Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.05.2014, Side 34

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The Great Reykjavík
Beer Heist Of 2014
Take our word for it, you don’t want
to learn this lesson the hard way…
34The Reykjavík Grapevine
It all started when Johnny, who didn’t
care for the sugary-sweet bowl of
spiked punch that had been brewed for
guests at this particular birthday party,
fought his way through the crowd in
search of some beer. He returned mo-
ments later with a cold bottle of Einstök
Pale Ale in his hand and a fat self-sat-
isfied grin on his face. The rest of us,
eager to feed our livers with liquid gold,
followed his genius trail to the kitchen
fridge.
Well after getting a little tipsy on the
fantastic free beer, an obviously upset
female approached us and asked if we
had seen her Einstök. Whoops. Was it
hers? Probably. Did we tell her instant-
ly? No. Did I realise it instantly? Yes.
I looked at the ground in shame. The
others didn’t seem to get it, though.
“Goddamn it, why’s she making such
a scene?” Johnny leaned over to me
and mumbled in his forced drawl. “It’s
just beer. In Germany this stuff goes for
50 cents a bottle. People usually give
away cases at house parties. Same in
the States. If you put a bunch of beer in
the fridge, you’re basically asking peo-
ple to help themselves. Isn’t that the
principle behind inviting your friends
over?”
The truth is, though, we were not
really invited. Frankly, we crashed
the party. Earlier that evening we had
gone to KEX Hostel for the Just An-
other Snake Cult album release con-
cert. It was there that we ran into our
editor and she hesitantly invited us to
the fateful house party. “You should
definitely come,” she muttered at KEX,
without actually telling us the address
of the place at first. Two text messages
later, we were on our rather disoriented
way through the pouring rain in search
for the house.
Although we were not really invited,
we were still warmly welcomed party
guests who then proceeded to un-
knowingly abuse our hosts’ hospitality
by drinking beer that, we later learned,
belonged to someone called Andrea.
The magnitude of our crime is perhaps
best understood through her version of
the events:
“Usually, when I go to house parties I
stash my beer somewhere safe. But this
was my house, my party, my fridge. My
boyfriend also drinks, so when I noticed
two beers were missing I just thought, ‘I
don’t remember him being such a fast
drinker… well, I guess I better keep up.’
Next time I checked the fridge, how-
ever, all my beer was gone. So there was
clearly a traitor in our midst. Everyone in
Iceland knows the code: beer is expen-
sive, so you don’t steal it unless you’re
comfortable in the knowledge that
you’re a worthless piece of shit. I went
into stealth mode, trying to weed out the
beersnatcher. Who was it? Who would
even do such a thing?”
Dismayed, I took a lap around the liv-
ing room ogling everyone’s beverages. I
bumped into my friend Anna [Reykjavík
Grapevine’s Editor], who asked me if I
was enjoying the party. I told her truth-
fully that I was trying to, but what with
my beer having been stolen it was prov-
ing difficult. I asked her to keep an eye
out for Mikkeller or Einstök bottles.
Suddenly, we both noticed the peo-
ple standing around us who were staring
at me. I looked down. They were holding
my beers. Ah. Foreigners. They didn’t
know better. Like so often in life, this
case called for Hanlon’s razor: never at-
tribute to malice that which can be ad-
equately explained by cultural tactless-
ness. To be honest, the look of shame
and confusion on their faces was almost
worth it.”
Andrea was actually more outraged
in that moment than she now recalls.
She didn’t scream at us, but she did
sternly point out that we had broken a
code. I felt a little like a child who had
released her creative energy on the liv-
ing room wall and gotten caught by her
parents. Andrea’s take was enlighten-
ing though. It put things into perspec-
tive, which was important because
perspective was exactly what Johnny,
in particular, was lacking the day after
the party.
Due to the fact that alcohol is so
heavily taxed, beer is indeed outra-
geously expensive in Iceland compared
to in most other European countries.
Furthermore, the Icelandic State has
a monopoly on selling liquor and only
dispenses it in special stores called
Vínbúð, which are unfortunately nei-
ther abundant nor open 24/7. It’s im-
possible to simply go to the gas station
in the middle of the night to buy more
alcohol when you run out at a party.
So we decided to make it up to her
by replacing the stolen beer with a new
six-pack the following Monday, which
just so happened to be St. Paddy’s Day.
We were unusually remorseful lepre-
chauns, awash with guilt and trying to
make everything better by placing a
different kind of gold at the end of the
rainbow. As Andrea put it, we were not
the first to steal her beer, but we were
the first ones to refill her stock after
thievishly emptying it.
The takeaway: When you’re at a
party, don’t you dare drink the booze
unless it’s given to you or you brought
it with you!
Words by
Yasmin Nowak
Iceland is not known for having an especially strict code of social etiquette. There are,
however, a few rules that you just don’t break. Three Grapevine interns and I learned one of
these rules the hard way, embarrassing ourselves at our first Icelandic house party.
Travel
“It was there that we ran
into our editor and she
hesitantly invited us to
the fateful house party.”
Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir