drinking in the shadows

i went to sopot yesterday; part of the tricity (gdansk/sopot/gdynia), sopot is the polish version of brighton I guess. It has a pier, a nice street full of cafes and a burgeoning nightlife. As darkness fell, there were noticeably more people around and the place looked set to be injected with more excitement after it's afternoon lazy slumber.

but it never happened.

sure, if i'd have been around at 1am I fully expect that the beach-front clubs would have been packed, but I was unusually knackered and left early. but even before that, the restaurants and bars were mostly empty. It took me a while to work out what was going on: the streets were busy, people seemed to be out. But where were they going?

the answer is simple. In poland it is legal & normal to drink bottles and cans in public. People just go to the off-licence and buy their own. The dark stretches of seafront were packed with groups of people in great big warm jackets drinking cans from their plastic bags.

it seems strange to me. why freeze your nuts off in the cold windy evening when some of the bars around sopot are pretty cool? I guess it's a bit more expensive to go to the bar, but a pint is only 6 zlotys (1 pound) so it's still pretty cheap. And you can hear each other outside, but not all bars are too loud.

in the end maybe they just like drinking in the dark