From: Christian Joergensen <?????????????????????>
Subject: About me and the danish tradition of pipes.

Hello Steve,

First I'd like to thank You for the newsletter, which I read with great 
pleasure. This beats the newsgroups by far, to see that everywhere 
else in the world there are pipe smokers who enjoy themselves with the 
tobacco as much as I do.

Then a Brief intro about myself: Age: 26, Field: french litt. and computer 
science, Not married but close, Pipe smoker since age of 16, Since a few 
years smoking cigars as well, but not at all an expert. 

I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, an old country with a strong tradition of 
using tobacco, ever since Columbus brought it to Europe, I mean, the 
vikings didn't have the tobacco, so they smoked all kinds of other stuff, 
and when not, they were eating strange mushrooms to get weird. 
I think they were pretty weird, and further south in Europe they must 
have felt the same about them, when getting invaded regularily ; I'm 
convinced that this is one of the main reasons (along with discovering 
America) for celebrating st. Christopher in the southern Europe. The 
vikings got the tobacco and stopped being vikings and weird (to some 
extent, anyway).

Does this mean that tobacco will stop you from beeing too weird ?? Well, 
honestly I don't know, but I sure hope so... I smoke quite a lot, as much 
as time lets me, and here are some of the most beautyfull things about pipe 
smoking: If I smoked a cigarette as often as I light a pipe, some people 
would surely turn away, with disgust painted in their faces, but when it 
comes to pipe smoking, this is somehow consideret as natural. Secondly, 
with this many cigarettes, surely my throat would be hurting, I would be 
caughing and so on. Non-smokers in general seem to like the smell of pipe 
tobacco (even burning), and I must admit that even to me, as a heavy 
smoker, a room filled with cigarette smoke can be very unpleasant, while 
with pipe smoke it is more like 'the more the better'. I think that the 
peace and calm attached to this sport can best be described with the words
of a danish artist and humorist, Storm Petersen, from the beginning of this 
century: 'You sit with a pipe, walk with a cigar and run with a cigarette.' 
He himself smoked a large kalabash pipe, that never left his mouth except 
when having a cigar instead.

How does someone begin to smoke pipe ?? From what I know, from my 
country, almost every pipe smoker does have a father or a grandfather 
who smokes or smoked pipes, while far from every pipe smoker's children 
smoke or intend to start smoking pipes. Pipe smoking becomes in this way 
a sort of tradition passed from generation to generation, unlike 
cigarette smoking, where this doesn't happen in the same degree. In the 
ealier days this was not a problem, smoking was a kind of a status symbol, if 
you could affort to smoke you would do so, but nowadays medical science 
and health care organisations work so powerfully against smoking that any 
normal parent (father) will have to strongly disadvice his children from 
smoking (that may be pipes or cigarettes). Maybe this will eventually 
exterminate the race of pipe smokers, just sorry for the best and most 
natural smoking pleasure.

This is a little bit of what I feel about my pipes, what I put in 
them their well being and their future.

Now just a little comment to the article in #192 about testing pipes in 
the pipe shop:
In the pipe shops in Copenhagen, the normal procedure in this case is to 
put a little plastic tube over the mouth piece and then let the customer 
try it as much as he likes. This is very friendly, of course, but in my 
experience, a pipe does never feel the same with this plastic tube as 
without it. I have in trying this been surprised more than once by the 
difference. Not nescesarily to the worse, it can also be: 'wow, it's even 
better than in the pipe store'. To beginners it is though a solution as 
it gives an idea about what the pipe is like (a little advice: take your 
time, let the pipe stay between the teeth for much more than just a few 
seconds, that improves this testing method a lot), but for the experienced 
pipe smoker i recommend messuring with excactitude the dimensions of the 
favourite pipe's mouth piece. Most important: 'How thick is it ?' and then:
'how wide is it ?'. Using this method I (at least) rarely (mouth piece 
is not all) go wrong when buying a new pipe.

Now I think that my 'talking time' must be over, if not long gone....

Yours at all times smoking and friendly

Christian Joergensen <?????????????????????>

[ Thanks for the word, Christian!  Interesting comments about the
Vikings... I wonder if that's why they wore the helmets with the
horns? :-) -S. ]


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