Imbibing through Europe again. Traveling Denmark and Germany and the drinks in between Part 1 of ?

On the hunt

One thing I've always loved about finding good drink and mostly beer of late, is how the ability to travel can put you into some great opportunities.  I have always wanted to go to Germany, but aside from planning my own excursions and an excuse to go I needed a reason other than to just maybe slam beers in Bamberg, or the Franconia/Bavaria regions.  And oh yeah... someday.. I am going to do that...

Enter family.  A member of my family who is an artist, was offered a space at the well known Bauhaus Archive to show her work.  My entire family was going to be there for the show, so what a perfect excuse to show up.  I always wanted to go to Germany since I was the only member my my family who before this trip, had never been there.  My mother was born there, then later moved to live in the United States shortly after World War II.  My sister, had been several times, my Dad tagged along with my Mom in retirement to other areas to see some obscure family members.

But not me.

Thoughts of grabbing and experiencing some of the culture of my family's heritage got me excited. There was going to be much language practice, I was going to finally have real German food in it's right place (which I found eating here growing up in North America ok, but not really exciting and sometimes downright awful), and more importantly... boy was I going to drink a lot of beer.  The time I was to be there ironically, was the period of Oktoberfest.

THIS VACATION IS GOING TO KICK ASS!!!  I screamed from the heavens!

However, with all things that involve travel you have to make plans. Time was booked off for both me and my wife, cat sitters were found (luckily), and then the reality sets in.  This costs money.

Enter opportunity once again.

While figuring out when and where and how long to stay, my wife noticed that flying into Copenhagen was cheaper than Berlin.  What a minute I said.. Isn't that Denmark?  We found out we could take the train from there to Berlin as well, something my wife and I have done in Europe often and love.  There is no better way and enjoyable experience, than riding trains through Europe as we have in the past.  But where would we stay?

My wife remarked, that she had an old college friend, a Dane who always wanted to see us if we came to visit.  I thought FREE ROOM in Copenhagen!!  THIS WE MUST DO!!

In my excitement of visiting someplace I never had before, once again the beer hunting and fooding took over.  Denmark... my fingers tapped furiously into the Google search engine, beer, then to dining... We honestly and seriously thought about making a reservation at NOMA, then it occurred to me that we probably need a time machine to make a reservation, and also thought spending another entire plane ticket flight just to eat there couldn't be justified.

Wait a minute... Denmark has beer!  Denmark has beer that I have never drank before!  It has great bars and beers shops!

I hit up a common grocery store chain in Denmark and looked up many delights and made notes, then it hit me, once I was done planning my thorough attack at killing Copenhagen's beer scene down to a "T", I was going to hit... the motherload of all beers.  There was the Mikkeller bars, the foreign shops.. then it dawned on me, while my wife came up to me explaining what we were possibly in for.

"I just wanted to let you know, that Katrine said we can stay with her", said my wife.

"Did you know the Mikkeller bars server Three Floyd's beers over there!"  I said.

"Her place is really small.." as my wife said realizing my mind was elsewhere.

"Holy crap look at this taplist they have here!"

"It might a bit cramped".

"That's ok, we can handle it, hey man look at these licorice stores they got here."

"She has a 2 and a half year old son...."

"BUT I CAN GET A BOTTLE OF CANTILLON BLÅBÆR FOR SALE THERE!!!"

"Are you even LISTENING TO ME...?!?!"

This is what I got really excited about.  Cantillon releases a blueberry lambic known as blåbær, once a year.  There is only one place in the world you can get this incredibly rare, and highly sought after beer.

It's in Copenhagen at a store called Ølbutikken.  The beer was going to be shortly released there just before I was to arrive.  Coincidence.. no this was DESTINY.

I was going to slay this dragon come hell or high water.

I returned back to my wife's semi furious gaze and let the reality set in.  One thing I have learned is that often your life partner doesn't share the same passions you have, but that's ok.  More importantly they understand things that make others happy.  We do have great enjoyment in same things, but when we travel it's for me food and drink, for her its sights, museums, and the like.

A small apartment, a 2 year old, and the sounds of Copenhagen rustling, the bike paths, the canal, it all seemed to wash away into a fog.

Yup this was going to be an adventure.  We booked it, and we got excited.

I thought I'd write about this travel experience for it was the most interesting and fascinating and some degree most frustrating trips I had ever been on.  There was alot I learned about my family, and also about myself in doing so, and of course, there was an incredible amount of good drink.

I'll be updating this blog with the day to day excursions of how the trip panned out.  It was without question an experience I'll never forget.  And of course I made sure to tell me wife...

and no I am not going to go see that dumb fucking statue.

The Journey Continues... Click here for Part 2.