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.

---

Recent columns:

August 29: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to "Pagan Life," a weekly column devoted to heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

August 22: ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

August 15: ON THE AVENUES: Breakfast is better with those gorgeous little herrings.

August 8: ON THE AVENUES: Unless you open your eyes, “resistance” is an empty gesture.

THE BEER BEAT: Beer news overview, featuring our Bamberg correspondent; Pearl Street Taphouse's anniversary; and a Dauntless beer dinner at La Chasse.

Look at the head on that!

Kim Andersen is an evil man, taunting the terminally New Albany-bound (that's me) with this photo of delicious, freshly-poured Spezial Rauchbier, as snapped from his current vantage point in Bamberg, Germany.

However, it's the two folks in back that make this view wonderful, because for them, it's just a restorative mid-afternoon local pub stop.

While I'm at it, cheers to Matthias Trum and family. Kim informs me that he was drinking six-month-lagered Schlenkerla Urbock on Thursday evening. No photos of Schweinshaxe -- yet. But he's got plenty of time.

(I posted the preceding words at Facebook long before lunch on Friday, when it was mid-afternoon in Bamberg.)

Then I watched as the pub crawl proceeded, first to Greifenklau ...

 ... then Schlenkerla.

Instantaneous communications enables me to see the photos before Kim's done draining his glass. The beauty of it is that I've been to these places enough times to possess near-total sensory recall: to taste the beers, smell the food and feel the room. It's grin-inducing.

I'm very fortunate, indeed.

---

Closer to home -- or Jeffersonville, to be exact -- last December we were introduced to Pearl Street Taphouse.

THE BEER BEAT: The Pearl Street Taphouse in downtown Jeffersonville.

I'm delighted for Kelly and Teri that Pearl Street Taphouse (that's downtown Jeffersonville, folks, not downtown New Albany) has come out of the gate so strong. Now comes the long haul ... and best wishes for it. If all goes as planned, my inaugural visit to Pearl Street Taphouse will be on Wednesday during a projected pub crawl of Jeffersonville.

These days, I'm too infrequent a customer anywhere locally to merit status as a "regular" (no Stammtisch for me), though here of late we keep going back to Pearl Street Taphouse for a round whenever engaged in errands by car.

The default remains walking 10 minutes to downtown New Albany. Runner-up has become Pearl Street Taphouse, which will celebrate its first birthday beginning December 1.

Good beer options in Jeffersonville have grown exponentially. I adore the fact that Tony Revak (you know him from Buckhead's) is running the beer program at Parlour, and of course Flat12's taproom is just a short distance away. Still, I like the ambiance at Kelly's and Teri's place; it shouldn't come as any surprise that the size and scale remind me of the Public House of old.

Congratulations to them, and may the birthdays flow into the future.

---

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," unless you're consistently branding a concept, in which case Big Four Burgers kept the same name even when the restaurant's second location opened in the New Albany building made famous by South Side Inn, miles from its namesake Jeffersonville bridge.

Then, when Matt McMahan's next food service idea germinated amid the vast expanse of the former South Side's kitchen, eventually giving birth to District 22 Pizzeria, the decision to take pizza and alcohol delivery to Jeffersonville will not result in the District 10 Pizzeria.

(22 and 10 are the county numbers for Floyd and Clark counties, respectively.)

Pizza, alcohol delivery concept District 22 is expanding, by Caitlin Bowling (Insider Louisville)

Roughly three months after opening the inaugural District 22, owner Matt McMahan said that he is expanding the pizza and alcohol delivery concept.

The first District 22 opened at 110 E. Main St. in New Albany in a space connected to McMahan’s casual dining burger restaurant Big Four Burgers + Beer. The two businesses share some staff and a kitchen.

Now, McMahan told Insider, he plans to do the same thing at the Big Four Burgers at 134 Spring St. in Jeffersonville.

“From Day One, I knew it was too much space,” McMahan said. “I’ve been wanting to do the District 22 for a long time.”

Although the concept is still young, he said that District 22 had done “decent numbers” since it opened, giving him the confidence to move forward with the Jeffersonville store.

“Sharing the space, sharing the utilities, sharing the kitchen, sharing the staff, it is literally a no-brainer,” McMahan said.

The ability to deliver alcohol, he said, has allowed District 22 to differentiate itself from the many other pizzerias in the area.

It's not just swill for home delivery, either.

---

Donum Dei will become the first brewery in our immediate vicinity to add a distillery, taking advantage of a trend toward statutory liberalization during recent years, as driven primarily by Indiana's Republicans (insert befuddled but appreciative emoticon here).

As accompaniment to Donum Dei's announcement, the Indy Star explains the boom in Hoosier "craft" distillation.

New Albany brewery to start making spirits, by Danielle Grady (That Jeffersonville Newspaper)

Rick Otey, a jovial, bearded figure, is already bursting with ideas now that his New Albany brewery, Donum Dei, has a license to distill spirits.

He hopes to start by crafting a beer brandy: a beer that has been distilled. Eventually, he wants to graduate to an all-grain moonshine, a vodka, whiskey and — finally — a gin, flavored with local botanicals.

On Wednesday, Donum Dei, located at 3211 Grant Line Road, became one of the few breweries in Indiana and the only one in Clark and Floyd counties, to also hold an artisan distiller’s permit. (Huber’s Orchard and Winery claims a distiller’s permit, but makes wine instead of beer).

It’s a goal that Otey and his co-owner/wife, Kim Otey, have been working toward ever since they opened their brewery to the public in 2015. At the time, breweries had to be in operation for three years before receiving their distiller’s permit. (Now, it’s 18 months).

---

In closing, there's a beer dinner coming on December 11 at La Chasse in Louisville.

I seldom mention events occurring across the wide expanse of water, over yonder in the big city, but as a reminder, the acclaimed La Chasse is Isaac Fox's restaurant. New Albanian old-timers will remember Isaac from Bistro New Albany and Speakeasy.

The dinner at La Chasse will feature beers from Dauntless Distributing, which brings some of the planet's finest brands into Kentucky, as well as handling Louisville brewers Against the Grain, Monnik and Akasha. Two NABC alums work for Dauntless: Richard Atnip and Kevin Lowber.

Details (menu, beers, price) have yet to be announced, but I'd love to see a good contingent of friends and fellow travelers in attendance. Aside from the beer angle, you owe it to yourself to have a meal at La Chasse.

There'll be no regrets.

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.

Estonia Spring Break 2016: Day Six, and a big surprise in Helsinki.

(As is my custom when posting trip summaries, I'm backdating them to the actual day of occurrence. Previously: Day Five)

A few days before the trip to Tallinn, Diana began selling me on the wisdom of visiting Helsinki on Sunday, May 1. We'd already talked about doing it. The two cities lie only 50 miles apart, with the Gulf of Finland's waters lying between them. It's a two-hour ferry trip, and a plush ride at that.

What's more, May 1 offered a chance to see Finns at play.

In Finland, the May Day celebration has developed from its pagan origin as a feast of spring into a nationwide urban carnival.

Worldwide, May 1st is celebrated as an international working class holiday. In addition to this, in Finland, it is also a traditional spring feast of university students, and the name day of the catholic saint Walburga, commemorated in former times, when Finland still was a catholic country.

Being a mixture of these traditions, the custom of celebrating May Day has spread throughout the country with many people taking part in it, if only to welcome the long awaited spring.

In Finland, May Day is a noisy urban festival, mainly celebrated in towns and cities. In Helsinki, the capital of Finland, the celebration starts on May Day Eve, as the downtown streets, pubs and restaurants start to fill with people in party mood.

The carnival atmosphere is enhanced by people wearing funny or frightening masks, hats, wigs and other party accessories. Colourful balloons, pompoms, party blowouts, serpentine throws and sprays, noisemakers and horns of various kinds are also popular, especially among children. For some people, the festivities also include a rather heavy consumption of alcohol, in the true Nordic fashion.

My wife's insistence on Sunday made perfect sense, and so the tickets were booked, and we boarded the Tallink ferry at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday. Pastries and espresso were available for purchase, and a benevolent staffer gave me a free booze-filled chocolate egg.

The ferry docked in Helsinki right on time, and nature of Diana's urgency became readily evident in the person of this guy waiting to greet us.

Yes, it's Kim Andersen, card-carrying partner in the famous Three Danes of the Apocalypse act on stage and screen. He knew he was to be in Helsinki on business, and when I mentioned the Estonia trip on social media, he contacted Diana for the sake of connivance -- and boy, did they connive.

Good. My day in Helsinki just got far better.

Amid requisite pleasantries, Kim explained the significance of the weekend's various parties, emphasizing the importance of Sunday for Finland's university students -- in fact, anyone who'd ever been a university student. Hence, these views at a public park as people of all ages celebrated.

Note the nautical-style caps. Everyone was wearing them.

We walked to the city center and found seats at a cafe just in time to witness a local May Day parade. It was fully interactive, with songs, applause and heckling from the crowd.

Grasping the spirit of the day, Diana bought a balloon.

Kim's boss joined us for a while, and a leisurely day unfolded in picture perfect spring weather. It was not to be a time for sightseeing in any conventional sense. Helsinki's streets were thronged, and folks were festive. Kim and I hadn't seen each other in person for many years, and there was much catching up to do. We wandered downtown, having beers and snacks, and talking.

I didn't bother keeping beer notes, or caring where we were. It was too much fun. By 5-ish, we'd arrived at the final stop on Kim's orientation tour: The historic Hotel Torni, a compelling 1930s-era with rooftop bar and a view comparable to Lounge 24 in Helsinki. Here's an internet view.

Naturally, Kim already knew that the bar at the top of the Hotel Torni stocks Sinebrychoff Porter, still one of the finest regional beers, and so our final round was special in more ways than one. Diana had the camera, and captured the scene.

The two-hour return to Tallinn was uneventful apart from eating far too much at an expensive buffet, though food was necessary after a day spent drinking from place to place.

Had we gone to Helsinki for a day trip and Kim not been there to surprise me, it's likely we'd have found a tram, a neighborhood and learned more about Helsinki and the people who live there.

But who cares?

I wouldn't trade this wonderful afternoon with Kim for anything in the world, and I'm grateful to Diana for slyly arranging it. It's a memory to be cherished.   

Next: Monday (Day Seven), and the winding down process begins.