At tastings you often notice that people are really interested in the story behind the beers. Who brewed the beers? How do you come up with the ideas to brew such different beers? How do you come up with those flavor combinations and where do you find all those separate ingredients?
These are a few questions that often come up. However, people also want to hear how I got into beer and what else I went on.
The story that causes the most laugh lines is the story that I was also a mermaid for a while. When I arrived in Finland in 1992, Finland was in recession, unemployment was 24 %. Work was almost impossible to find, let alone for a brewer who arrived in a country where specialty beer hadn't really been discovered yet.
Yet at that time I got a number of jobs, such as cleaning a ferryboat sailing between Germany and Finland. I was also a dishwasher for a while in a popular nightlife in Helsinki.
In a town next to Helsinki, a new amusement park was opened by Renny Harlin, a Finnish film producer who has produced films such as Die Hard and Cliffhanger and The Leningrad Cowboys, a well-known Finnish rock band with a special "look". This indoor amusement park named "Planet FunFun" was combined with the combination of Nighclub and a stage for live music. They searched for male and female mermaids. I thought: Why not? I went to audition and there was a line of 100 other boys and girls who all wanted to be mermaids. After a few interviews and "body shows" I was chosen as one of the 10 male and female true mermaids. The adventure could begin! :)
It was actually quite a unique experience to do this. The mermaids came into action in the evening. A male and female mermaid both lay on a shelf side by side over a basin of water. In front of us was a wire mesh fence with a small circle on it. The female audience had to throw balls at the male mermaid and the intention was to hit that small circle on the fence. If they hit that round, the mermaid would fall into the water.
So the male audience had to throw the balls at the female mermaid's fence.
However, the public had already had a drink before entering the amusement park so hitting that round was not easy :)
Some people say to me that they would never dare say this if they had done that work. I find it inspiring to hear such stories from others or to tell them myself. These are all experiences that shape you and broaden your base.
In the interview in the video below I briefly tell you about this experience.
