Package Tourist Redemption

Day 174
After stopping by the supermarket for my breakfast I headed straight to the Carlesberg Brewery. It was quite far away though and by the time I got there it was almost lunch time. Given, I hadn´t really woken up that early.

I didn´t know if I should really take the tour though. It was quite expensive and I figured that it would be much like all the other brewery tours I´ve done. In the end I decided to go for it, mostly because I was allowed to take pictures. The girl selling me the ticket didn´t mention to me until I had paid20that I would get 2 free beers with the tour. She should have said that first, she would have had me at free beer.

Carlesberg was founded in 1847 by J.C. Jacobson and named after his son. The museum started with a collection of unopened beer bottles from all over the world. The collection was started in 1968 by a road engineer. Eventually it took up way too much space in his house and he decided to give it to the brewery. There were 10,376 bottles in the collection at this point. He has continued to collect and people sometimes give bottle donations. Now there are 17,615 bottles in total. The most interesting ins a Bass No. 1 Strong Ale from the UK dated 1869. This is possibly the oldest bottle in existence.


As for the museum it was a bit similar to what I had seen before. There was a history of beer section, but I won´t repeat that. Apparently women were the first to brew beer in Denmark. During the Renaissance people consumed between 10 and 30 liters a day. This is known as the great Nordic inebriation.

The Carlesberg brewery brought bottom fermented Bavarian style beer to Denmark. The first bottles had swastikas on the labels. This was later changed. In the 19th century brewery workers were given 4 liters of beer for free a day. It´s a wonder anything got done.

After the history there was a small sculpture garden and then came the stables and some really cute horses.

As I walked to the bar to claim my free beers there were some interesting quotes on the walls. "I am a firm believer in the people. If given truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them real facts and beer." Abe Lincoln. "Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza." Dave Barry.

Once in the bar I worked on my journal and drank my beers. Wren I had been checking out the museum there was a really large tour group that was getting in my way. Apparently they had to be on their bus at a certain time and most of them didn´t use all of their free beer vouchers. They gave me a stack of them on their way out. It was more than I could finish in a month of Fridays though, so after a bit I just passed them on to the people at the next table. I had a train to get on and I didn´t want to fall asleep and find myself in Djibouti.

I headed right to the train station and really got there just in time for my train. I was headed to Lund, in Sweden, to try and meet Christine again. This time it worked and we had a nice dinner. Lund is a university town and where Christine went to school. She gave me a little walking tour after eating. It´ s a really cute little town. The only problem was that Christine had that thing to do on weekdays that most people have, I think it´s called work, and couldn´t stay out that late.

When I got back to the hostel I didn´t even bother to try and make friends. I simply went to sleep.