Great Boo's up
I’ve been thinking a lot recently. No, hang on, that’s a typo. I’ve been drinking a lot recently. And also thinking about drinking a lot. Thus it has occurred to me that different countries go about their drinking in quite different ways.So, to help you know how to behave as a drinking tourist, I have compiled a short list of how various nationalities approach boozing. For added accuracy, I’ve broken the USA into regions.
Drinking cultures around the world
In Midwest America they don’t really drink socially at all. If they go drinking it’s beer and shooters until everyone’s hammered. Then they drive home.
In New Orleans, everyone drinks all the time. Cocktails and beer are drunk until the town is spinning. Then they get a cab home. The cab driver is also drunk.
In New York they drink in the evening. They’ll go to a bar, have a couple of beers, a vodka and tonic and then get a cab home. This will cost more than the Midwestern and New Orleans nights out put together.
In London they’ll drink at any time from lunch onwards, consuming lager, shorts, cocktails, wine by the bottle or nail varnish remover as long as it’s served in a sufficiently trendy bar. Then they’ll get the night bus home, stopping to urinate and vomit on various national monuments along the way.
In Italy they’ll drink wine by the glass, argue about politics and then go home on their moped.
In France they’ll stay at home, drink wine by the bottle, eat a large meal and talk about the food and the wine.
In Russia they’ll drink any time after waking up, drinking vodka until the bottle is empty. Then open another. Then another until nobody is left standing. Nobody will know how they got home or what they talked about.
In Ireland they’ll drink beer in the pub, sing traditional, incredibly maudlin folk songs a cappella, have a fight and then walk home.
In Japan they’ll drink sake and lager after work, sing pop songs on an expensive karaoke machine then fall asleep on the train home, glowing gently.
In Romania they drink palinka (plum brandy) they’ve distilled in their basement until somebody goes blind. This takes about a glass.
Feel free to add or amend any nations as you see fit. You never know, if we get enough of them we could produce a ‘round the world’ drinking guide.
posted by Peter The Great @ 8:17 AM
3 Comments:
In South Africa some make their own booz: "Most of these drinks contain 3-7% alcohol-the equivalent of a weak beer to a rather weak wine. Sorghum, honey, sugar-cane, sap of palm trees and many other substances have been used in fermentation; in recent times, tea leaves, pineapples, & processed sugar have joined the long list of popular ingredients. Distillation - boiling a fermented drink, catching the steam & condensing it to make a drink (spirit) that is much stronger - was not a traditional technique, but as those who can't afford expensive, highly taxed bottled beer turn instead to illicitly distilled liquor"...
Fancy a pineapple beer?
Like the Blackadder referenc, dude. From "Beer" in Series 2 when his puritanical aunt (Miriam Margolyes) and uncle come to dinner and he is trying to get them to leave him all their money, right?
Well, you're not likely to forget that episode are you Mr Orange, as that was the moment you discovered you had a thingy shaped like a turnip and a pair of comedy breasts, right!
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