Old memories by the cubic metre
There is hardly a thing such as Norwegian pub culture. We would not dream of having a pint for lunch, and the local would usual be a cafeteria connected to the local coop supermarket, where coffee is the main drink.
Sure, there are bars here, too, of various shapes and sizes. Some of them are replicas of English or Irish pubs, shipped over from companies specializing in this sort of thing.
The Churchill was such a pub. Not a part of any chain, but with filled with dusty bric-a-brac more or less connected with Winston Churchill and his times. Newspaper clippings, statuettes from India, model airplanes from WW II, you get the idea.
It was very centrally located, between the National Theatre and City Hall, which meant that business was good for many years. After office hours or shopping, on your way to the cinema, a useful spot for meeting friends.
Their beer range was never very sophisticated – your usual lagers plus Guinness. The most interesting beer was the canned Bombardier, and every time I suggested a broader selection, they argued that it didn’t sell. Their coffee was vile, the only food on offer was toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.
But people came in, had their beers or other drinks, and they obviously offered an atmosphere that lots of customers enjoyed.
Well, after more of twenty years, the show is over. The bust of Queen Victoria is put in a box, the rest of the memorabilia is going into storage, and everything else is being ripped out. The owners of the building wanted three times the previous rent, so it was not viable to continue.
I was only in there a few times a year lately, but I will miss it anyway. It was, after all, where I met my wife.
Last orders for Victoria
Awww. Hope you claimed some good memorabilia.
Beer Nut – well, I’ve still got the Missus.
Although it sounds as if this place had its merits, this also backs up a point several people have made recently in response to CAMRA’s campaign against pub closures in the UK: good pubs will be OK.
It’s all very well having vile coffee, rubbish beer and terrible food when times are good and people aren’t too fussy where they splash the cash, but when the market gets harder, the pubs which are offering all these nice little extras are the ones that survive.
The Liars in Alpine has just gone too!
There probably isn’t much of a pub culture in Norway because beer is so unbelievably expensive. Less and less people are going out to drink beer here in the UK as taxes rise.
Difficult to mourn a pub like The Churchill, really. The ambience was not too bad, but other than that I can’t think of anything positive to say about it.
It is a bit sad. I won’t miss it for the beer, either, but it was OK to have a place in that area that a) usually had room for one more group of people and b) had a moderate noise level. I do not know of that many such places in that area, close to the cinemas.