Also, Swedes go on cruises to Åland (a Swedish-speaking Finnish island with low/no alcohol taxes) and famously bring huge suitcases to fill with booze.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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I thought it was tax free because the ferries keep loitering on international waters for enough time.
Lol it's both, I've been on the famed swedish booze cruise with family over there and it's a yearly tradition for them to stock up on liquor, but it's also a weekend long party on a boat. One bartender was concerned that 14 year old me didn't want any vodka in my red bull.
I took one of those booze ferries in college from Oslo to Copenhagen. The drunkest I got that whole semester by far was our trip back. But my favorite was the old ladies with boxes of hard liquor and packs of cigarettes getting off the boat
The great Baltic migration.
At first I thought this was a map of invasion by each country.
But... where do the Polish and Czech go?
to the store down the street because they got the cheapest
But only down the street. You can't go up the street.
Welp, time to move to Gdansk or Olomuc.
To rehab
They make the booze
I really wish I knew where the UK went for cheaper booze. I guess we go fuck ourselves
Used to be France but Brexit put a stop to that.
Scots go south
Beer is actually cheaper in Switzerland than France, less taxes. As someone who lives on the border, I buy all my booze in Switzerland. Atleast in supermarkets.
Obviously swiss labour is much more expensive so in bars and restaurants its more expensive in Switzerland.
Maybe that explains Luxembourg as well, cuz on the face of it that makes no sense
As a Belgian, definitely. Booze is much cheaper in Luxembourg.
Used to live in CH and here to make the same point: as the taxes are low there, alcohol (and, surprisingly, big TVs back then) were some of the very few things cheaper to buy locally. Do not think it changed now. Restaurants, on the other hand, were some of the most expensive in the world there.
Another way of reading this is that alcohol is really expensive in Switzerland and Austria.
Did something change in Austria recently? It used to be more or less the same prices as Germany about a decade ago.
Not sure about alcohol prices, but stuff like deodorants and other necessities often cost double as much as in Germany since some time
Whereas Iceland wishes it wasn't an Island.
German alcohol taxes generally aren't bad, going to Poland or Czechia should mostly be about general shopping trips. The Luxembourg thing is absolutely true, but rather specific: In Germany you pay more tax per ml of alcohol the higher the ABV is and if you want to make your own liqueur you wan to start out with real high ABV and then dilute down, a litre of 96% is about 30 Euros in Germany, 20 in Luxembourg. Wouldn't be worth the trip for more pedestrian ABVs.
You can generally import as much as you want within the EU as long as it's for your own use, to not have to explain yourself keep the booze to under 10l per person.
German beer taxes are low, like 10ct per litre on average. Wine taxes are even lower because France exists, German vinyards do have a lobby and all they want is to make sure is that people don't get used to paying more than a fiver for a bottle or they might start buying import stuff.
Im origanally from the Czech boarder in Germany. We usally went to CZ for cigarettes and gasoline but the alcohol in shops wasnt really cheaper. Pubs or Restaurants on the other hand are really worth the trip.
Or, you know, drink less alcohol.
High taxes on alcohol is a public health measure, meant to encourage people to drink less poison.
How's that working out?
Good question. It's working pretty well, actually.
Yea it's actually a very effective countermeasure. That why I hate it. I know it's the absolute right thing.... but I like drinking...
And now we have a whole industry of people flying around the world to get wasted every day (🇬🇧)