The always-diverting Strange Maps offers up a display of Europe's "alcohol belts." Shorter version: you can't grow grapes in Russia. It's fun, but I'd love to see also a map of alcoholism belts. Is it true, as the folklore tells us that the Russians (males, at least) all get schnackered at the age of 14 and stay numb until they die at 58?* More generally, I remember encountering many years ago (I think it was in one of Harry Kemelman's rabbi novels) that we can distinguish (a) cultures with a high level of teetotalism and a high level of drunkenness; from (b) cultures where booze is regularly integrated into family celebrations and folks are correspondingly ill-disposed to just drinking themselves silly.
Fun fact: first place I ever saw a drunk sleeping on the street was oh-so-wholesome Norway (this was in 1973, long before they became more or less de rigueur in the United States). Yet these are people who have lighted trails inside city limits for night-time cross-country skiing.
*Flamers take note: I did not endorse this particular defamation; I am open to evidence that it is a lie.
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