For those who have made the pilgrimage to Copenhagen, and come away with a romantic vision of re-making their auto-dominated city into a more bike-friendly place, there’s a lot than can be learned. While leadership and infrastructure are certainly keys to building a bike-friendly city, too many re-tellings of Copenhagen’s success leave out some of the most important ingredients.

Aside from a reference to parking violations costing as much as $80, the LA Times article spells out none of the details about how car travel is priced in Denmark. A close look at the specific policies for taxing and pricing of cars and fuel, and promoting dense urban development, are key to understanding why Copenhagen has been so successful.

And ...

There’s a lot we can learn from the design and operation of bike lanes in Copenhagen, and the lessons about leadership and the need to make investment are real. But that’s only part of the story. Public policies that ask car owners to take greater responsibility for the cost of roads and emissions, and the conscious decision to build housing at much higher densities, make cycling more attractive and feasible than car travel for many trips. As we always stress at City Observatory, the dysfunction in our transportation system stems fundamentally from charging the wrong price for roads. Stories, like this one from the LA Times, extolling the Copenhagen cycling success story shouldn’t leave out the essential role of correctly pricing cars and fuel and building dense housing.

ON THE AVENUES: Breakfast is better with those gorgeous little herrings.

"A kind word is no substitute for a piece of herring or a bag of oats."
-- Sholom Aleichem

Other people go berserk about social media postings on politics and religion, but the ones that really annoy me go something like this:

Q: Hey guys, what’s the weirdest restaurant experience you ever had in a foreign country?

A: Well, one time we were in a McDonald’s in Beijing, and …

STOP. RIGHT. THERE.

You what?

You went all the way to effing China and ate in a McDonald’s?

Why on earth would you do something like that?

I mean, it’s bad enough to stuff Chick Fil A down your unresponsive pie holes here in clueless L’America, but why waste your time patronizing wretched genero-chains when you’re enjoying the good fortune to be able to travel overseas in the first place?

(gurgling sounds are emitted)

Wait -- what was that?

You’re asking me if I think the Chick Fil A in Beijing serves Peking Duck Bites?

We can only hope, seeing as folks like you apparently need Peking Duck Bites to populate your nauseating “gotta try” Instagram moments, and so if I’m lucky enough to last another two decades before cashing out, you can rest assured I won’t be spending a solitary dime at Chick Fil-WTF, anywhere in the world.

Now if you’ll kindly excuse me while I take great pleasure in BLOCKING you from my life … on social media, at least.

Enjoy your flavorless reeking muck.

---

What do these beige people have against basic human decency, anyway?

It reminded me of my 1985 stay in Salzburg, chatting with a forlorn and utterly terrified Texan who surely has since devolved into a staunch backer of Donald Trump -- or Ted Cruz. The Texan was depressed to the point of a nervous breakdown because he couldn’t find any beer to drink in the lovely mountain city.

Pitying this disoriented Lone Star fool, I tried to talk him off the ledge: cheer up, mate, because it’s your lucky day as a beer lover. You’re in Salzburg, and Germany’s just over those mountains; meanwhile the brilliant Augustiner beer garden lies a few blocks away, they have sausages, and the beer there is just glorious.

He looked at me like I was a mutant space alien.

“But there’s no Miller Lite. It’s my favorite beer. These beers are awful. It just isn’t the same.”

That’s true, friend. It isn’t the same.

IT’S BETTER, YOU ABYSMAL COWARDLY FOOL. WHO IS DUMB ENOUGH TO COME TO EUROPE TO DRINK AMERICAN LIGHT BEER?

Well then, I suppose there’s only one recourse.

Maybe it would be better if tucked tail and fled back to Dallas, renting an efficiency apartment upstairs at Hooters and taking your meals at Arby’s before repairing to Applebee’s for a night cap.

You know, a dullard’s paradise by the gnash-bored Lite.

---

Now that I’ve gotten all that off my chest, is it time for breakfast?

You may recall that I prefer fish for breakfast -- but not just any fish. Among the rotating selections from the pantry at dawn’s early light are pungent smoked kippers with crackers; piquant pickled herring on buttered rye bread; and on special occasions, lox with the requisite bagel, cream cheese and just a light sprinkling of capers.

On special occasions, just for garnish, there’ll be a garlic-stuffed olive.

Happily there are repercussions to such culinary preferences. From nowhere, impatient cats find me as I’m walking down alleyways, and they make an eager, impromptu parade.

Even better, some mornings I get in a hurry, forget to brush my teeth, and inadvertently breathe on a prim, proper, crisply suited banker -- and he promptly wilts, as though beaned on the noggin by a stray aesthetic revelation. If it doesn’t render the banker entirely unconscious, I’ll breathe on him a second time.

That usually does it.

Let’s be clear. I like deceased marine life in the morning. Captain Crunch isn’t even close. Pop Tarts need not apply. Eggs will do, generally when pickled.

Breakfast fish is real food for real people.

Obviously, these dining strategies are best complemented by stiff, aromatic black coffee, such as that produced through the saving grace of our home Saeco espresso maker. As for side orders and balance amid the oil, vinegar and brine, there’s properly bitter orange marmalade on toast and the occasional serving of Greek-style yogurt with fruit. Both work quite well.

Indeed, pungency settles the humors. Until the pallid likes of Bob Evans and Cracker Barrel grasp the eternal wisdom of treats like these, it’s hard for me to take them seriously as contenders for my early morning dollars.

May these franchised monuments to white bread, Velveeta and decaf never, ever besmirch the shining shores of Scandinavia, where so many years ago I learned to eat breakfast the right way.

---

It was July, 1985 in Oslo, Norway. Thanks to an exchange rate highly favorable to Americans, Scandinavia briefly became almost affordable, and when I stepped off the overnight train from Copenhagen to explore Oslo’s main station in search of a bite to eat, the handy restaurant with its all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet actually was reasonably priced.

(As a side note that for budget travelers, buffets meant two or perhaps even three meals, not just one. A clean freezer bag could be stuffed full of meat and cheese when no one was looking and reserved for duty later in the day.)

While industriously filling my plate (and bag) I saw three ceramic pots positioned on a narrow shelf. Innocently imagining they were filled with jams or jellies, I scooped out a spoonful of … rectangular silvery-gray piquant vinegary fish parts.

Inadvertently, I had been introduced to pickled herring, a delicacy that hitherto had eluded me. Quickly I realized it was time to put up or shut up, because what possible goal would have been served by traveling all the way from Hoosierland to Norway and then being too timid to taste the damn difference between the two?

Right there in Oslo, with every corn-fed Indiana olfactory receptor sounding a red alert -- “BEWARE, Midwesterner: Ocean products not fully processed into paste to make Filet O’Fish sandwiches … do not compute … WARNING!” -- I piled the pickled herring onto a flat, dense and nutty slice of rye bread.

The funky aroma tickled my proboscis. I hadn’t eaten pickled herring before, not even once, but it was love at first chew.

Later that week in Bergen, Norway, I treated myself to a culinary splurge. For three hours at lunchtime, a renowned local eatery ran an all-you-can eat seafood buffet for the equivalent of $15. Bearing in mind that my daily budget for lodging, meals and alcohol was $25, this was a budget-buster.

The fact that it has lingered in my memory three decades later attests to the correctness of the decision to abandon fiscal rectitude.

The buffet served as a Nawbany rube’s introduction to smoked salmon, something quite rare in the rural, corn-fed Indiana of my youth. In 1985, I had no way of knowing the same-but-different confluences between Norwegian smoked salmon and Jewish lox (the latter cultural norms being as uncommon as Vikings in Baptist-laced Hoosierland), or the meticulous strategies for preparing such treats, which are every bit as traditional, proud and locally varied as American barbecue methodology.

I could say only that I liked it, a lot, along with mussels, oysters, flounder and all the rest of the bounty.

The summer of 1985 was an introduction to all things European. I became enamored of the continent, and always will be. Food in general captivated me, especially those items and recipes we didn’t commonly experience at home at the time, like moussaka (from Greece), North African cuisine (in Paris) and even Nutella (rare in Louisville back then).

Specifically, engaging in strange, subversive encounters with un-American fish became a thread running through most subsequent journeys, from pie, mash, eel and liquor (gravy) in London in 2013, to the snack tray at Suzanne’s wedding on the Baltic in 1996, which also included eel, this time smoked, or black scabbard fish with bananas at the island of Madeira last year.

But my single proudest moment of all came when I enjoyed the distinction of being the oddball foreigner who introduced my Danish pals to the grandeur of the Faergekro restaurant at Nyhavn (“new” harbor) in their own city of Copenhagen.

The daily herring buffet was and remains a highlight of western civilization. At least ten varieties of pickled herring (with sour cream, curry and Madeira sauce, among others) are offered, along with dense dark bread, butter, and garnishes like raw egg, onion and caper berry. Whole smoked herrings are carved from the bone and replenished.

Beer is available, as well as Akvavit (Scandinavian schnapps), along with the wonderful northern custom of providing house-made infusions of herbs and spices for flavoring the firewater and washing down the tasty pickled and smoked morsels.

You can spend whole days in a joint like this, and one time in 1989, I did just that, starting a tab at Faergekro for lunch, and finally arriving back at my temporary Danish doorstep in a taxi well past midnight, pea soup fog choking the street as well as the inner recesses of my cranium, fully tempted to join WC Fields in returning to the eatery the next day and asking:

“Was I here last night, and did I spend $300?”

(Insert whatever the words are for “yes, you did” are in Denmark.)

"That's fine. I was afraid I lost it."

Fishies and Akvavit were far better than losing the money, and it may have been a wonderful evening.

---

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30 years ago today: 1987 European summer's end.

Unaffordable food in Brussels.

Previously: 30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Elephant, Mouse, wonderful friends and a Titanic Struggle.

--

Day 120 ... Thursday, August 13
Copenhagen. Barr home. Very quiet -- Tuborg

Day 121 ... Friday, August 14
Copenhagen (overnight train ↓ to Brussels)

Day 122 ... Saturday, August 15
Brussels

Day 123 ... Sunday, August 16
Brussels → Atlanta → Louisville

Given the exhaustion of Barrie's clash with his fellow titan on Wednesday evening, I'll never know how he was able to awaken on Thursday morning, calmly pull together his belongings and stuff them into his oversize, military-issue duffel bag, and start making bus connections to Copenhagen's airport for his flight home.

Hungover isn't the word, but the necessary tasks somehow were managed. I rode with my pal and saw him through the gates, ending an incredible summer's beering through the continent, then retraced my connections to Kim Wiesener's apartment to begin mimicking the Average White Band's immortal advice.

The remaining days abroad were an anti-climax of sorts, but in the final analysis, that's what detox is all about.

Kim and I had a Tuborg or two on Thursday evening, which seemed appropriate given my afternoon's exploration around the vicinity of the brewery, which sadly has long since ceased to exist.

I have no recollection at all of Friday, certain only that I booked an overnight couchette out of Copenhagen for Brussels, arriving on Saturday morning to a pre-booked hostel bunk. The remainder of the day was devoted to packing and walking. In later years, I'd have spent this time sampling ales and eating mussels, but finances were perilously low.

Apart from shrapnel, the remainder of my Belgian francs were depleted for budget-travel-grade food on Saturday evening. More worryingly, my one-month Eurailpass unceremoniously expired at midnight Saturday, and while I could easily walk to the train station on Sunday morning, I wouldn't have the fare for the trip to the airport without cashing my last $100 traveler's check.

I didn't want to do this, so ... I altered the handwritten date on the railpass, somewhat ineptly as it turned out, because on Day 123, halfway to the airport, I was controlled. The railway employee was having none of my forgery, but asked to see my plane ticket.

Convinced that I was leaving Belgium, he invalidated the railpass but didn't write a citation. Back home I flew, and was met at the airport -- by someone. Barrie? Bob?

And the rest, I suppose, is history.

Next: A summary.

30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Elephant, Mouse, wonderful friends and a Titanic Struggle.

As they were: Graham, Roger, Barrie, Kim and Kim.

Previously: 30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Visiting the Carlsberg brewery just prior to the Altercation in Copenhagen.

---

Day 118 ... Wednesday, August 12 (Part Two)
Copenhagen. Altercation in Copenhagen. Classic evening

An epic one, indeed.

This story has been told, blogged and altogether beaten to death on a dozen occasions at various blog portals, though never before with photographic evidence.

As part and parcel of my ongoing commitment to taste and decency, I'll be sparing readers the more graphic photos, which include bodies slumped in unsuspecting doorways, phallic Lenin busts and other testaments to the oddly redemptive power of Elephant Beer.

The tale begins with where I wasn't.

It is worth noting for posterity’s sake that I was not physically present at the precise moment when a failing “Ignoble” Roman’s Pizza franchise situated off Grant Line Road in New Albany, Indiana, quietly was shifted into the “local” column by the O’Connell family.

Redubbed Sportstime Pizza, events were set into motion that changed numerous lives (some even for the better) and led to what today is widely known as the New Albanian Brewing Company, with which I was affiliated for 25 years (until 2015).

Such are the vagaries of serendipity. Human beings put great stock in planning and preparation, and to be sure, there are times when advance thinking genuinely matters. Yet, much of the time, little of it is relevant, and the Fickle Finger of Fate makes the final call.

The reason for my absence in 1987 was the four-month European sojourn which recently has been the topic of 50-odd "30 years ago today" retrospective blog entries. It was my second such trip, and today, in the year 2017, it is another incremental mile marker, helpfully denoting the passage of three decades into the mists of an ever-more-distant past.

My 1987 overseas pilgrimage was divided into three rollicking acts, with ample time for education, recreation and debauchery: One month in Western Europe, with short stays in Benelux, Switzerland, Austria and Italy; two months behind the Iron Curtain, including Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia; and then a final month’s swath of perpetual motion danced with considerable glee through West Germany, France, Ireland and Denmark.

To this very day, I am amazed, humbled, enlightened and utterly stupefied by my good fortune at the places seen, experiences savored, and people encountered while on the road in 1987.

Three months in Europe in 1985 taught me the helpful rudiments of budget travel, and in 1987, because the daily budgetary regimen was established as a habit of sorts, much more time remained to absorb, to cherish, to live and to drink the occasional beer for breakfast.

These many years later, there can be no doubt that the single most abiding outcome of my wandering the continent in 1987 is an enduring friendship with three fellows I met there.

The three Danes of the apocalypse are Kim “Little Kim” Wiesener, Kim “Big Kim” Andersen and Allan Gamborg. I’ve now known them more than half my life, an existence immeasurably enriched by their camaraderie in myriad ways too profuse to chronicle.

But my motive at present in name-checking the three Danes, and by extension, recalling the manner by which we became acquainted during the summer of 1987, is the 30th anniversary of a drinking bout subsequently dubbed “The Battle of the Titans,” held at the venerable Copenhagen pub called the Elephant & Mouse (sadly, it since has gone out of business).

The date of this grand spectacle was August 12, 1987, and it is a day that will live in forgetfulness.

---

Let's begin with a summary.

This story is inexorably intertwined with that of my high school and college classmate, and illustrious, longtime partner in mischief, Barrie Ottersbach, who occupied a formidable role in the narrative of that long-ago summer of '87.

An unsuspecting Kim Wiesener was the tour leader for a “youth” travel group visiting the Soviet Union and Poland, and Barrie and I were enthusiastic, if only marginally qualified as participants (we were 27 at the time).

Legend has it that Kim fell under Barrie’s spell (or was it the other way around?) on a hair-raising Aeroflot flight from Copenhagen to Moscow, where I had arranged to meet the remainder of the group, having arrived in the capital of Ronnie Raygun’s evil empire by way of a 36-hour train trip from Hungary.

On the hazy morning following the boozy evening of the group’s belated arrival at the hotel, all of us were supposed to meet in the hotel lobby for orientation before setting out on a bus tour of Moscow. Kim was mildly concerned when Barrie failed to appear for roll call.

I reassured him that all was well, and that Barrie was in safe hands, having ventured into the Soviet underworld with “Bill,” the friendly neighborhood black market sales representative whom I’d met earlier under similar circumstances the previous afternoon.

At that exact point, not even a full day into the excursion, Kim surely understood it would be a very challenging journey, but he was reassured when Barrie appeared later that afternoon, brandishing a softball-sized wad of colorfully useless rubles.

For the remainder of our stay in the USSR, Barrie grandly depleted this ridiculously huge bankroll on lavish restaurant meals, caviar, vodka and champagne; beer was difficult to find, and the rubles were non-convertible inside or outside the country. It was fling time, and fling it we did.

For a few brief days, Barrie himself occupied a crucial position on the fringe of the black market, a mirthful capitalist amid communism’s decay, profitably reselling his rubles back into hard currency for those members of our group who were too squeamish or senselessly law-abiding to trade on the streets.

Our introductory lesson in entrepreneurial initiative thus completed, we moved on to Leningrad (before and again St. Petersburg) by overnight sleepless express train just in time for an impromptu day-early Fourth of July celebration.

Kim, Barrie and I gathered on the grassy, mosquito-infested bank of an urban canal. With beer in short supply, the soiree was made complete when a bottle of the finest Russian vodka materialized from Kim’s backpack. Illuminated by the White Nights, we were introduced for the first time to Allan Gamborg, who coincidentally was passing through the city with a tour group of his own.

Ominously, as the bottle was passed around from person to person, its silky contents ingested without any semblance of a chaser, Kim and Allan began speaking in hushed tones about Denmark’s answer to Barrie: Kim Andersen, hereafter to be known as Big Kim.

Their descriptions of Big Kim were offered to us in impeccable English, although occasionally they would lapse into Danish or even Russian in search of the proper words to explain this larger-than-life phenomenon from their homeland. Barrie and I scratched our heads and made mental notes.

Would we ever meet Big Kim, and if so, when and where?

Once the canalside vodka bottle was emptied, we stumbled back to the hotel, which was a tall concrete monstrosity located in a suburb of Leningrad. One of the tour participants had packed a full-sized American flag, which he proceeded to unfurl on the building’s roof after bribing an elevator attendant to take him 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, Old Glory subsequently was traded to a Soviet railway employee in return for a huge tub of first-rate Black Sea caviar.

Brief stays in the oppressed Baltic lands of Latvia and Lithuania followed, and then the group proceeded to Warsaw in Poland. There are too many anecdotal tales to coherently relate, though here are highlights:

Building the “Leaning Tower of Pivo” from empty export Carlsberg cans in a Riga hard currency bar.

The well-endowed Danish lass Mette’s provocative push-ups at a meet-and-greet with Lithuanian students.

An elderly fellow tourist mistaking the liquid in our vodka bottle for mineral water on a scorching hot day at the Polish-Soviet border as we waited for the train’s wheel carriages to be changed.

Surreal and somber Polish side trips to Krakow and Auschwitz.

Wild going-away parties in Warsaw, where Barrie and I drank Bulgarian wine with Bozena, our helpful Polish tour guide, alongside a few of the tour group’s stragglers.

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, hyper-kinetic tour leader, was right in the thick of most of these occurrences, and a sort of wartime kinship was born. At the conclusion of the trip 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 during a Copenhagen convergence?

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 to Prague for cheap beds, jaw-dropping sights and the world-renowned Automat Koruna. From our first draft Pilsner Urquell to a legendary brewery trek, it was an amazing time.

Next came Munich, where we met Don “Beak” Barry and Bob Gunn for three epochal days of Bavarian beer hall carousing, before pressing on with Bob, down the Rhine and to Paris, Versailles, Chartres cathedral, 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 history, music and classic pleasures of the Irish countryside.

Originally 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 while aboard the ship to Le Havre. Once in Paris, we hopped an overnight train to Hamburg, then 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.

Providentially, so would I.

The world was advised to forget Ali’s and Frazier’s “Thrilla in Manila.” Instead, onlookers were to gird for the "Altercation in Copenhagen," or “Battle of the Titans,” to be held in the quaint beer venue called the Elephant & Mouse (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 Mette (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 him into our own hack to proceed to the next planned stop.

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

Now the bout 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 Little Kim’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.

A somewhat desultory encore continued into the wee hours.

30 years have passed since that epic summer of 1987 and our first meeting with Kim Wiesener, Allan and Big Kim, who have been everywhere, but now reside in Copenhagen, Moscow and Arnhem (Netherlands), respectively.

Certainly all of us have changed, but the friendships carries on, and I cherish them all. We five have met many times, in many places, and they’ve all been special – just like the next time.

Next: Summer's end as Barrie departs Copenhagen and Roger hops a train for Belgium.

30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Visiting the Carlsberg brewery just prior to the Altercation in Copenhagen.

Previously: 30 years ago today: Copenhagen, and the calm before the Clash of the Titans.

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Day 118 ... Wednesday, August 12 (Part One)
Copenhagen. Altercation in Copenhagen. Classic evening

Kim was at work on Wednesday, and I knew the way to Carlsberg, so there was no doubt that Barrie's limited amount of time on the ground in Copenhagen would include a brewery tour.

It wasn't necessary to twist his arm.

Carlsberg would be a return visit for me, and this passage from the 1985 travel narrative sets the scene as well as reiterating what led us to beers of the world in the first place. I've inserted the 1987 photos into 1985 commentary.

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In 1985, the performer Michael Jackson’s (1958 - 2009) savvy pop music was ubiquitous throughout Europe – also in America, unoccupied islands off the coast of Antarctica, and the remainder of the planet.

It’s no surprise. After all, Jackson’s Thriller album already was timelessly epochal a mere two years after its release, and today, years after his death, it has sold 65 million copies worldwide.

This astounding quantity is considerably more than the total number of books sold by Michael Jackson, the beer writer (1942 - 2007), although three million units is no small achievement in itself.

Honestly, Michael Jackson the entertainer's music never did much for me, apart from his “Willard” theme. To this day I refuse to accept “King of Pop” as his honorific. Maybe it applies to Hoboken’s Frank Sinatra, but not to Gary's Moonwalker, though this is a matter of personal taste.

Conversely, a compelling case can be made that Michael Jackson the Yorkshireman fully deserves to be remembered as “King of Beer,” far more so than A-B InBev’s classically insipid American Lager.

Jackson’s book The World Guide to Beer (1977) almost singlehandedly elevated beer to the status of a topic important enough to discuss in mixed company, although ironically, it probably didn’t achieve critical mass in America until long after the initial publication, when it could be found remaindered on the discount tables of chain bookstores in malls across the country.

That’s where I found The World Guide to Beer, and I wasn’t the only one. A whole first generation of “beer geeks” took its cues from Jackson’s classic survey of world beer history.

It was a big, heavy, coffee-table book, and I didn’t haul it to Europe in my gym bag, but it was every bit as important to me in 1985 as budget travel guidebooks like Let’s Go: Europe and Europe on 25 Dollars A Day.

Why?

It’s all about the power of words.

While the canon of pop music has been enriched by the singer Michael Jackson’s output, its everyday vocabulary is not directly referential to his body of work. However, the language of beer indisputably passes directly through Michael Jackson, the writer.

He was among the first to systematically consider and explain beer styles, and to show how aspects of the brewing process, historical practice, geography, chemistry and myriad other human experiences pertained to them, demonstrating that our enjoyment of the genre is enhanced by greater overall knowledge.

All of these facets taken together form a shared language of “beer speak,” and Jackson shaped it in an enduringly readable way, neither dumbing down his material nor assuming the role of lofty pedant. He was an erudite prose stylist in addition to his journalistic skills as a nuts-and-bolts reporter.

The “Beer Hunter” always told wonderful stories, while never forgetting the newspaperman’s facts-first orientation, and I persist in believing that Jackson is best compared to figures like Samuel Johnson and other great essayists of the English tradition.

As such, I feel quite fortunate to have made Jackson’s acquaintance, chatting with him on more than one occasion. In fact, in 1994 he visited my pub and drank a pint, but first he showed me the way to Carlsberg in Copenhagen, where I experienced my first Old World brewery tour.

I’d gravitated back to the Vesterbro neighborhood stretching beyond the Vista restaurant’s front door, stepping off the “S” near Carlsberg’s 19th-century rail yard complex in Valby, the brewery’s gently undulating locale.

This observation alone provided a valuable lesson for future European beer hunting expeditions, because breweries of a certain pre-automotive age almost always are located near railroad tracks or navigable waterways – the interstates of their age.

(At the time of my visit, formerly independent Tuborg* still brewed beer at its own historic plant on the other side of town, despite having merged with Carlsberg. Tuborg, which I toured in 1989 prior to its closure, had its very own shipping docks.)

Carlsberg remains an iconic international beer brand, recognizable the world over for the green label and unique script of its flagship, Carlsberg Hof, a mild Pilsner-style golden lager. Significantly, the beer wasn’t always golden. Nor was it always a lager. Carlsberg’s first batches in 1847 were dark-colored ales.

Founder J. C. Jacobsen was the son of a brewer, and his career began at a propitious time, because numerous factors were converging to make possible the seismic transformation of the beer business, from a typically localized and smaller-scale brewing of ales to the eventual global reach of mass-produced golden lagers as brewed at factories just like the one I visited.

Jacobsen had no specialized academic background, but he was industrious and astute. His European contemporaries Gabriel Sedlmayer and Anton Dreher were pioneers of lager brewing, and because they didn't think in proprietary terms, the Dane freely borrowed from their expertise, making frequent journeys south for continuing education.

It is said that Jacobsen transported fragile lager yeast from Munich to Copenhagen, keeping it cool in his stovepipe hat. More importantly, he funded a laboratory and commenced a rigorously scientific approach to brewing, correctly foreseeing the value of a consistent, replicable product in the context of a global economy.

However, neither Jacobsen nor his son and eventual successor Carl were robber baron capitalists. To them, brewing was more about technology than art, but the profits were a different story. Father, son and Carlsberg became models of 19th-century industrialized philanthropy, with the family’s brewing interests bequeathed to a foundation with numerous scientific, cultural and artistic non-profit imperatives.

Much about Carlsberg has changed since my first glimpse of Copenhagen. There have been mergers and acquisitions, and a structural reformatting of the company after the fall of Communism. Large scale brewing has moved to a different location in Jutland, and the “old” brewery in Copenhagen survives as a company headquarters, tourist destination, and historic site, producing specialty “craft” brews. The former acreage of the industrial plant nearby is being redeveloped as a whole new city quarter.

However, Carlsberg still fulfills its philanthropic mandates as a foundation, and I’ll always feel better drinking a multinational Carlsberg than a beer brewed by the likes of AB-InBev. Unlike the Jacobsens, the Busch family legacy is unsightly, indeed.

Carlsberg’s most enduring architectural feature is the imposing stone Elephant Gate lying just outside the historic brew house. Generation of multi-lingual brewery tour guides have been drilled to immediately disavow the presence of swastikas carved into the elephants’ pedestals.

Paraphrasing:

“These are ancient symbols of auspiciousness, luck and well-being. The word ‘swastika’ itself is Sanskrit, not German, and these have nothing to do with that other fellow during the war.”

Point taken.

As I came to understand with notches subsequently added to my belt, brewery tours at the Carlsberg level of operation seldom rise above the introductory. I’ve heard and repeated the gospel several thousand times since. Grain is malted and mashed, sugar water created, hops added during the boil, and yeast eating sugar to create alcohol and carbonation. The inevitable conclusion comes while looking over the throbbing, cacophonous bottling line.

Thirsty yet? Well, come right this way.

Of course, a brewery like Carlsberg is able to place these tours in a compelling architectural and historic context. If 19th-century industrial buildings like these did not continue to fascinate modern man, we wouldn’t rush to convert them into condos, and if advertising graphics from the same era didn’t cease to exert feelings of loyalty and cultural identification, we'd have no breweriana collectors.

Unfortunately, the litigiousness of our modern world has gone far toward spoiling the ultimate objective of brewery tours, because who would endure the factory stroll without a prospect of tasting the bounty?

At the end of my first Carlsberg tour, the participants were seated at tables in a room festooned with brewery ads and graphic art. Sample beers in lightly chilled bottles already were lined up and ready on each table, with a few salty snacks and gratis souvenirs – stickers and decals, maybe some paper labels. There was joy and delight all around.

It seemed odd to me at the time that families with young children would be taking the brewery tour, but they were. It was free-wheeling Europe, not puritanical America. There were soft drinks for the kids, and only later did I do the requisite math and learn the solo traveler’s best strategy at such times: Stick close to the families and be smilingly gracious, because when they occupy a table set for six with a single spare seat and invite you to join them, only the adults will be drinking.

And this, of course, means more beer for me.

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We were able to do some light sightseeing, then returned to Kim's apartment to begin preparations for a memorable evening at the Elephant & Mouse pub, in the company of "Big Kim" Andersen, as opposed to "Little Kim" Wiesener, who wanted us to meet his old friend.

30 years later, we're all old friends.

There'd be special beer at this pub, too: Carlsberg's Elephant Beer, on draft.

Here are labels from some of the Carlsberg beers we drank:

And a stray:

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* 1987 photos featuring Tuborg, which I took after Barrie's departure, as well as a couple of beer labels.

Next: Elephant, Mouse, wonderful friends and a Titanic Struggle.