If a man ... said, "I will speak out to you concerning wine and liquor,"' he would be spokesman to this people (Micah 2:11)

I took over 150 pictures during our trip, and only one of them is of my boyfriend and me together. But I have plenty of Tim alone. Basically, whenever he picked up a drink, I picked up my camera. You could say that I just wanted to make sure I captured him at his happiest, but I also wanted to remember the various drinking experiences we had as well.

The first real beer we had on our trip was at the Tollwood Winter Festival, which is where the locals go to find unique gifts for the holidays. Of course, shopping can be exhausting, so many stop to have a beer, the unofficial but undeniable national drink of Germany. We weren't shopping, but we stopped to have a beer anyway. Later, outside the tent, Tim had a hot caipirinha, the national drink (although usually cold) of Brazil, which was one of the exotic offerings along with hot mai tais and hot mojitos:

Whenever we had time to kill during our wanderings, stopping to have a beer was a good diversion. Despite the cold weather, Tim like to have a brew al fresco. In Berlin, he got one at a kiosk on Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Under the Trees Boulevard). This was just a typical lager, but in the summertime, we were told, the rage is flavored beer. Near the end of our trip, I tried one at the airport. It wasn't the greatest, but to be able to drink it while walking down this avenue without a single open-container worry, that would be divine.

Because we were there during Christmastime, about the only places we could find some drinks in Warsaw were at the Turkish doner stands, almost all of which offered beer on tap. But this great bar opened up just in time for us to stop by before we caught our bus. And even though I should have had a vodka, in true Polish style, I grabbed yet another authentic dark beer to match the truly dive bar; it was located in an underground passage used to get across a busy street:

Vilnius didn't seem to have the drinking culture like that in the other cities we had been to so far, where you could find a cheap drink on every corner. We had to get off the beaten track to find this bar, called "The Bear." Before noon, we were the only ones in the place, which was under an office/apartment building, although you couldn't tell from the real-wood paneling. This also was where we first tried Krupnikas, a mead-like liquor that is Lithuania's national drink. As Tim and I agreed, this was by far the best of the regional quaffs:

Riga, on the other hand, offered drinks in all shapes and sizes. We were early in Vilnius and late in Riga; we closed down this hokey medieval bar, called "The Droplet." The waitress had to kick us out, perhaps because some shady business between some Russian proprietors was about to go down. We were happy to venture forth, though, because we had had enough pints to wash away the aftertaste of Black Balsams, Latvia's national drink, which tastes like a mix between Jagermeister and spruce beer, in a bad way:

Luckily, the Tallinn Christmas Market in Raekoja Plats (Town Hall Square) was still going strong more than three days after baby Jesus' birthday. Although it was consumer-oriented enough that vendors would take credit cards for hot cherry nectar (for Tim, nonalcoholic, for once) and hot apple-ginger-honey grog (for Kim, alcoholic, thank you very much), the towering tree and hall (and probably alcohol) provoked that warm, fuzzy feeling. To keep the glow alive, we headed into a happy hour at yet another medieval bar, where the waiter gave us free shots of the brandy-like Vana Tallinn, the Estonian national drink. Much to our relief, we found out later that the guy was a lawyer-turned-restaurateur who had just bought the place weeks earlier, so he had a right to be raiding the liquor cabinet:

By the time we hit Scandinavia, it became less fun to shoot Tim drinking, because the bars were more pedestrian and the beers more expensive. At times, we rued the fact that we hadn't bought more canned gin-and-tonics or pear ciders, which actually were pretty good, at the supermarket in Tallinn or in the duty-free shop on the ferry. We could have brought in a whole cart because of this poster explaining the Schengen Agreement, which makes borders between most European Union countries less restrictive. We were incredibly lucky because, as per the agreement, the Baltic States opened their borders on December 21, a day before we left on our trip, which made the train and bus rides much more bearable, especially when you could bring cheap booze with you:

With less than half a day in transit, we didn't have time to try to find any decent bars in Stockholm. Besides, after we felt ripped off by paying too much for bad coffee, we just didn't feel like risking it. So instead of soaking up some suds, we drank in this scenery instead:

I was glad to do the extra walking, even in the Stockholm snow, because I was sure I would gain many pounds with all the alcohol I consumed. But apparently, standing out in the cold weather boosts your metabolism enough to counteract those liquid calories. In the end, Tim and I each lost a few pounds. So I dare say, the Baltic Backpacking Diet was well worth it. Watch for the new best-seller in your local bookstore soon.