Helping a friend out :)

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This time a post about beer but not about the taste. Some time ago I received an email from the Soulfly mailing list, they had an IPA beer that was available in the Netherlands. I immediately ordered 6. I posted a photo in a Soulfly group where I received a direct message from a member of that group. He was from the United Kingdom and wondered if I would be willing to send him a few of those Soulfly cans. At first I had my doubts but decided to order a few for him anyway.

I received them, packed them to send to the United Kingdom and sent them. He immediately transferred the money so everything was arranged.

Until I received a message from him a few days later, he had received the cans but (probably) due to the pressure in the plane the cans exploded. Now I have to say that the aluminum of the cans was also very thin, thinner than other cans.

I found it very annoying but of course I couldn't do anything about it. He also indicated that it was a shame but that we probably couldn't have prevented this.

Then we were sitting at home in the garden, next to our man cave, until we suddenly heard a bang from the man cave. And guess what, we still had 3 cans there and because of the heat one of them had exploded. So it was really the cans, they were just too thin.

Anyway, my English friend had an access to order special beer haha, before I knew it I was getting requests from him if I could get other special cans of beer from metal bands. Unfortunately, most of them were not available in the Netherlands until last week he asked if I could get 'Day of the dead' stout beer. Trooper beer from Iron Maiden. He even sent a link to a Dutch liquor store that had them :).

I looked online and they did indeed have them in stock. I asked him how many he wanted and in the end it became 20 (!?). For a collection I thought that was quite a lot but oh well, the strange thing (and I haven't asked him yet) is that Trooper beer comes from England I think, so it's actually strange to have it sent from the Netherlands. Maybe it's very expensive in England, I don't know.

Anyway, I received the order and it turns out that they are larger bottles. 800 grams per bottle and then times 20 is already 16 kilos. He asked me if I could send it in two boxes so I went to see what the shipping costs were. For DHL it came to 72 euros per box, which was very expensive and he thought so too hahaha... With PostNL (Dutch postal service) it was 42 euros for one box of 20 kilos. So I only made one box. With the debacle of the cans in mind I did my best with the packing :) I would find it annoying if the bottles didn't arrive intact either. So I bought bubble wrap, wrapped each bottle separately, reinforced the box and put an old blanket on top of the box to be able to press everything down. I have to be honest that this is actually a bit too much for me to help someone hahaha, I was pretty much busy with it all evening.

Finally it is in the box and can be sent tomorrow, now we just have to hope that customs doesn't tear the box open, or the postman.

Have a great evening,

Peter