Pictured Above: ABSINTHERIE Prague, Czech Republic – A bar and museum where you can try about 60 kinds of absinthe including absinthe cocktails, absinthe ice-cream, absinthe beer, absinthe chocolate, etc.  Absintherie is one of the biggest collectors of absinthe and absinthe-related objects in Central Europe.

—

“Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies,
or sighs,
or rocks,
or sings,
or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
“It is the hour to be drunken!”

— “GET DRUNK”, a poem by Charles Baudelaire – a known absinthe aficionado, the man who all but defined artistic decadence, Baudelaire’s best known work includes this poem that mentions the use of absinthe. Baudelaire’s main accomplishments are in the fields of poetry and art criticism, but he also wrote thoroughly emotional political tracts, dramas, and novellas. Baudelaire’s life was an extravagant one: he lived well beyond his means and drank far beyond the capacity of his body and pocketbook. Read More.

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