“No beer, only punch.”
We’d taken the last couple seats at the bar and asked for the former. Pretty much everyone around us was drinking beer, but the barman insisted otherwise for us.
Maybe it was a rite of passage for out-of-towners—the Scottish accents were a dead giveaway, after all. But the punch was surprisingly pleasant. I quickly downed it so I could move on to the Dry & Bitter IPA that caught my eye when we sat down.
I’ve previously found Copenhagen’s bodegas to be a bit of a novelty, not to mention the off-putting smoke that’s still permitted in them. But this time? I fell for them. They’re not pretentious. They’re not fancy or over-the-top. They’re just honest. They’re Copenhagen’s dive bars.
We ended up getting pretty comfortable, staying longer than we should have, and drinking cheap, palatable Danish Lager by the bottleful. The barman grew to know his audience, too, quickly offering one after another until we forced ourselves out the door.
