I’d like to be able to say that this place was a bit of an eye opener to me, except that it was almost impossible to open your eyes in here due to the permanent, thick fog of stale smoke and complete absence of ventilation. The pub – technically a Nachtcafe – is a long cellar under the main street of Mayrhofen, Tirol, and most nights it was impossible to see from one end to the other. Until my first visit to Apropos – Appies from now on – most of my drinking had been confined to isolated freehouses in the Welsh Marches. Which is another way of saying that I was naïve about almost every facet of adult life. Prior to my first descent of the steps into this beautiful subterranean galley, the last pub I’d been to was a flat roofer on a caravan park in Mid Wales, full of people from the Black Country who had accidentally bought mobile homes in a country that they seemed to utterly despise. Now I was a thousand miles away in a pub that I would come to feel more accepted in than I ever had ...
Beer, n. An alcoholic liquor obtained by the fermentation of malt, and flavoured with hops. Hiraeth, n. A profound feeling of longing, loss, or nostalgia for a person, place, or past (even imagined).