02 Feb World’s Southernmost Bar

The bar at the end of the world . . . at least the southern end of the world . . . is at Vernadsky Station in the Antarctic.

It used to be called Faraday Station back when the British had money for such scientific adventures as running meteorological outposts in remote locations. Over the years they’d done some outstanding work there. Faraday Station was where they discovered the hole in the ozone layer.

  Formerly, Faraday Station . . . from which all roads now lead to Ukraine

But money ran short, priorities changed, and the time came to close the place down. Unfortunately, there are treaties governing how to close places down in Antarctica and, even more unfortunately, Britain had signed those treaties. The only way to get rid of Faraday Station was to haul it away. Every stick of wood. Every chunk of concrete. Every scrap of linoleum and sheet of insulation and fleck of paint which, when the accountants penciled it out, was more expensive than keeping it open.

They were still debating what to do with it when the Soviet Union blew apart and seventeen newly-minted countries began looking for ways to make their marks in the world. Ukraine wasn’t flush with cash to spend on flashy science projects at the bottom of the world but the British weren’t asking for much so, in 1996, Faraday Station changed allegiances for one British pound. Ukraine changed the name to Vernadsky Station, and moved in. The British didn’t even repatriate the pound. It’s still there, set between two odd-looking wooden posts on a plank bolted to the bar.

                 The southernmost pound in the world

I was surprised to discover a working bar in an Antarctic research station. The people who owned the station had been surprised, too.

Back when the British ran the place they’d sent down a load of lumber and a pair of carpenters to build a dock. When spring came and ships could get back in, it turned out the carpenters had built a bar. Looking at a long, Antarctic winter they’d had the choice of spending months stumbling around in the dark and freezing wind muscling together a dock. Or staying indoors and warm and building a bar. It must have seemed like a no-brainer.

Judging by the quality of the liquor, the guys who work there now are chosen for their competency in meteorology, upper atmospheric physics, glaciology and other sciences Antarctical. Not for their skill as moonshiners.

At first gulp what they serve seems like vodka. Bad vodka, but vodka. It’s clear and makes its presence known in your throat. But that’s just because we’re Americans and have a limited palate. Ukrainians all over the world know better. They call the stuff “horilka” and make it from kitchen scraps. If it contains anything that started life as a potato, it’s only by coincidence. The word “horilka” comes from the root for “burning,” which is about as apt an appellation as you could want.

   Turning his back on horilka at the bar at the end of the world

Payment can be made in greenbacks or, if you’re wearing one, the even-more-universal currency of a newly liberated bra. The only person in our group who took them up on the bra deal was a middle-aged lady who looked like, well, a middle-aged lady. Or, in her case, a middle-aged lady fitted out for Antarctica, which meant she was sheathed in so many layers it would take half-an-hour to get to whatever lay underneath. At least that’s how long it would have taken me.

It took her about fifteen seconds. She did a few unobtrusive wriggles, then pulled her bra out of her left sleeve and handed it to the barkeep who tossed it onto the stack of previous payments.

Judging by the pile of bras, this guy has sold a lot of moonshine horilka

She’d learned the bra-through-the-sleeve trick at stripper school.

“Stripper school?” I was amazed. “There’s such a thing as stripper school?”

“Never got my license, though.”

“License? You need a license to be a stripper?” This was a world I should have looked into years ago.

“I would have gotten it, too, if it hadn’t been for pole. Rest of the classes were easy. Tease. Dancing. Lap. Never could get the hang of pole, though.”

Her husband didn’t seem to think any of this was unusual, but it was hard to tell. The fact was, he kept to himself so much I wasn’t sure he enjoyed being in Antarctica, or just gotten dragged along.

Maybe, when I thought about it, he’d concluded years ago that if he had the sort of wife who was likely to hand her bra to a strange man in a very remote bar, it was a good idea to keep her in sight.

Or, when I thought some more, it could be she treated him to his own personal lap dance every time she got him alone, and he wandered through life so mellowed out he didn’t talk much.