I've known for quite a few years that age restrictions on alcohol consumption are lower in much of Europe, including Germany, than they are in North America. I've known at least since I was a teenager myself. Maybe 2/3 of today's teenagers can't count to three or write their own names or find their own arse with a flashlight, map and recorded instructions, or whatever the latest statistic of mind boggling ignorance among today's youth is, but there are certain facts of law and biology that are widely known within the barely-post-pubescent set. Although calling these nuggets of knowledge "facts" is a bit misleading, since they are characterized by a certain less than scientific nature, a core of truth and a patina of myth, like a favorite pebble kept in one's pocket and worried smooth by a million touches. But in any case, every half-worldly North American teenager knows that those lucky European bastards, born with the silver spoon of continental sophistication in their mouths, don't have to spend the latter half of the week trying to network their way into someone's big brother buying their alcohol for them for the weekend's festivities. (Ah, but wasn't that half the fun of it all?)

Having long known all about the continental laissez-faire attitude in these matters, I haven't really blinked an eye at the clumps of teenagers drinking on streetcorners downtown on Friday nights. I don't even feel that judgemental about it. This is an undeniably lovely destination for a tourist, but I'd probably drink too if I was a teenager in this burg. I'm more concerned by their appallingly bad hair cuts and the fact that every single one of them wears a kaffiyah out of some misplaced sense of "fashion". Still, nothing could keep me from feeling a bit of shock and unease, deep down in my culturally conditioned gut, at looking over at the next table in the pub the other night and seeing what to my ancient eyes appeared to be four twelve year old boys drinking their beers. It was just... wrong. Not even in a moral sense, just a "this is not how the universe is supposed to function" sense. Is this what it's like to be eighty - that everyone else looks comically, unbearably young? Thanks for making me feel older than the hills, Germany!