Our first encounter with Café Victor was a traumatic experience. We entered the place late one Monday evening in December 2002, after having attended the first of Nick Cave’s two excellent concerts in Reykjavík. We decided against having a beer when we saw a large sign over the bar advertising their “Christmas special”: gingersnap cookies and the traditional Icelandic “blanda”, which consists of Egils orangeade and the classic Icelandic drink “Malt”, a sweet malt extract, also from Egils. When we tasted our beverages, we instantly knew that something was not right. A chat with the bartender revealed that our “blanda” did not, in fact, contain any Malt at all, but something called “Black Elwis”: a German drink that is, as the bottle label claimed, the first bottled beverage to combine alcohol-free beer and cola and tastes even worse than it sounds. “Does the German propensity for evil know no bounds?” we thought, as we staggered out, dazed and confused.