Scandinavian Beers

Hello, fellow bloggers. I apologize for the delay, but I have been a bit pre-occupied with finding a new job, dealing with student loan issues, entertaining guests, and yes, building a mathematics curriculum from scratch. None the less, I have done a wee bit of sight seeing during my furlough months, and I can regale you with at the very least, some suggestions.

You may have heard Scandinavia is expensive. $6.50 Silver Bullets at Coors Field are expensive. Scandinavia is outrageous. I'm talking about 200 dollar train rides, 13 dollar cups (NOT bowls) of soup, five Euro coat checks, and of course, 15 dollar beers. No, not growlers full of your favorite micro brew, or boots full of some Bavarian nectar, but a regular, old, run of the mill pint.

They don't taste good when being paired with succulent, Swedish Meatballs made out of moose. You know sometimes when you eat pork meatballs you occasionally have those pieces of fat or cartilage that wind up squirming their way into your teeth? Well the moose was tender and moist like pork, but there was no gristle. It had a subtle flavor which went along great with the mushroom cream sauce and was augmented nicely by the tangy lingonberries. I was so excited for this meal, I ordered a Norrlands Guld, a traditional Scandinavian lager. But I could only gulp down half of the bottle in-between bites. I have never once splurged on a meal and only ordered tap water, but that would have been a good time to start. They don't taste good when Team USA is winning (take that Algeria, you gormless excuse for football team. You didn't deserve to beat Egypt, you didn't deserve to be on the pitch and play for a pathetic nil-nil tie!); And they certainly taste like shit when Team USA loses.

If one were to start in Norway, and work his or her increasingly impoverished ass Eastward, he or she would come to this bitter sweet conclusion: The beers become cheaper, but they also more gravely offend the palate. I could have picked any of the beers, (Carlsburg, Frydenlund, Falcon, Lapin Kulta to name a few) but Finland's Karhu has volunteered to be so atrocious, that is is going to have the Dunce Cap placed on its head. The sinister bear (pictured) on the can isn't false advertising. This beer's bite is as bad as its bark. As with all the other Scandinavian beers, Karhu tastes like Sunday morning. Don't play stupid with me here people, and don't play innocent either. I know you have all helped clean up a party, still stumbling with a B.A.C which is more than twice the legal limit. Wanting to atone for the previous night's streaking, plane jumps, and skeet stains left on the now overturned couch cushion, you volunteer to help pick up the empties. But they're not empty are they? You bet that Gamma Phi pledge's sweet ass they're not. About half way through pouring out that second wounded soldier it hits you.

"I'm slap happy, still drunk, and desperate. I'm going to pay for this with a wicked hangover later. I need to keep drinking to avoid said hangover. I'm too poor to purchase even a tall boy of Milwaukee's Best."

So you stop pouring out the bottle, and mull things over. It's not cold, but the early morning dew give the beer a cool temperature. It looks like beer. Hell, it even foamed in the sink while you were pouring it out. So you take a swig, and horrified by what has happened to something so scientifically pure, you never repeat such an act again. Now take that swig for twelve to sixteen fluid ounces worth, and you have just consumed the barley pop of the Vikings.

It tastes like it was brewed during those frigid arctic nights, transported in a sauna (a Finnish invention) then stored in cool kegs, poured through room temperature pipes, and served in a hot glass fresh out of the dish washer. The minimal amount of bubbles which rise during the initial pour, decrease at an exponential rate so that after five minutes, you don't know whether a beer has been sitting there for a round, an hour, or a day. What makes Karhu the number one offender is that it tastes like the barkeep threw in a shot of Everclear when you weren't looking just because you're an American and must be a fan of Tiger Woods.

The moral of the story is that when you travel to the lands of the first crackers to set foot on North American soil, bring extra loot, eat the moose, check out the scenery, and drink the Budweiser. At four Euros, it's on special and tastes like a bottom fermenting lager SHOULD taste.