Tipsy Tours of Speyside

Under pagoda-shaped cupolas all along the River Spey, goose-necked stills steam and gurgle.  This is whisky country at its most densely congested - a full half of Scotland's distilleries are found in the Speyside region.  Driving along the roads is like taking a quick tour of a bar shelf: there's Balvenie, here's Glenfiddich, now we're passing Glenlivet and Johnnie Walker.
We took tours at three distilleries over two days, ambling through forests of copper stills and dank, cask-filled cellars.  Our first was Glenfiddich, where the countryside around was full of shaggy Highlander cows.  Glen Grant, the second tour, was nestled by a little stream with autumn-brown gardens.  At Cardhu, on the day we left the region, the small clutch of stone buildings basically made up the entirety of Kockando village.

Of the three distilleries we toured, the Glenfiddich plant was by far the biggest and most commercial.  We were shown a sweeping, highly-stylized video about the founder of the company and the heather-filled highlands around the town (lots of slow-motion, rain effects and mist).  The video was more mythology than nuts and bolts, and made the process seem like alchemy more than industry.
The truth is, whisky is kind of a benevolent magic for the towns along the River Spey.  In the Cardhu tasting room we were shown a photograph of the distillery's founders.  The elderly, craggy-faced husband and wife wore muddy, peasant clothes and worn boots.  "They were arrested two or three times before they finally got a liquor license," we were told.  Distilling was that kind of game in the 1800's, one for half-outlaws in the highlands with little money and small operations.  Today, it's the realm of globalized giants.  Not only is whiskey from here shipped and revered all over the world, but the world comes tramping back to Aberlour and Dufftown to take a look.  Alcohol tourism is a major boon for the area, and the Speyside distilleries are big local employers.

The magical process is really pretty simple, even if it's carried out on a large scale - it's both romantic and mechanical.  "Malted" barley - which is grain that's been allowed to begin sprouting and then dried out - is put into huge wash tanks (called "mash tuns") and soaked in hot water.  Sugar is released from the grain and seeps into the water, which is then pumped into a big fermentation tank, where yeast is added.  Less image-conscious distilleries use stainless steel, but all three plants we visited had wooden tanks, which were almost thirty feet tall (what you can see in the picture is just the very top).  Some of these mammoth things were as old as fifty years; their wood was black and soft with age.
The sugary liquid is left in the tanks for a day or two while it ferments. When it's done, it's basically a strong beer, at about eight percent alcohol.  This frothy liquid is sucked through tubes and spat out into the stills, where the actual distillation process begins.

The deep luster of copper isn't all for show.  The metal helps remove impurities in the liquor, and it transfers heat well… but the dull, orangish gleam is also regally impressive, especially when it's executed at this scale.
The stills are heated from below and (I'm oversimplifying) the alcohol inside evaporates and goes up the neck into a cooling coil, where it becomes liquid again.  Because alcohol becomes a vapor at a lower temperature than water, more alcohol is removed from the "mash" than other liquids, which stay in the bottom of the still.  After the first distillation, the alcohol content of the putative whisky is about thirty five percent.  A second run-through, in a "spirit still" raises that number to about sixty five or seventy percent.  It's clear, strong, undrinkable stuff.  A few years sitting in a barrel mellows the taste, adds color and reduces the strength.

Down in a corner at one end of each distillery was a locked, brass and glass case, about the size of a coffin.  Inside, visible behind the glass, hot, clear liquid splashed and flowed from copper tubes. Beakers and hydrometers filled, emptied, bobbed and gave readouts. These were the most fascinating things, like relics of some fancy, 19th century laboratory - and we weren't allowed to photograph them.
"Nothing secret," our tour guide at Cardhu told us.  "But we can't take any chances with electronics."  They were worried, as all the distilleries are, about an explosion.  The hot liquid flowing through the locked box was new, very-high-proof liquor, and the air was thick with the scent of alcohol.  After a few minutes near the box, we began to feel slightly tipsy.  Any little spark ("faulty wiring" was what they worried about) could blow up the entire town.

The glass boxes are locked by the British government - the distilleries are only allowed to open them if something breaks inside.  "Every shipment of grain we get is recorded," the Cardhu guide told us.  "The government knows exactly how much whiskey we should get at the other end." They can't even taste their product until they've paid the tax.  When I asked the tour guide at Glen Grant about how the distillers knew things were going okay, he told us that it was all computerized.  "There are instruments inside the pipes," he said.  "We get feedback from those, and then we make a few decisions."
Really, there are few decisions to be made - the whole process almost runs itself.  At Cardhu we were told that it's possible for one person to run the entire distillery by themselves, at full capacity, for a whole shift.  That includes every part of the process, from the raw grain to the barrel-ready liquor.  "We're open twenty four hours, every day," she said.  "Even Christmas.  Even the royal wedding!"

At Glen Grant, in the village of Rothes, we took a tour with a group of Welshmen as the evening grew dark.   From room to room, warehouse to storehouse, the smell in the air changed.  In the beginning, the odor was of barley and autumn fields.  By the fermenting tanks and mash tuns, it was deeply sweet, a cross between a bakery and rotting apples.  In by the stills, the air was almost palpably thick with sharp, fiery liquor.  In the aging buildings it was rotting wood, old sherry and damp earth. Even though Glen Grant's a big business (and part of the giant Campari multi-national), it was a reminder of how pleasing the alcohol process can be.
And then there's the tasting.  Every tour included a dram or three, even Glenfiddich's, which is free.  Speyside whiskies are generally light, clean and have very little peat - much easier to drink than the smoke and brimstone stuff of Islay.

Something about distillery tours… they're all the same.  We came to expect everything about the routine, from the jokes about fermented grain waste being fed to cattle ("we have very happy cows in Scotland") to the familiar refrain about the evaporated alcohol that escapes from whisky casks ("we call that 'the angel's share'").  The mash tuns were the same, as were the fermentation tanks, and the stills differed mostly in arrangement.  The tastings had diffrerent styles, but it was the same general idea - swirl, taste, add water, taste again, agree that it was very tasty, say thanks and leave. Essentially, if you've been to one you've been to them all.  Which is to say, definitely go on a tour.  Just don't go to all of them. And don't try to do too many in one day, at least without a designated driver.

The Mecca of Irish Trad

The eaves are arched, the windows stained-glass, the music spills out over the congregation from a balconied stage.  The allusions to church architecture inside The Quays in Galway are obvious.  Like a cathedral, there are aisles and corridors, rooms off to the sides, doorways that lead to spaces for quieter reflection.  The main altar was a long, two bartender bar.  The shorter bar near the doorway, presided over by an older man in less of a rush, was the confessional.  We sat at a table for a meal and two pints.   Boiled bacon, cold cod mash, a beer and a cider.  "Is there live music tonight?"  A tall young American asked the front room bartender who gave a look that read 'of course' and simply said, "you'd better go back there if you want a good place for it."  We followed the overheard advice and resettled ourselves in the main space which proceeded to fill up around us.  It was heaving by the time Prospect Hill began their set.

Every night of the week, you can count on live traditional music at at least a handful of Galway's pubs. The Crane, on the West bank of the river, away from the concentration of central pubs, promises nightly live music in their upstairs bar. We sat at stools downstairs, across from an inebriated old man who was passionately schooling a young stranger about politics. We figured, when we saw people walk in with instruments, we'd know to follow them upstairs. One after another, customers came in.  Cold hands deep in their pockets, they would approach the bar and ask for a Guinness before the door had closed completely behind them. We drank and waited and then suddenly, a lively reel broke through the room. The corner booth's coffee drinkers had gone into superman's phone booth and transformed into a superband without even standing up.  The crowd continued to talk, but were sure to clap and hoot at the end of each set of reels.  A round of applause, the next round of drinks.

During the day, music fills the streets.  Buskers are planted around each corner with open guitar cases sparsely covered in a confetti of coins.  They close up and move under an awning during the bouts of rain, having a coffee, staying dry. Then, they're right back out again in their spot. Or a new one.  Their routines were anything but monotonous. The day after we saw the "MacNamaras Band" (above), Santa had ditched his accordion, Elvis and the O'Bamas, and picked up an electric banjo and amp in another spot. You'd see a guitarist alone one day and with a group of guys another, like the streets were filled with a single band that disassembled and reassembled at their whim. One big jam session.

"Trad," as traditional music is colloquially called, is the pervading sound of Galway.  Street musicians may blend it with acoustic pop or soft rock, but the roots are unmistakable.  The young members of Prospect Hill's set gave us an hour long primer in Irish trad, and hooked us in to searching out more. The vocalist put down her banjo for a sean-nós ('in the old style') song, sung in a high Irish-language chant style. When they threw in a more contemporary sounding folk tune, the lyrics were a lamentation in the tradition of caoineadh songs of sorrow. Of course, traditional Irish music has always been made for dancing and the reels were the main focus of the night. Reels are fast-paced tunes in the vein of a jig or polka or waltz, a repetition of measures with a set meter.   In tow were the Reel Masters, a step-dancing duo who brought down the house, jumping over brooms, stomping and twirling along to the banjo, accordion, mandolin, guitar and bodhrán (a traditional Irish drum).

Live music in Galway has a specific feel to it, a dynamic between musician and audience that doesn't really match up with anything I've experienced before.   It's more fluid, like out from any crowd can emerge a musician who, after his or her set, blends right back in with a Guinness in hand. Sometimes, a scheduled set would start without us knowing immediately where the string-plucking was coming from.  Then, in the corner we'd spot a duo whose hands worked feverishly across strings.  Sometimes the crowd would quiet down, stand at attention, clap afterwards.   Other times, the din would only get louder as voices struggled to be heard over the tunes.  We could never really tell which way things would go, but everyone else knew whatever the local code was.

If the musicians indoors competed with conversation, the ones outdoors had a tougher opponent. Rain. The street musicians are as much a part of the outdoor atmosphere as the infamous Galway rain and the two forces often jostled for attention, taking turns silencing each other. Or maybe just giving each other a rest. A short, heavy rainfall acted as a curtain and the performers would pack up and hurry offstage (and into a pub or under or awning). Then, the curtain would rise again and the sun would cast its spotlight on the performance once more.  Showtime.

In Galway, live music is a centerpiece and a soundtrack. In the forefront or in the background, it is always around. No one complains when a soccer match is turned off because a set is about to begin. Guitar cases are strung across backs at the rate of messenger bags. That woman sitting next to you with a tea or that man whose had a few too many Smithwicks may be the headliner. On Halloween night, two bouncers stood outside The King's Head and college kids piled through the door in droves. Inside, a man in a turtleneck played pop/rock under neon lights. It was far from traditional folk music, but it also wasn't the DJ set I'd expected by looking at the crowd. Maybe if it had been trad, the act would have had an easier time getting people's attentions. Maybe not.

A compilation video of some of the trad sessions we enjoyed in Galway - with a conclusion that would make Michael Flatley sweat.

Halloween in Galway

The night got grimmer as it got later - pirates vomited beside the River Corrib, ghouls with bottles stumbled in the streets, scantily dressed cats and bloody brides crowded the bars.  An awful sounding fistfight began in the early hours outside our window; accompanying it was much shouting and pleading.  In the morning, we saw spots of blood on the concrete and broken bottles in the gutter.  Bits of costume were strewn everywhere in the wet. A report was in the paper about a man whose costume caught on fire.  He'd been dressed as a sheep, in cotton balls and gauze, and had burns on eighty percent of his body.  The Galway nightclub he'd been at wasn't far from us.  Frightful stuff indeed.
We spent Halloween in Ireland, where the holiday was born, and came away a little unsettled.

It's hard to tell what to believe when it comes to pagan traditions and festivals - this is the stuff of legend and misty history after all - but most historians say that Halloween's roots can be traced back to the Celtic Irish festival of Samhain.  As far back as the first century BC, Samhain marked the changing of the seasons and a time when the dead could make their way out into the world of the living - there were bonfires and animal slaughtering, feasts in honor of ancestors and costumes to trick evil spirits.
The pagan rituals have mostly been replaced, but the frightfulness still resonates powerfully in Ireland.  This isn't a holiday for children.

We saw little trick-or-treating, which seemed odd at first but made sense later.  A few kids were in costumes, but there weren't many and there were even fewer after dark.  Parents keep their young goblins and witches inside on Halloween night, we've learned, because the streets are just too dangerous. After a fun, energetic parade, Galway began to spin out of control and tilt toward alcohol fueled revelry, fights and firecrackers.
These three girls were asking people for money in a pub before they got chased out by the bartender ("Go on!" he said, not quite angrily.  "You can't be in here without your parents!")

Dublin police and firefighters were attacked through the night by people throwing stones and bottles.  In one instance, emergency service vehicles were ambushed when they responded to a phony call for help.  The night is wild by tradition.  In Galway, firehouses and ambulances were "stretched to the limit" by the fires and drunken chaos, but nobody seemed surprised.  Luckily for us, the wickedest stuff happened after we were in bed.
Ghoulish and bloody costumes were more in vogue than ironic and humorous, but there were some laughing exceptions.  Two friends wandered the streets dressed as a beer bottle and a banana.  One girl went out as a twister board.  This young man was… something.

It sound as though we didn't have fun, but we actually did. A real excitement pervaded the early going.  The weather was fine and clear, the moon was not much less than full, the streets were crowded and the pints were flowing.
In the dead of night, we listened to a girl beg "nobody wants to fight anymore," as the sound of blows echoed in the darkness.  On the bus out of town the next day, a group of highschool boys called friends on their cellphones - "we've been in Galway.  Nope, haven't slept.  Bars were too crowded, couldn't get in anywhere.  Just drank silly inside the flat."

Halloween is such a place-specific event.  In America, it speaks most directly to childhood and dead-leaf nostalgia. Two years ago, in Krakow, the streets were quiet and somber in advance of All Saint's Day.  In Barcelona last October, around the time of La Castanyada, the few people celebrating seemed intoxicated partly by the novelty of it all.  Here in Galway, we felt that the city was on the verge of falling apart in the dark.

Here's a video of the parade, with all of its drumming and twirling.  A note: Rebecca suggested that I name this post "Hall O'Ween"

Winter Comes to the Danish Coast

On the bus from Odense to the village of Faaborg we passed thousands of Christmas trees.  Funen island is full of them, planted for some future yule.  The air was cold, but not yet freezing - the rain stayed wet, the ground stayed green.  It felt like fall.  By the time we left town and the island, a feeling of winter had come over the place, drawn in from the dark sea beyond the harbor.  Mornings dawned with white breath, coats and cloaks were pulled tight.  In this part of northern Europe, where thatched roofs and half-timbered houses still stand sentinel next to ancient fields, winter feels like the natural mode of being.  It's a part of the oldness and rockiness of the landscape.  In three coastal towns - Faaborg, Kolding and Vejle - waves and cold air mixed, and the wind began to smell like snow.

At Oasen Bodega, a salty place with a palm tree on the wall, we were greeted by a cloud of cigarette smoke and curious stares.  The regulars were drinking bottles of Carlsberg beer and nodding at one another.  One old lady fondled my butt as I passed her on the way to the bar.  A glassy eyed old man gave Rebecca his facebook address.  Not long after we sat down, a taxi driver came through the door and began calling for John.  John was reluctant and feigned surprise, but there was a powerful force at work - likely his wife.  He stumbled out the door with the help of a friend's shoulder.  None of this happened with any great urgency, or even much movement at all.
The scene was like one from Chaucer's winter tavern.  We could have come back in April, when the land was thawing out, and found the same group sitting on the same stools.  It reminded me of bears settling in for hibernation - eyes closing, heartbeats slowing, mouths slackening, the world growing quite dark around the edges.  This is what living on a winter island must be like.

Sea and land mix easily here, because traveling overland through Denmark is deceptive.  The bridges and train causeways make separate pieces of land feel like one entity. It's all very flat. Copenhagen has an air of solidity, and I never felt like I'd been off the mainland until I was on the mainland.  This after crossing bridges from Zealand to Funen to Jutland, which is attached to Germany and the rest of the continent but isn't much higher above the waves. So Funen feels like an island, but also doesn't.  The land is wide-horizoned, and no-one is hemmed in, but the people still share a closeness - everyone grew up with the same sea around them.
The leaves were being blown out of the streets, leaving bare cobblestones behind.  Faaborg is an old place, where once a huge fishing fleet docked.  The houses are pretty and close together, painted in bright, earthy russet and yellow.  On our last night, we began wondering when the weather was going to turn - the season had already tilted into winter, a storm felt inevitable.  Everyone had shut themselves up indoors.

In the castle town of Kolding, on a fjord of the same name, we saw our first snow of the season.  It wasn't much, and it came out of a bright blue sky, but it was unmistakably snow.  The flakes were the hard, bouncing kind that might have been sleet, but it wasn't sleet.  We caught the sight through a window. A team of construction workers stopped what they were doing and looked around at the sudden white.
Later, in the early dark of a late October night, we found ourselves surrounded by a throng of people at another pub.  There was no lethargy - the cold and season had invigorated the crowd, and they drew together for comfort.  There was a lot of beer to drink and a quiz game to listen to - a man stood up to call out questions and we all scribbled on sheets of paper.  He spoke in English, which was surprising, but nobody had a hard time and it was lucky for us.

Vejle is drawn as far away from the water as it can be without really leaving the shore.  The harbor and town are at the far end of a narrow, long cut of water.  This far inland the ocean is calm and full of sea grasses and gulls.  A little fish market was set up at the head of the water, near the bestilled boats and a big factory.  This scarred shark's head rested on a bucket of ice.  It wasn't clear if the meat was for sale or if there was some other meaning.

In the morning, Velje was coated with a thick frost.  The dense grass by the water was white and stiff, the air was frozen dry.  Dead leaves lay on the sidewalk, coated in patterns of crystal.  The day would cloud up and grow windy, but those early hours were as clear and bright as any midwinter dawn. Our hands and ears were cold - the first pinches of real cold we've felt this year - but the sun was warm on our faces.  We walked along the fjord and listened to the birds squawking.  The nordic winters are dark, but the season has some brightness too.

Carlsberg Bryghus

In winter-hardened, cobblestoned Copenhagen, the thing to drink is beer.  Sure, Danes will dabble in wine or sip at a cocktail, but look at any bartop and you're likely to see more bottles and half-liter glasses than anything else.  And in those glasses, chances are, one is likely to find one of two beers - Tuborg or Carlsberg - even if the color varies and the taste does change.  These two pillars of Danish brewing are actually part of the same company, and, until recently, they bubbled to life at the same place.
In the heart of Copenhagen, on a little rise (nothing in Denmark approaches a real hill) that catches the October sunlight, is one of the grandest and horsiest breweries we've ever seen.  We spent the better part of a morning and noontime there, eating, drinking and looking at barrels.

The Carlsberg plant is so large that it actually constitutes an entire neighborhood of Copenhagen.  The buildings are of fantastic brick and copper, the architectural style is pure 19th century industrial pomp.  Approaching the main gates is akin to walking up to a palace - huge elephants hold up a tower, statues peer out of windows, theres a lighthouse and gardens, chimneys and archways.  A touch of Willy Wonka pervades the place, lent by the magic of booming business and rivers of product, but
it's mostly a show; the brewery was decommissioned in 2008, and the neighborhood (known as "Carlsberg-distriktet") is in the process of being developed into a livable space.  Carlsberg's made a modern dance center out of their old mineral water building, and the bottling plant has become a conference and exhibition space; soon, apartments will begin going in.  Still, beer is the dominant theme.  A small brewery remains in use for specialty products, there's a museum, stables and a visitors complex.

For those with visions of musty cellars, dripping taps and booming barrels, a visit to Carlsberg might seem a little sanitary at first.  The museum's collection mostly consists of old wagons and beer trucks (there's even a Tuborg rickshaw, from India, and a Chevrolet in the shape of a cask), with a smattering of copper tanks and ancient laboratory vials.  You can certainly get a sense of age, but most of the facilities have been thoroughly modernized.  There are loads of videos and two slick taverns, colored lights, giftshop soccer jerseys, scent machines and foosball tables.  In the same way that beer advertisements blend "sepia-tinted tradition" with "awesome nightclub," Carlsberg has tried to amp up its artifacts with flatscreens and glass walls. This is a beer tour, after all, not some lame skansen.

The stables were a highlight because it's hard for mammoth animals not to act genuine.  Carlsberg's "ambassadors" - some two dozen Jutland draft horses - live in a bright, clean space somewhere between the giftshop cash registers and the stools of in-house Bar 1847.  We'd seen the one-ton horses pulling tourist carts around town, but not up close.  Jutlands are huge.  They were used extensively for pulling loaded beer-carts, and became known as bryggerheste, or "brewery horses."  The breed almost died out in the 1970's, but has been revived a little since.  One can pet the ambassadors (who look a little bored), watch them get hitched, see them trot out the gates and then return in a sweat.

Carlsberg was founded in the 1840's by an industrialist named J. C. Jacobsen, who began a laboratory that developed beer yeast for pilsners and the concept of pH.  The beer company grew rapidly, and began exporting in 1868 - its distinctly pale pilsner was a hit in Europe, and by the 20th century Carlsberg was among the largest breweries on the continent.
It wasn't until later, though, that the brewing company became the giant that it is today.  In the 1960's, the Carlsberg group began brewing internationally and snapping up competing brands - including Tetley, Baltika, Kronenbourg Lav, Mythos, various asian products and (Danish competitor) Tuborg.  Still, it's the company's original beer that dominates the world, making Carlsberg the fourth largest beer company on earth.  It accounts for forty percent of all beer sales in Russia and - as far as we can tell - is stocked in every supermarket from London to Tbilisi.

Included in the price of admission to the visitor's center are two (admittedly small) beers at either of the on-site bars.  At Bar 1847, the popular pour was a new beer - Jacobsen's brown ale.  It was sweet and supposedly inspired by British style beers.
Outside in the insipid sunshine, we wandered in autumn garden and listened to the clomping of large hooves.  There was a decorative hops greenhouse and a miniature version of Copenhagen's famous little mermaid statue.  The day was warm, even a little beer was enough to feel sleepy.

The other "tavern" is really a slick, multi-floor extravaganza where families eat lunch above a working bottling plant.  We ate herring, pate and pork meatballs at Jacobsen Brewhouse and Bar, watched Carlsberg commercials and drank pilsner.  It was a light-wood and stainless steel space, outfitted with three copper vats and a long, shiny bar.  The food was good, the atmosphere convivial, the crowd substantial.

Production's been moved west, to Fredericia in Jutland.  Perhaps its just as well - modern beer brewing has little to do with rolling barrels and building with brick.  It would have been fun to see the clattering rows of bottles and the blur of filling and capping.  But, mostly empty, this visit made for a more relaxing day.  After our second beer and a game of foosball, full of fish and liver, we got back on our bikes and rode down the cobblestoned hill to Copenhagen - it really felt as though we'd been away.
J. C. Jacobsen famously had a "beautiful" chimney built for his brewery (the curving, many-detailed "winding smokestack") because he wanted to show the world that a factory could be more than just an industrial site.  He wanted grandeur for his brews.  And, in the movies that play in the museum, you can hear echoes of that old splendor.  In one film, men sing lusty songs as they clean giant casks and harness elephantine horses - the songs sound almost nationalistic, anthems devoted to beer, as though Carlsberg were a nation unto itself.
At least the horses are still just as big.

Northern Roads and Reflections

At the Hotelli Inari, in far northern Finland, people come more to drink than to sleep.  There are beds upstairs, according to a pricelist, but we're not sure what kind of rough-edged person might sleep in them.
Downstairs in the bar, a full range of Lapland characters came out on a recent Wednesday night.  Bleary eyed men sat slumped over beers.  Young women in perfume and high-heels gathered to laugh and chat. A group of Norwegians were in town to celebrate something.  Inari is a Sámi town, on the shore of a many-armed lake of the same name.  The arctic circle is some two hundred miles south.  There are four different languages spoken in Inari's woods and along the back roads.  A man and woman came to set up Karaoke in the bar.  When they turned on the machines, a waitress told them to wait a bit - the music was too loud for the regulars.  This is the slow-simmering life in Finnish Lapland.

The landscape in this part of the world is flat, wet and mossy.  Lakes and ponds appear everywhere in the northern forests, and dry land can seem only temporarily firm - walk anywhere in these woods, and you'll find places where the ground is soggy and soft with water.  Lake shores aren't exactly distinct boundaries, the liquid bleeds into the low rock like watercolor paint over a pencil line.  One could get lost forever here, in such featureless space.
In October, the Arctic days didn't feel too short, but the feeling of darkness approaching had soaked into everything.

Why would people live here, when it seems so much like a wasteland?  Reindeer and salmon.
Finnish Lapland is also called Sápmi, just as the indigenous Lapp people are known as Sámi in their native tongues.  The native people have lived here for thousands of years because their home is extraordinarily rich in food.  Even today, fishermen pull sixty pound salmon from the Tana river, and herds of reindeer are kept in the forests and fells.  We came across these traditional riverboats up near the border with Norway.  Boats like these are used for checking and maintaining the Sámi salmon nets that are strung from trellises in the water.  Nowadays, angling is more popular than netting.  We passed many signs advertising fishing excursions on the roadsides.

Driving in Lapland is a hypnotic experience.  Trees and water pass, the horizon opens and closes, the distances become almost theoretic.  In some ways, it reminded me of traveling in the American west, where two hours away is "close by."
When a house or a gas station does pop up, it's an event.  At Kaamasen Kievari, which sits somewhere close to two intersections, a traveler can eat, drink, sleep, gamble, send mail or just get some diesel and coffee.  It's not a big place, but it has most of what anybody could need.  The menu was heavy on reindeer, most of the daytime crowd was drinking, the sound of slot machines was a quiet constant.  The road outside is flat and fast through the trees.  If you don't need to stop, there's no reason to slow down.

A big part of the local economy here is Norwegian bargain shopping.  Finland's wealthier neighbors come across the border to buy beer, liquor and gasoline.  Näätämö is a nothing town.  It's no more than a few muddy parking lots, two supermarkets, some rusting cars and fuel pumps.  There aren't any houses - at least, none that you can see from the road.  We know someone must live in Näätämö; there was a row of mailboxes beside the K-market.  The border is ten minutes away.  Square-jawed men and women come down from the northern fjords with petrol cans and leave with bottles of vodka.

We felt, traveling here, that even manmade things had somehow become wild. There are boats everywhere, but we never saw one out on the water.  They just sat, pulled up onto the shore, filling up with rainwater, their engines taken off, looking more like driftwood than transportation.  Log trucks are common, but seem more animal than human as they careen down dirt roads.  Mailboxes sit on the roadsides, with no house in sight - they look like giant mushrooms that have sprung up in the rain.

Ivalo stands out as a metropolis in this emptiness, with its few supermarkets and three roundabouts.  We pulled into one of the two gas stations for lunch. Dolly Parton was on the radio, men in chainsaw chaps stood by their pickups outside.  The lunch buffet was popular with the locals - people sat down quietly with trays of reindeer-hamburg pasta and squash soup.  There were video slot machines at some of the tables, two euros for five shots.  Some of the old men wore cowboy hats.  Included in the price: coffee, bread, salad, herring, juice and lingonberries in syrup.

Finnish Lapland doesn't feel particularly European.  In a lot of ways it feels like parts of remote middle America - I was reminded of Michigan's upper Peninsula more than once.  The people are of a similar type: independent, citizens of vast spaces.  That's not to say that it felt American either.  Maybe better to say that there's a kinship between northern places, as though the circular world near the pole is a separate continent from those attached southern extremities.  Every part of life here is edged in tradition, but the existence is modern - the Sámi part of the land's identity is a picture frame, not the whole portrait.
We stopped the car often to get out and look at one lake or another.  Sometimes the water stretched miles into the distance, sometimes it was just a pool in the grass.  We got caught up photographing the reflections of trees and rocks.  It rained and cleared up.  We hoped to see northern lights at night, but there was nothing but darkness and clouds.  Lapland in October is a meditation more than experience.

Autumn Light and Reddish Brews

Down a dirt turnoff on Fasta Åland, on a day when the island's fall foliage was peaking, a bartender named Katarina didn't know what to tell us.  We were in Stallhagen Brewery's countryside pub and I'd just asked her what she had.  "Today…" she said, scanning her shelves and bar, "today I have ten… twelve beers."  Were they all Stallhagen's? "Oh yes," she said.  "They're all our slow beer.  Made right here."  It turned out that she had more than twelve beers, and that the brewery would become the unexpected focus of our day.
We'd set out some hours earlier on a pair of bikes, trying to ride across the island to an old fortress called Kastelholm.  We could have made it to the castle, but stopping for lunch slowed the process.  So did a tour of the brewery.  Tasting Stallhagen's beers brought us to a crawl.  Autumn days are just too short.  Kastelholm will have to wait for another visit.

Åland is a lethargic place anyway (at least in the offseason). A flat landscape of rocks and trees that peters out into the Baltic, the archipelago never feels much higher than the surface of the sea.  Our ride was easy, the way was quiet.  Traveling on back roads and bike paths, we passed windmills and red barns.  There were dwarf sheep in the fields and swaybacked draft horses.  We stopped for a moment near a cow pasture where wide-headed Angus steers watched us.  The leaves have been changing for weeks, but the color had just reached it's full palette.  In a pumpkin field, heavy fruits lay in a tangle of vines.  We were smiling, but pedaling swiftly.
As the weather's cooled, our trip's tenor has changed - from languid to brisk.  Shorter days bring a flash of color and a flurry of movement between darkness.  Setting out by bike on a June morning can feel like the beginning of an epic.  In October, it's a race.

Finland fits into the great beer belt of Europe, in between the clear liquids of hard-edged Russia and the summer-ripened fruits of the south. Warmer climes and Autumn days might bring to mind vin nouveau and federweißer.  In Scandinavia, grapes struggle.  The pub replaces the cafe as the latitude shifts, and the inclination of a tippler is to crawl inside.  Beer soaks up murky light better than wine, a wan companion for brighter skies.
Finns love their beer as much as German's do, or Poles and Czechs.  And, especially in recent years, they've embraced small scale brewing and high-quality products.  Stallhagen is among the breweries that have sprung up to meet a surge in demand, but they're intentionally limited in scope.  Katarina told us, as she brought us into the tank rooms and showed us the bottling plant, that they have a hard time selling large amounts - which is fine with them.  All of their beer is hand made (a point made over and over), unpasteurized and carefully attuned to the seasons.  Åland is a small place, and demand for their product is mostly limited to the the islands.  "The state alcohol stores need promises for a certain number of cases for each outlet," she said, shaking her head.  "That's not how we make beer. We like to sell in small shops and in the bars."

We sat outside on Stallhagen's patio with weak light and dry leaves.  The sun was warm enough when it came, and our faces were warm from the ride, but there was a chilly breeze.  Our food was terrific - the kind of fish that tastes of butter even before it hits the pan.  Pike perch, brought fresh from the docks, was served with roasted potatoes and a thick cream.  It was easygoing pub food, but done with care and pride.  It tasted like something pulled from cold water and cooling earth.
Inside, a man was showing a group of elderly people from Mariehamn (the archipelago capital) how to pour beer and drink it properly.  They sat obediently as he pantomimed reverence and contemplated each sip.

Katarina gave us a taste of a harvest beer that they'd made just for an island farm festival, and another that they were still working on.  This havtorn (sea buckthorn) brew was warm and frothy and still sweet.  "It's at least two weeks from being ready," Katarina said.  The two bubbling carboys sat right in the pub's dining room.  The color was reminiscent of the just-turned fields outside, and the taste was like new jam.
The smell of new beer is so much different than old, stale brew - in contrast to a bar's morningtime funk, the brewery smelled like rising dough and fresh grain.  The seven brewers in galoshes worked with clanging efficiency; bottles rattled, hoses gushed, pumps gargled.  It seemed like lighthearted work, and altogether sober.

As we'd biked home from the brewery, a heavy mist had rolled across the island and bad weather settled in.  By the time we boarded a ferry to the mainland, it was raining.  When we woke up in Helsinki, the weather had worsened.  This was the part of fall that brings people inside. In Helsinki, we found Stallhagen beer at Poseidon bar near the water.  Rain rattled the windows and dead leaves ran the dark gutters.  The evening crowd in those close quarters was a mix of old seafarers and young lovers.
I told the bartender here that we'd been to Stallhagen brewery the day before and she acted surprised.  We were surprised, though, that we'd found it in the capital.  There are only a handful of mainland bars that carry it; Poseidon was just the closest place to get out of the elements.  Drinking the beer - and remembering the color of island leaves - reminded us of another element of autumn in coastal Finland.  When maritime places begin to turn away from their beaches, and the smell of woodsmoke wafts in the air, the terrestrial takes hold over the water.  October seas are unfriendly.  Better to drink in the hops and wheat of summer fields, just now emerging in the glass.

Wharfside Norway

In Arendal, we finally gave in to the pier pressure.  It's a particular societal pressure, to turn your chair outward toward the water and have a mid-day beer.  Arendal is known for its pretty, chi-chi dock and for its local beer (delicious Arendals).  On a sunny Saturday afternoon, people pulled in on their motorboats from the suburbs that are scattered across the nearby islands and peninsulas.  Most of these well-heeled brunchers were heading to join the rosé sipping set.  We joined the already settled in crowd at Fiskebrygga ("Fish Wharf").  A different sort of 'in' crowd.  The type we always feel lucky to join.

The older set at Fiskebrygga carried newspaper cones to their tables, filled with golden brown fish and chips.  We ordered the fiskekaker - a flattened and fried version of fiskeboller.  The Fish Wharf professes that these are the best fish cakes on the southern coast.  The trio of fish and flour patties, which oddly resemble English muffins in this photo, tasted elegant, a little sweet, dense but fluffy.  They were served pub-style, with potato salad, a packaged tab of butter and some slices of white bread.  The thing about dock-sides is that they have a salty quality about them.  There's something that makes you want to use your hands, have something a little greasy or a little messy.  Something completely simple. 

At the center of Pollen, the name of Arendal's rectangular inner harbor, this fishing boat sold peel-and-eat shrimp, small crabs and big ones - which were split in half by hand before being bagged up for customers.  It was the sort of harbor lunch that you brought home to enjoy, at least here in Arendal where the crowd isn't necessarily one to sit on the steps and tear into shellfish.  The scene is something we now expect from a Norwegian dock.  Norway is the world's second largest exporter of seafood (after China) - but there's still plenty kept in the country to go around.

Reker, shrimp, most often show up in piles atop halved round rolls and stuffed into split baguettes with a slice of lemon on top and bed of mayo below.  But this is how Norwegians like their little pink crustaceans best.  Into the gusty port air, a plume of shellfish steam goes up like a smoke signal.  Open for business!  It was the first thing we saw when we stepped off the ferry in Stavanger.  This man, sorting through his freshly steamed catch.  The scampi (long clawed mini lobsters with a body about the length of a cigar) were separated out and placed in a blue, plastic bag.  The rest were available to be scooped up and weighed and given to waiting customers.

Stavanger's harbor was that perfect mix of luxury and grit.  Of life by the water and life on the water.  Boat shoes and neck tattoos.  As Merlin put it earlier, Stavanger's history is one of 'depression and wealth, boom and bust' all tied to the sea.  So, its dockside life has that extra edge of energy that comes from a sense of desperation. I've always loved the term 'watering hole,' because there's a suggestion that there's something life giving, thirst quenching and habitual about visits and returns.  Sometimes, it just fits a place so well... and dockside pubs are often that place.  Under the canvas awnings outfitted with heat lamps, men find the drop to drink they craved so much when they were out there with water, water everywhere.

A raucous maritime bar wreaks of jubilation to be back on land, but also a strange sense of sorrow to have left the sea.  At least, I get that sense.  Piers have an atmosphere all there own.  The way the water intensifies sunlight and seagulls squawk energetically, hit the senses sharply.  But then there's a rhythm to it that builds up.  There's that melodically melancholy squeaking of docked boats, the creak of their wood, heavy like sighs.  And when you watch kids sit on the edge of a quay looking out, you can almost see them creating a memory that they won't necessarily think of in words.  Above, the wharf in Oslo - a tip of a calm in a great, busy city.

Of course, Oslo's harbor had its resident shrimp boat, scooping out servings.  There were at least fifty tents set up this Saturday, some sort of food festival that included farmer's stands, outposts of the Norwegian grocery chain Meny and a ridiculous array of prepared food.  It was everything from chicken and rice to waffles and baked goods, an all you can eat herring station and the requisite fish and chips.  But the shrimp guy was still there taking care of his loyal customers.  When you're docked in the water, it's a lot harder to get lost in a crowd.