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stella40 -> RE: What the hell is wrong with people (7/13/2007 5:14:47 PM)
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How did I guess where the mother came from?
This is quite common. In fact it's not unheard of to go visit the doctor and find that the doctor is six times over the legal limit as well. I read the Polish media and you get stories like this every week. There was the Polish coach driver, for example, (drunk of course) who made a 300 mile journey in a packed coach in little over 2 hours (bear in mind we're talking narrow country roads and villages here, not motorways). Then there were the cops trying to catch an armed gunman who were so drunk they actually shot each other.
I think part of the problem might be something to do with the fact that there's been a long running problem with alcohol smuggling (spirits) from countries such as Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine - and we're talking the dangerous stuff. Some of it is fake - Jim Boom, Johnnie Waker, Absolut, and some of it has obscure names - Corn Law Vodka, Naked Mountains Irish Whiskey, Butch Gin, and so on. And so, a few years ago the Polish government decided it would solve the problem by reducing tax on sales of hard liquor. Now you can walk into any supermarket and buy a bottle of cheap vodka for as little as £3.
Then you have 'strong' beer, which started out at 7.2% alcohol, but which now can be as much as 11.8% alcohol.
Buying good wine in a 'Monopoly' (Polish liquor store) is impossible. For example:
Customer: "Can you recommend a good Italian wine?"
Assistant: "Yes, this one will blow your head off."
The wine importers in Poland are trying, it's a growing industry. But Poles just haven't quite got the concept of how a wine tastes or even the concept of drinking wine over dinner. All too often you turn up to someone's flat with a bottle of wine for dinner, as have all guests. You all sit down to dinner, you drink the wine, then more wine, and then more wine, and then a bottle of vodka is produced, and then another, and then someone comes out with a guitar, phone calls are made, other friends arrive, people start singing badly, then someone goes down to the gas station to buy another bottle of vodka (yes, gas stations in Poland sell alcohol), and I guess you can work out what happens next.
You can walk into any 'Monopoly' (liquor store) and ask for a 'cocktail', and the assistant will immediately produce for you a bottle of Polish wine - full of sulphur, chemicals, spirit alcohol, it doesn't taste very nice at all, but this isn't the big issue here, it is whether it does the business. And it does. One bottle you're okay, two even, three you're anybody's, and any more and you're everybody's. The secret is mixing it with beer - and I speak from personal experience - two cans of lager and a bottle of Polish wine can leave you very... horizontal.
Women's drinking habits don't really differ from the men. This is why all the liqueurs contain 40% alcohol, and even the fruit flavoured beer (marketed towards women) can be as strong as 7% alcohol. Drinking is socially acceptable, really.
I can remember having to teach generals in the former Polish army English and not long after having to quit this job because after two 90 minute lessons with Polish generals (who were all paralytic anyway) I myself wasn't in a fit state sometimes to even walk out of the building. Half the time half the generals were asleep anyway, three were apparently three of only six in Poland at the time who could speak any English but I never heard them being able to string a coherent sentence together. This was all pre-NATO, things have changed, but believe me, had the invasion of Iraq been left to this former Polish army some of them might have strayed as far as Turkey or Egypt and become quite pickled in the process.
It was the Poles who taught me everything I need to know about drinking alcohol, making alcohol, avoiding hangovers, sobering up and even (if I wanted to) avoid being breathalysed by cops if I was driving whilst over the limit. I know that you have to filter methylated spirits through a thick slice of bread before you can drink it. I know how to produce something alcoholic using just sugar, yeast, water and a bit of time.
So this is why I for one somehow guessed where this article came from and why I wasn't surprised to read it.
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