nin137

Nick's Journal
2006-02-11 15:48:33 (UTC)

Drinking

i was watching "schultze gets the blues" last night (a
horribly boring movie if you have no idea of german
culture). and something struck me. i guess you could say
that something took me back to my old culture. for most of
the movie, schultze and his friends are always drinking,
mostly beer, but sometimes liquor. and this got me thinking
about the cultural difference in drinking between austria
and america.
you see in austria, you are considered and alcholic if you
are a bastard when you are drunk. in america you are
considered an alcoholic if you drink two or more beers in
consecutive nights (and just forget about it if you dare to
drink one during lunch).
this brings me to my commuter train. for the past year and
a half i have seen people drink like fiends on this thing.
they sit down, crack open a steel reserve and just drain it.
then they go to their second steel reserve, crack it, and
just drain it.
i'm sure i've mentioned this in a prior journal entry but
i've had a man finish an entire six-pack in 20 minutes,
while sitting next to me. he just sat down and
non-chalantly uncapped the first bud-light. so it went every
3 minutes. skssst. glug, glug, glug. skssssst. glug,
glug, glug.
i've seen people drain airplane bottles. those little
liquor bottles.
and this got me wondering. where they really like schultze?
were they like my grandfather who had a 22 for lunch? (he
was a dentist by the way). or is there a difference? i
wondered about this for the longest time until i went to
peru and met a couple with their son from portugal. the son
was saying how he didn't like how americans drank, because
they didn't drink in a festive manner. they drank to get drunk.
and i guess this is the difference. these sorry losers on
the commuter train were drinking to lose themselves,
drinking wasn't just a past-time. it was an end in itself.
there was no joy in it whatsoever. it was just to get
drunk. it reminds me of how dave complained of the business
men who would go to bars after their workdays and just drink
with people who weren't even their friends, just so that
they could lose themselves. it's really just a ruse. an
illusion that you aren't drinking alone when you do such things.
now of course you can say that there are europeans who are
guilty of the same, but to the best of my knowledge,
europeans are much more involved in social functions than
americans and those social functions are the cause of the
drinking, whereas these business men outings seem to be
exactly vice-versa. the need to drink drives the gathering.
i dont' know this is just musing of the difference in
culture. about how i thought it was weird when my
grandmother offered me a beer for lunch when i was back in
austria a while back.
i was like, "sherry! how dare you!"
and then i realized. it's cool to get crunk in europe.
these farces aren't pulled over the occassion to create a
facade of legitimacy. you drink and there isn't a stigma
attached.
sure people get drunk and piss on two year olds, but who
hasn't done that? no friend of mine!!! it's just a crazy
difference that you only notice while watching a mediocre movie.




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