Restless Me - The Journal of World Travel

May, 1998 - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Married. I'm all over Natalie now. Didn't think of her even once as I courted the girl who would become my wife. I've really fallen for this one, and the chances are much better she'll stick around. We are on honeymoon in the Canadian Maritimes. We walk along the docks, past the lure of smoke-filled casinos (well, one anyway), and make our way to a lovely little Irish pub housed in a grey stone building near the water.

I drink beer now. I chalk this up to my experiences in Europe. Amazing; I actually like beer. We order lasagna and Caesar salads and I'm all ready to drink Keith's Lager -- "Nova Scotia's own" -- when I see it: Smithwick's on tap. I can't believe my eyes. I don't rub them and look again like all good cartoon characters, but I do ask if it's for real. "I can't get this in the U.S.," I tell the tender. "Your loss," he says. "It's a damn fine beer."

Yes, I say. It is. And I tell him the whole story -- except that I leave out the part about Natalie. "I've got family in Cork," he says. "Smithwick's is all I drink when I'm there. They're Harp people, but I like this stuff," as he hands it to me, a slight golden cascade rippling down the outer edge of the glass.

I hesitate. It's been five years. The beer has been mythologized, allowed to ferment in my memory until it has become, quite simply, the finest beer in all the world. Can it possibly stack up? Or will it, inevitably, tumble just short of my dreams, unable to match up with the memory? The glass sits. Condensation beads. I regard it. It's the high school sweetheart, here at the twenty-year reunion. I see only the fresh-faced eighteen year-old, but in walks someone who's almost forty. And what about me? Surely I'm not the same either. My tastes have evolved. I drink lots of beer now; in fact, I fancy myself something of a connoisseur -- I'm sure I could even take the inside of a brewery.

So it's with great apprehension that I take the glass to my mouth and take a sip. It goes down easy. A remnant of foam remains on my lip. "So, how is it?" my wife asks. "As good as you remember?" the bartender asks.

Amazingly, it is as good as I remember. I order two more; I'm not disappointed.

April, 2003 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

It's our five-year anniversary. Our schedules are tight and we can't get away for a long trip. So we catch a cheap flight to Buffalo, rent a car, and head up into Toronto. We do the requisite stop at Niagara Falls. It disappoints. Actually, the Falls themselves don't disappoint. The choc-a-bloc tourist hotels and cheesy gift shops -- they disappoint. So we snap a few shots on the camera and move on, getting into Toronto just as the latest casualty rates from the SARS epidemic push into the double digits. We'll have to skip Chinatown, which makes us both sad.

We don't stop in any pubs. Instead, we do all our meals in really great restaurants. Thai, Italian, Portuguese. We gorge ourselves and never tire of the exchange rate jokes when the bill comes. "Hmmmm. $120 Canadian. Once we do the conversion, they'll owe us money." We don't say these things very loudly. We love Canada, and we're very conscious of publicly avoiding comparisons with the U.S. Still, we love the exchange rate jokes.

On the way to the hotel, we stop at a liquor store. There it is: Smithwick's in a bottle. Beer maven that I am, I'd be the first to tell you that beer from the tap is always better than beer from a can or bottle. But with floating widgets and all, great strides have been made in canning and bottling that actually makes beer coming in these receptacles pretty okay. So I get one bottle -- 20 ounces. That will be fine; I'll pick up a case crossing the border back into New York.

We get back to the hotel room. My wife is tired and goes to bed. I grab my bottle, content to spend the next half hour or so with a different kind of love. I settle in. Grab a plastic cup from the bathroom. Flip on the TV. I go to open and pour. It's not a screw-off. I have no opener. The lobby is fourteen flights down and I hate elevators. I take the bottle into the vending area -- no opener. I do what I used to during my short stint as a bartender. I wedge the top of the bottle against the counter, with the lip of the cap resting on top, and then I bring my fist down. The cap should pop right off. Should.

Actually, it does pop off. But it takes a chunk of glass with it. The severance looks clean, so I decide to drink the beer even though tiny shards of glass could very well be floating inside. I pour it into the plastic cup and look very carefully for slivers of green glass. I see none, so I sip -- carefully, straining the beer through my teeth so I can catch any stray shards. Through all my concern and worry, I realize that I'm not paying any attention to the beer. So I forsake a cut-up esophageal tract and drink in heavy gulps.

It's no good. My Smithwick's is no good. It's probably the fact that it's from a bottle, and that I'm drinking it out of plastic, and that I'm standing by myself in a vending area in Toronto and it's almost midnight.

I throw away the rest.

Last Week - Baltimore, Maryland, USA

I'm picking up some Italian meats at a new frou-frou bistro that has just opened up near my house. I notice a new Irish bar across the street, housed inside what used to be a hideous Chili's restaurant. I run inside to see what they have on tap. There it is: the great red and green beacon. I can't believe it.

"Smithwick's on tap?" I ask, incredulous. "I thought you couldn't get this in the U.S.," I say to the bartender.

"Well, apparently . . . you can." He smirks. Several guys sitting at the bar chuckle, amused at my ridiculous question. The bartender was probably ten years old the first time I had Smithwick's. His buddies at the bar don't look to be much older. And the "beer" they're drinking looks like water with a hint of urine in it.

"You want a pint?" he asks.

I think about it. "No," I say. Two women, two countries, two different eras -- I'll let my Smithwick's live in my memory.

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EVAN L. BALKAN is an alumni of the graduate writing program at Johns Hopkins University. He teaches literature and writing at the Community College of Baltimore County. His book 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Baltimore is forthcoming from the Menasha Ridge Press. He lives in Baltimore with his wife Shelly and newborn daughter Amelia.