Backpacking through Europe in 1994
Day 43 • October 19, 1994
Copenhagen, Denmark, Day 2
Thirty years ago today was awesome - beer and sex!
More specifically, visiting the Carlsberg Brewery and getting to sample free beer, and then visiting a sex museum.
There were no free samples there though, which, upon reflection as a 52-year-old man writing this in 2024, was probably a very good thing for the 22-year-old me.
Nonetheless, for that 22-year-old single guy wanting to explore the differences from Kearney, Nebraska that existed in the world, this was an awesome day indeed!
Sampling the free beer at the end of the Carlsberg Brewery tour.
My Photographs from today in Copenhagen
Day 43 / 10-19-94
Copenhagen Day 2
Today was awesome - beer and sex!
After sleeping in until 11:30 and eating lunch with Camilla, I set out for the Carlsberg brewery.
Carlsberg is the seventh-biggest beer company (Anheuser Busch is number one) but it is the largest brewery - over 94 acres – in the world.
I thought that the best part was going to be that it was free, but there was more. There was free beer at the end! We only had 15 minutes to sample; but I was able to get down four bottles. Two regular, one Carlsberg ice and one Carlsberg premium.
I also learned an interesting fact: the swastika is an Indian sign over 3,000 years old meaning good luck.
They had about a dozen storage containers there, and each one holds enough beer that if one man drank 10 beers a day, it would take him 430 years to finish. I was like, let the Dome have one, we could kill it in one semester!
They also have a mansion on the site, called, appropriately enough, the Carlsberg honor mansion. A very prominent Dane is invited to live there (now it is some astrophysicist or something like that), and among its other perks, the person residing there gets all the free beer he/she can drink. One other thing: when you move in there, you get to live there for life.
So with a slight buzz (made all the better because it was free) I walked to the Copenhagen Erotica Museum. Along the way I passed by one of the seedier streets of the city, Istedgade. Displayed in the shop windows were every kind of sex item available; porn videos, magazines, blow up dolls, dildos, penis enlargers, cock rings, leather whips, etc.
It's not that all of this was so shocking to me - I'd been in adult shops before - but I'd never seen the merchandise displayed in the street windows!
Pornography was legalized here in 1969, and I think they're quite proud of it. I read it or heard it mentioned no fewer than a dozen times.
And with this fact in mind, I arrived at the Museum Erotica. It's on the street and it contains art, drawings, paintings, photos, toys and more, about sex and all things sex-related for the last 300 years.
I thought the most interesting “art exhibit” was a room with 12 big TV's all showing adult movies simultaneously.
Then I walked back to Camilla's dorm for dinner. I wrote a few letters and went to bed.
My beer coaster from the Carlsberg tasting room.
The label from the bottle of Carlsberg Ice I drank during the brewery tour? Why in the world would I save this?….
… because I used the back to write down the contact information for Kim & Kirsty, two girls I met on the tour!
Attention Dear Reader,
The next set of photos is from my walk through the Adult Industry section of town.
Pornography is legal in Denmark, and it is on display.
As I was documenting what I saw in Europe, and the differences between here and my hometown of Kearney, Nebraska, I simply took pictures of what I saw.
If the depiction of sexual scenes by mannequins and dolls offends you, DO NOT SCROLL DOWN ANY FURTHER!!!
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YOU’VE BEEN WARNED, THE NEXT SET OF PHOTOS MAY OFFEND SOME READERS
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IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED, DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER DOWN!
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