Copenhagen’s bodegas offer a glimpse of the old school beer drinking haunts of Denmark

For every trendy café with its lattes and moccas and overpriced, overwhelming choice of food, Copenhagen offers a cheaper, far more basic alternative: the bodega, a dingy window into Danish drinking habits which have barely altered in centuries.

Also known as ‘vinstue’ or a ‘værtshus’, many bodegas offer just one choice of beer – generally a toss-up between the two stalwarts, Carlsberg and Tuborg, although lagers like Faxe and Royal are also found. Many bodegas have no draught pumps and provide bottled beer only, which regulars will vary with shots from the many choices of Danish snaps and bitter on offer, with peculiarly national tastes like the unmistakable cloves flavour of Gammel Dansk, the ‘Fisherman’s Friend’- like kick of Fisherman’s or the liquorice flavored vodka shot, Små Grå – all real throat warmers for a cold winter’s day. Served by a leather-waistcoated barman who looks like he’s seen better days, the generally aging clientele seek refuge from a cold and perennially dark scandinavian winter in the smoky surroundings.

In accordance with the customers of mainly pensionable age, it’s not unusual to see a collection of zimmer frames fastened safe with bike locks outside the steep steps which lead up to the door. Windows of bodegas are generally covered with net curtains, and a décor of brown woodwork does little to help boost and illumination. As if stepping into a technological timewarp, one shouldn’t be surprised to be asked to refrain from using a mobile telephone.

A bodega is the kind of place that you enter for the first time as an extremely conscious stranger, but after a handful of visits to your local you’ll be on first-name terms with most of the regulars. With their universally sombre décor, flower- print tablecloths and larger-than-life habitués, a Danish bodega really is one of those bars where, ‘everybody knows your name’. Perhaps there’s Kirsten with the bleached streak through her stiff bouffant of black hair, never far from the fruit machine, or Gert, the retired seaman who never seems to tire of recounting his time spent in the British ports of Hull and Grimsby. There’ll probably be Smokey, the veteran northern English rockers, playing on the jukebox, or perhaps one of the older Danish favorites like Kim Larsen.

Without a doubt Copenhagen’s oldest bodega is Hviid’s Vinstue on Kongens Nytorv, which was established in 1723. It prides itself on having survived not only the two great fires of 1728 and 1795 (which destroyed vast sections of Denmark’s capital) but also the English wars of 1801 and 1807, the First World War and the German occupation during World War Two. Be warned, though, if you have problems making decisions: unlike many bodegas, Hviid’s Vinstue offers 27 different kinds of beer.

One of the last remaining places from Nyhavn’s notorious former years as Copenhagen’s den of vice, the Hong Kong Bar hasn’t closed in decades. In fact, it doesn’t even have a lock on the door, because it’s always open for business. Don’t expect the same kind of tourist treatment here as in the rest of Nyhavn – this subterranean drinking hole is of a different breed.

Bodegas have their own language- it’s usual for customers to ask for a ‘hoff’ (Carlsberg beer) or ‘et par bager’ (two beers, usually bottled). The bodega has been referenced in Denmark’s contemporary poetry and literature, for example in poet Benny Andersen’s ‘Svantes Viser’, his hero Svante often has to make a swift retreat from his fears into the safety of a bodega and its alcoholic  aid. In the poem ‘Svante in the Department Store’, our hero is so overwhelmed by the range of products on offer, from women’s underwear to garden furniture, that he picks up the first things he sees and flees to a bodega to drink a couple of simple, no-frills bottles of beer while he examines his ridiculous and wholly pointless purchases.

A bodega is a place of elementary pleasures, without the fuss of changing fashions and confusing trends. If the vast array of drink varieties tumbling from the glass shelves of Strøget’s cafes is giving you a headache, take a step off the main tourist path- it’ll be simpler at any rate.