IDUR
 

Swiss time is already midday over. All ghosts (ghost, ghost2 to ghost6) have abandoned and went to sleep for a whole year.

Please allow me one last Halloween-topic before getting serious again: The "clinic"-stay was a full success: everybody there became now a mileage-addicted-fan and did suscribe to all available programs....

My "sabbatical" week on FlyerTalk had different reasons:

a) I didn't want to pass 1'000 entries first and create again a big chat out of that - but at the same time I underestimated the effect of saying good-by (effect here on the board and effect on me as a "SMALL swiss BROTHER just WATCHING YOU" talking without contributing/argueing: it wasn't easy for me - and thank you for caring about me).

b) as with smoking - I never smoked/inhalated cigarettes, but I enjoy a good original cuban cigar (hoppla - "cuban" passes the censorship here) in my free-time/holidays - and with alcohol-drinking (I have at least 2 days per week with 0%) I wanted to find out if I can let the chatting for some days.

c) I wanted to get the postal-addresses of some flyertalk-friends who did contribute to my pleasure/amusement or real benefit in the past few months, to thank them with a personal very small present for the coming december-holidays/festivities.

d) Halloween was only one week ahead, and so the timing seemd perfect to let the door open for this reinkarnation (rebirth as I first said).

e) I did ask the Webmaster of FlyerTalk to put my entry-counter back to zero or one, they promised "to look into it", if/when they can do it, then I will have a come-back under my "original" Rudi - till then it is IDUR.

f) I am the keenest supporter of CatMan to reach the 1'000 miles first.

Rudi ... I can't believe you'd yank our chains like that!

We thought you were gone, and some of us were starting to think there was some massive conspiracy afoot!

WELCOME BACK!!!

Welcome back Rudi!

IDUR/Rudi ... go to have you back MAN (in the Budweiser tradition).

in certain European countries Anheuser-Bush is still not allowed to market their strongest brand under "Budweiser" (they use "BUD" instead), Anheuser Bush couldn't wave (or buy) yet the older rights of the original bohemian (Czech) BUDWEISER.

so here in Switzerland this word is censored (and I can't defenetly see their tv-spot here, even more so, as tv-ads for alcoholic drinks are forbidden at all - may be that's the reason why we all watch foreign-tv here).

Sounds like we're going OMNI, but European TV ads have a lot more scantily clad people which are not allowed on US TV ... makes you wonder which really is more "open". In addition, the big tobacco and alcohol producers/distributors here in the US have a lot of money which they like to spread around ... not that I am implying anything.

the tv-ban for alcohol-spots is only in Switzerland and Scandinavia.

But the industry goes easy around this by sponsoring televised sport-events (or President Jelzin in the news ...)

No risk of turning this into an OMNI thread, since it looks to be one already, so here goes:

On the question of the brand name "Budweiser", I'm not sure that the one from Bohemia is truly the "original".

Technically, in German "Budweiser" means only "from Budweis". As I understand it, in the old days Budweis (the city now called Ceske Budejovice - sorry, I don't have the proper accent marks on this keyboard and HTML is marked as disabled) was famous as a center of beer brewing, and so when Anheuser-Busch wanted a name for a beer which was redolent of "old world" beer, they simply took "Budweiser" as a name.

However, they did not (or could not) register the name as a trademark or brand name everywhere in the world, and the Budwar brewery in the city which used to be called "Budweis" beat them to it some places.

At least that's what I heard. The answer is probably somewhere on the Internet. Maybe I'll go surfing this morning.

By the way, I first ran into the Bohemian Budweiser in the mid-60s while wandering in the neighborhood around St. Stephan's Cathedral in Vienna. Great stuff! I highly recommend it to any beer connoisseur.

ok - here we go, I have the decision (with all details) of the "Schweizerisches Bundesgericht" somewhen in the 50's or 60's at my office. I'll check it on monday. (And if we really want to stay on with this: 70 years ago there were over 50 breweries worldwide with "Löwenbräu" in their name ...).

(I/my family had a similar fight with Martell brandy from France, we being Martel (one l only) wine-merchant's in St. Gallen. It was settled between my grandfather and the french, since then the name "Martel" for our family-company doesn't stand alone anymore, it is "Martel AG St. Gallen").

Back from a quick surf.

Rudi - your decision from the Swiss Federal Court will probably have more information, but what I got from the 'net was that Anheuser-Busch introduced their Budweiser in 1876 and apparently trademarked it soon thereafter; while the Budvar brewery first registered a trademark somewhere around 1911. I couldn't find the first use of the word "Budweiser" as a trade name by the Budvar brewery, but as there were numerous breweries in the city of Budweis, it seems likely that none called itself (or was allowed to call itself) "the" Budweiser.

Anyway, for those who are interested, I found some interesting sites (I suppose the html won't work, but I'll try to make links anyway; if they don't work, just copy the URL into your browser address window):

As to the Budvar brewery, go to: <a href="http://www.insidechina.com/sponsors/budvar/history.html">Budvar</a>.

As to the history of Anheuser-Busch, go to: <a href="http://anheuser-busch.com/legacy/history.htm">A-B</a>.

Rudi has umlauts on his keyboard. I feel soooo discriminated!

thank you Counsellor - you make me surfing for another 2 hours (it is only 1:40AM here ....)

keyboard discrimination: don't be jealous, when I am away, I suffer because of all my typing errors on "strange" keyboards ...

there would be other interesting "trade-mark" discussions with/about ORIGINAL historic swiss products possible: how about "Emmenthal-cheese"? or the "generic" expression of "Swiss cheese" (from Madison, WI) in any McDonalds?

Hey! IDUR is Rudi speled backwards. He didn't really leave us!

And I'm the last to recognize it!

Budvar: http://www.budvar.cz/english/informace.html