Poetry Akhevita
Having learned that I’m going to Norway, friends envy twisted. "Fjords!" – exclaimed one. "Nansen and Amundsen", – Suggested others. "Grieg and Ibsen", – My intellectual friend knew. And only one burned traveler ironically brought: "Oh well". – "What are you nukay?" – I asked suspicious. – "See, – he answered mysteriously. – You are our. " – "And what, there are not loved by our?" – I was worried. Traveler crooked grinned. "Get stale", – He advised, as if I was Nansen and went to the North Pole. "What else is flammable?" – I asked incredulously. "Vodka", – The traveler laconic answered.
I did not store vodka. "All the same, not Moscow with Mikhail Sergeevich", – I thought poisonous. But just in case bought in friendly and, more importantly, a cheap Sheremetyevsky Duty Free Some Whiskey. In the plane I opened a guidebook. The guide promised the terrible prices for alcohol and an implacable fight against drunkenness. I lazily thought that whiskey would need to buy more, and that before the fight against drunkenness, then I am not a drunkard, so it does not concern me.
Quickly slipping passport controls in the pretty airport of Fancy, I cheerfully chapel on the way out when I suddenly a voice was heard from the door to the left: "Sir! Yes yes you, you. Be so kind: customs control".
Customs Control I was not afraid. Take me there was nothing.
"Are you carrying alcohol?" – asked the Customs officer. "Yeah", – I cheerfully agreed. "how many?" – "What’s all?" – I stared in bewilderment. "Alcohol, say how much?" – "Bottles three. Or four", – I felt, I already think so bad, on what light I. "Now let’s see, – said the customs officer, shyly smiling. – You exceeded the importance of importation of alcohol into the country". And silent, ruling me with a bright Scandinavian eye. I also silently. "You do not know customs rules? – he accompanied the voice of the Gestapovsky Stakhanov. – This is a very serious violation". And looked at me expectantly.
Corridor empty. All passengers joyfully sat down in a taxi, and I braided here, in the customs cut, already having time to break the Norwegian laws! The customs officer again interested in the screen with his damned X-ray machine – apparently, recalculating my bottles. "Shoot me", – Stupidly thought I.
– Well, that’s, – said the customs officer finally – for the first time I forgive. But remember and tell your our friends: the import of alcohol to Norway is limited!
Under the lamoclovy sword of this warning, I lived in Norway six months.
Drinking – National Norwegian Sport. In no case because all the Norwegians will drink. And because drinking in Norway – difficult. Norwegian semi-dry law led to the fact that the Norwegians became obsessed with thoughts about alcohol. In any company, the conversation inevitably sooner or later goes to drink. The eyes of the Norwegians begin to burn, they involuntarily lick and coolly sadness about France or Russia, where you can drink. And this is a normal human behavior: it is worth banning people to do something like all their thoughts will immediately rush to the forbidden act.
The operational situation in Norway is what.
Alcohol sold solely in Vinmonopol stores, in our – in monopols (only beer is released in the supermarket). Monsopolka is organized class. At the entrance there are catalogs, painting stocks of a monopoly, so that the buyer did not take time from the seller with questions like: "And it is impossible for the same strong, but only cheaper?" You culturally choose in the catalog the desired alcohol, almost like on an antique auction (especially since the price of it is almost the same as on Rembrandt), and go to one of the numerous counters. Stocks in the monopoly is extensive – from Moscow vodka to Chilean dry wine. but. However, however. First, the monopoly is extremely rare. In the center of the Oslo of their pieces four. Second, Rembrandt Prices. Third, opening hours.
Prices for tempting bottles those still. Norway generally country is stunning dear. But when the cheapest bottle of vodka costs almost forty dollars, and about good whiskey you need to forget at all, here they involuntarily run in the back of the head – or run home for the last money. However, in the purchase of alcohol at such prices there is also their own charm: you know what they indulge in a vice and even dear debauchery. A sip of whiskey in Oslo stands almost as much as in Moscow the pollocks of vodka. "Damn it, – thinks our, – and I, it turns out, a steep guy! Money how much!" But, however, very soon the ours fall into angry, they are firing the heart and politics of the Norwegian state croot.
Opening hours Monsopolki Slice Schedule Yasnel. Monopolka closes approximately when a working day ends in the city. For the first time being in the monopoly spot Friday night, I came to horror. The sullen crowd reminded not that bloody Sunday, not that about the capture of the Winter Palace. However, she first of all reminds of the same as the same 1985. "Och-Chen looks like", – Matters our viciously. Looks like yes no one hundred.
So, you had a misfortune to suck in the midopol of an hour in four afternoon on Friday. Hurrying the crowd, you are squeezed to the entrance and take a special ticket from the machine – with your turn number. The room will be good – 549th or even 761th. You swear, but immediately understand that if there were no bore tickets, then in civilized Norway, in all likelihood, there would be the same fights, as we have had the notorious wine tents of the era of Mikhail Sergeevich and his wife’s raisa Maximovna. Here without turn no one will crawl. Stand, stare on the scoreboard, on which the number comes out. Culture. Civilization. Europe. Her mother is.
The queue is also very interesting. Homeless from the station (where the money is such bums take?). Touching Mothers with Children. Revered gentlemen in strict suits. Foresting foreigners. All, all equalized the damned monopoly.
However, it is not necessary to stand in line. Calculate how quickly it goes, go out, squeeze the fresh air and think about why the state and society love prohibitions and restrictions.
Beer, by the way, in supermarkets cease to let go after seven in the evening. Understand why, just impossible, so pull out all questions from the head.
"And how are they with catering enterprises?" – Thinks our timid, squeezing in the crown cam. And with catering enterprises they are all right. On Sundays in restaurants they do not let anything stronger. But on the other hand, what idiot will order whiskey at such prices? Even vulgar local beer in the bar will cost you so much dollars in six and a half.
In the beer supermarkets cheaper, but caution is needed here. Oh, the ours abroad, the ours abroad. Once in the city of Bergen ("Capital of Fjordov, Hanseatic City!") I was in a situation. There were us four – me, my Moscow friend (which appears to everyone as a colonel of the Red Army Rudolf Slate Abel), his wife and my friend is American. My friends in Norway have just come and the local high costs were perceived by tragically. It was decided not to go in Egniya, but to buy a delightful local smoked and salt fish and beer and put in the street. Bought supplies, began to look for a place. I cowardly offered a secluded corner in the port between the Seiner and the trawler, which will be said to the fact that sailors and in Norway Sailors. However, the Moscow friend ironically looked at me and unmistakably chose the most prominent place: bench and table in the middle of the square. Sat down, laid off with fish and beer. Only the second bottle was opened – someone’s shoulder: Tuk-Tuk. Open, police.
However, it was not painful. The police turned out to be a girl in the form that is unlocked (but firmly) reported that they were able to plug in the streets. It’s clear?
Well though smoking can.
our does not know how to live without asking eternal questions. What to do – pretty clear. Have nowhere to sprinkle, therefore, like everything, by stones. But who is to blame.
In the case of our anti-alcohol campaign, Mikhail Sergeic was guilty to blame. In the case of Norway, in all likelihood, Puritanism played a fateful role. As the enlightened Norwegians assure, local Protestantism is especially harsh. Indeed, on Sunday, almost everything is closed, and in Easter and at all the life freezes for five days, so not that Gina – Bread will not buy. However, I don’t know the subtleties of Protestantism, I only know that the dry law is almost a peer of Norwegian statehood: Norway was marked from Sweden in 1905, in 1919 introduced a full dry law, and in 1932, somewhat retreated, – semi-dry, which safely and lived to day today and all will survive us.
Some towns have preserved dry law, and in local hotels alcohol served only visitors. However, enlightened Norwegians from Oslo with a malicious light in the eyes notice that somehow in these highly moral towns there are a lot of homes with the first floor without windows. As it is believed, on the first floor they are engaged in moonshine and drunkenness. And this leads us to an interesting question: how the Norwegians themselves are struggling with their morality.
The person is still invincible as invincible and its weakness. So, the station in Oslo, as in any city, is a place where bums, alcoholics and drug addicts hang out. There are in the capital and the area for the kind of institutions that are considered to be "Doubtful". Etc.
So, the response of Norwegians on a semi-dry law has become a familiar moonshit. However, I myself did not have a Norwegian self-sughd. Familiar assured that "All cooks" – Naturally, besides them; try the same product is resolutely impossible. What is even in our. So to speak, common cultural roots: Vikings Kyiv founded. Nevertheless, as a conscientious researcher must recognize that the prosperity of moonshine is not proven, and what is approved that "All cooks", So evil languages are terrible pistol.
But there is a second Norwegian response to the dominance of clerics and Popovshchina: ferries, a thing, a our friend, but from another side. Long enough, year so in the 86th, I was in Tallinn and found myself on diplomatic admission, it seems in the hotel "Viru" – In any case, somewhere on the top, from where a wonderful Tallinn raid has been perfect for. The reception spacing five with a plus, but at some point the Estonian foreign minister looked out the window and calmly said: "Perhaps it’s time for us to diverge. I see a steamer in the harbor "Georg Ots" and lucky to us Finnish tourists". Feats of Finns, who hit Peter and Tallinn, were legendary in those days.
Norwegians in Estonia and Russia do not go: far and wild. However, there are excellent ferries departing in Denmark and Germany. Honestly, I did not really believe in what a familiar story was told about the ferries. As long as one day at the weekend I saw passengers, with a ferry of convergent. More precisely – unloaded.
In short, a ferry ticket is fairy cheap. Some Norwegians (I emphasize – some) cheerfully go on the road along the North Sea, to the Danish or German coland, almost without coming: on the ferries alcohol cheap – Duty Free. Customs, however, is also there, and more liter of strong drinks, as I showed my sad experience, it is impossible to import. So what is excess of the norm in the stomach. Norway is generally a common country, and when you see the Sunday morning in the insole, in our, a drunken man waving a half-breeding bottle of whiskey in the tram, in some way being scared.
There are, of course, the third way of fighting the semi-like law – spit on everything and cut out the official way. When you meet in a drunken bar, cheerfully falling out of the lady toilet, only then you understand how high in Norway is the standard of living.
But it seems that most Norwegians are legitimately standing in line in a monopoly, alcohol quietly saves. Moreover, there is something to savor: Scandinavia gave the world not only Nansen and Ibsen, but also Aqua Vitae, Akhevit is a forty-graduate tincture, with a bouquet of exquisite, tart, often by Tinn. Akhevit Goldist, gentle, excites brutal appetite and generally noble, like a bride. Norwegians belong to it in poetic (the ours with vodka positive) and – on the droplet, on the droplet.
But. Poetic relationship with alcohol is like a Platonic Roman. And there is, I have a suspicion that all the Norwegians, going abroad, seriously, and not in the ferry alcohol-tour, sooner or later, greedyly rushed into.
Here, by the way, the story. I returned to Norway from Frankfurt. In the German waiting room was quiet, sleepily and sad. In general, it is boring to live in this light, gentlemen. Announced landing. And then the hall was filled with the magic sound, saying that the genus Scandinavia is actually a very live lady: "Click Click" – I went chime bottles from the bags of Norwegians returning to our Puritan, but still a pretty homeland.
