Danish Drinking Culture

In Denmark, it's pretty common to drink beer at lunch. We sell it in our school cafeteria, and most schools and some businesses have Friday Bars, a bar open only Friday, for staff members or students to come together and drink. Ours opens at 14.15 or 2:15.  Most school events have also been celebrated with free beers, and Schnapps at celebratory meals is common. The drinking age is vertually non-existant, though I think one must be 16 or 18 before buying hard alcohol in stores. Most people I met here were drunk for the first time when they were 11 or 13.

At the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen, the management stepped in to limit the amount of drinking at work. Now there are no beer vending machines and the only time and place employees can buy beer is at lunch in the cafeteria. Workers went on strike. You can read the article here if you want further information.

The Danish perspective is that they drink more and more often than pretty much any other country. On numerous occasions I've had teachers, classmates and even people I've interviewed ask "so we drink a lot here, don't we? I mean, it must be pretty different." And not that I'm proud to do so, but I think back to tailgates and downtown Columbia bars, and say "No, it's really no different from college life back home at all."