Polish Customs Officers Dump 90,000 Cans of Beer
Who are currently the most hated breed of workers in Poland?
If you were a gambler, I guess nobody would be surprised if you bet your monthly mortgage payment on politicians!
If you were a student, I guess nobody would be surprised if you bet your pocket money on teachers!
Well, think again.
It seems that those ever-cuddly little customs officers are top of the despised pile this month.
In the northern seaside city of Gdynia, business as usual includes destroying over 90,000 cans of Japanese beer.
According to the News.pl portal, "the alcohol had been kept in their warehouses for up to 11 years."
The Polish beer mafia must be kicking themselves that they didn't manage to raid the warehouses on time to liberate the stuff and sell it to local soccer fans or university students, whose palates are notoriously low on quality when it comes to consuming liquids with alcoholic content.
If this deliberate spillage happened in Ireland there may well be such an outcry that a national day of mourning would be announced. Although, on the other hand, maybe the Japanese beer tasted like a slop bucket of Guinness leftovers from the night before and everybody would be happy the stuff won't end up in their local pub, promoted as a novelty drink from some smart-arse publican.
One interesting aspect left out of the article I read on this topic was, where the hell does the beer go when dumped? Is it put into a giant secret vat that has pipelines running into the customs officers very own homes? Or does it go to Polish president Lech Kaczynski's palace, and was this one of the dirty pieces of covert news that politician Jan Palikot had up his sleeve when he recently hinted that the Polish president has a drinking problem?
Or does it just flow into the Baltic sea through various underground channels? Or to ground water sources that Jan and Jadwiga Kowalski/a use to make their daily quota of tea and boil their spuds in?
I guess we'll never know. That is, unless a custom officer stumbles on this blog and reveals the rules of engagement of their profession.
So, to conclude, and reveal what the hell the above pictures are all about. Well, believe it or not, they are of a Japanese beer spa! Imagine the size of the spa and the money that could have been made for charity if the customs officers decided to pour the 90,000 in a colossal bath. Now that would have been a creative end to 11 year old cans of beer,
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*Probably the best known Irish saint after Patrick is Saint Brigid (b. 457, d. 525). Known as "the Mary of the Gael," Brigid founded the monastery of Kildare and was known for spirituality, charity, and compassion. St. Brigid also was a generous, beer-loving woman. She worked in a leper colony which found itself without beer, "For when the lepers she nursed implored her for beer, and there was none to be had, she changed the water, which was used for the bath, into an excellent beer, by the sheer strength of her blessing and dealt it out to the thirsty in plenty." Brigid is said to have changed her dirty bathwater into beer so that visiting clerics would have something to drink. Obviously this trait would endear her to many a beer lover. She also is reputed to have supplied beer out of one barrel to eighteen churches, which sufficed from Maundy Thursday to the end of paschal time. A poem attributed to Brigid in the Brussel's library begins with the lines "I should like a great lake of ale, for the King of the Kings. I should like the family of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal."
So between her home brewing and peacemaking qualities she is certainly a good role model for Irish society;))
Shaunj, I guess you could bring yourself to drinking it. But it would be a bit like drinking bathwater with the dirt of 10 people floating around in it. I suppose you wouldn't really notice if you were half cut!
I wonder if there is a high death rate of people getting drunk in beer spas from falling asleep drunk and drowning?