Week 2 Revisited - Beer Festival on International Women's Day

I remember International Women's Day from last year very well. Swenglish host number 2 (in England) took me to a beer festival at Hove Town Hall.

As part of your entry fee you got a glass and in that beaker you could be served pints, half-pints or a third of a pint. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The same hall where I had worked as a ballot steward at the local elections was now lined with beer and cider barrels. There was no music and all areas were brightly lit as if we were at a conference.

Arriving at six o’clock there were pre-dominantly men between 40 and 60, perhaps older, sipping their pints or halves or thirds, nodding knowingly, searching for the perfect brew: pale, bitter – or dry if they had cider. An organisation called CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) was behind the festival and was originally formed in the 70s by four men in the North who were disillusioned with the UK beer market.

A couple of hours later the know-it-alls had left and the crowd consisted of mainly 20 and 30-year-olds who drank just to get pissed even if sips were swapped and the occasionally comment about flavour slipped into the conversation. Most people seemed to pick their pint by name: Kama Citra, Snake Slayer and Nightmare were only a few of the choices. Others looked out for the ales with the highest alcohol percentage.

To say that the beer festival was a male dominated event isn’t an exaggeration. There weren’t that many women in the room who gave their opinions on real ale. In England, as well as in Sweden, I’ve experienced that people (often the ones who are a bit older) have been surprised when I’ve wanted beer instead of wine or a drink at the pub. Times have changed, but the older generation still frown if a woman orders a pint. Once I went to an informal job meeting with a male colleague and the person we met up with asked what we wanted to drink. Pint of Harveys my colleague said, and I said that I wanted the same. The person who offered the drinks looked at me and said: half pint? As if I wasn’t allowed a full pint because I was a girl.

I’m not saying it’s a good thing that girls drink as much as guys nowadays, but it’s not fair to assume that a girl drinks a certain drink and a certain amount just because she’s a woman. And the same goes to say for guys. I’ve met men who towards the end of the night only wanted half a pint, but haven’t had the guts to order one because it’s not considered macho enough.

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Week24: Subtle Differences - Size Matters?

So what have you found? What are the differences between England and Sweden? People keep asking me, but the further I get into my Swenglish project the harder it gets to answer the question.

Apart from the obvious differences like the climate (it snowed last night in Stockholm!) there are the more subtle differences that I find interesting. They can be hard to discover, but last night I found out that size matters - or not.

I was at a film/poetry/music event with my host and I was going to order wine at the bar. ’Would you like a small or large glass?’ I asked. My host looked at me, not quite understanding. In Sweden there’s only one size when you order wine, generally large. Whereas in England you have a choice between 125/175ml or 250ml in most places.

It’s the same with beer. I was out in a bar when I stayed in Malmö and my host asked if I wanted another beer. ’I don’t know,’ I said. ’Perhaps a half.’ My host looked confused. In Sweden there’s only one size: ”en stor stark” which means ”a big strong one”. (Although in some places, like British or Irish themed pubs you can get different measurements.)

So what does this say about the cultures then? That the English are more nuanced with their difference sizes? And that Swedes just want to get more drunk? Or perhaps the English are just more fuzzy, bothering about size? Personally, I miss being able to order a small glass of wine or half a pint, because sometimes a big glass or a pint is too much, especially at the end of the night.

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Week9: Quiz Me

I’d been dreading that I would be taken to a pub quiz at some point. I like the idea of this English tradition: to gather in a pub and team up with friends and strangers alike to answers questions about anything from historical battles to the ingredients of a specific recipe. But in reality quizzes make me uncomfortable because it reminds me that my general knowledge went out of the window when I finished school. And any day I’d prefer to have a chat about weather to being trapped in a quiz for two hours.

The closest Sweden comes to quizzes are "tipsrundor" - nature trails with multiple choice questions pinned to trees. This activity normally takes place in the morning and you’re more likely to win a wooden carved horse than a bottle of wine or cash to spend in the bar. Despite my love for nature I’m not a big fan of this activity either. There’s something about playing games that I can’t get into, perhaps because I don’t care too much about winning or losing. In fact I often want to lose so I can get on with doing something else.

Yesterday wasn’t too bad though. The person I’m staying with has got a good brain. He follows the news and there are books on political, historical and social topics in his bookshelf. When he went out for a cigarette everybody had to wait for him to come back so the quiz could continue ...

There were a few questions that would be easier to answer if you grew up in England, e.g. who was the composer on the £20 note (Elgar) and which East Enders character survived being buried alive by his wife (!?). I was happy though that I knew the answer to the literature questions: in which decade the Lord of the Ring novels were first published (50s) and who the heroine was who married Mr Rochester in a Charlotte Bronte novel (Jayne Eyre).

It also helped that we were about ten people in our team and I wasn’t the only one hiding behind my glass. Funnily enough no-one at our table knew how many fluid ounces there are in a a UK pint (20). There were eight teams taking part and we came number four.

P.S. I was ashamed not to know how many stars there are on the New Zealand flag (4) as I've got NZ relatives and my brother is a flag freak!

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