One major advantage of drinking bourbon

One major advantage of drinking bourbon is this: if you happen to be in a bar or pub that is used to serving mostly Altbier (the local brew) and the occasional glass of white wine and you order a Jack Daniels or Jim Beam on the rocks, the staff are quite often unfamiliar as to how much of the amber liquid to pour into a glass, which means that you often end up with an amount of liquid that is sufficient to keep a goldfish in.

Thanks to the very generous serving I received, I am thoroughly sloshed. Even after walking back home 3 and a bit kilometres, I am still very pleasantly "anaesthetised", as I like to put it. Phew.

This is something I first observed as a student in the UK. I once accompanied an Austrian friend, Brigitte C., to a poetry weekend she was doing with the Open University. We stayed in a house owned by the Poet Laureate Ted Hughes in Yorkshire, not far from Haworth, where the Bronte sisters lived. On a visit to a local pub, I asked for a whisky and lemonade (what I drank in those days, not knowing any better). You'd have thought I had asked for some exotic cocktail. There was a look of disgust on the dour Yorkshireman's face as I ordered it, but he nevertheless gave me what I wanted - with about twice as much whisky than I was used to. That was certainly a 'happy hour'.