Dave prepares to pull his last pint at the Mr Pickwick pub

David Court, the managing director of the highly popular Mr Pickwick pub on Alpenstrasse in the city, is to pull his last pint on Tuesday 30 August. However, the 49-year-old Swiss-Canadian will not be leaving Zug entirely.
 
Much of the pub’s success (there are others run on similar lines in Baden, Basel, Lucerne, Bern and Zurich) is due to Court’s genial manner with his chatter in Anglo-Swiss German. He does not stand on ceremony, in fact rather than refer to him as Court, it is far more appropriate to call him Dave. And not many have ever stayed as long as he has, eleven years now, as landlord of a city centre pub.
 
What made this father of two come to Switzerland from Winnipeg in the first place? Dave explained that he first came to the country in 1991 when he got a job in a tourist shop in Interlaken. At the time, of course, he was far more used to the huge skies over the Canadian prairies, but only rarely do the Swiss mountains give him a sense of claustrophobia these days.
 
Six years later, having trained as a chef, he then moved to Zug with his girlfriend, who later became his wife, and worked for a while at the of the Juanitos Mexican restaurant before taking over the Mr Pickwick pub, which is actually run by the Gastrag AG company of Basel, in 2005.
 
“The good thing about Switzerland is that everything works,” he explained, as he also mentioned his grandfather and hence his mother, too, were Swiss. “This is why I, myself, have been a Swiss national since 1995.”
 
While he works in the busy centre of Zug, he lives in the peace and quiet of Menzingen, which he very much enjoys. Furthermore, his brother is not that far away in Edlibach.
 
“Quite simply, serving beer is what my life is about,” he said. “We have done our best to make everyone feel very much at home in our pub,” he added, and it seems that both locals and expats have enjoyed having an English pub in the city where they can watch Champions League football matches over a pint or two of Guinness, with a portion of fish’n’chips, too, if that is what they want.
 
Indeed he can offer as many as 12 different types of draught beer at his bar, not to mention a dozen more in bottles. “What people like about this place is the nice pub atmosphere with its living-room-style carpet, the beer pumps and having the opportunity to have a game of darts or watch a football match at the same time.”
 
What came as a bit of a shock for Dave was the ban on smoking imposed in 2009. “Nevertheless, everyone soon got used to it. Now smokers head to the door if the urge for a fag gets too much,” he said, as he mentioned how the first thing he used to do when he got back home in those days was to have a shower as “he stank like an ash tray,” he admitted. The change has meant however, that more families with children and more women came to drink there.
 
Unlike in the Victorian times of Dickens’ Mr Pickwick, pub fights are virtually unknown in Alpenstrasse, and if anyone attempted to deal in drugs, they were soon shown the door (video surveillance is in operation now).
 
So why is Dave moving away?
“After 11 years I felt I needed a new challenge, so I am opening a Craft Beer Bistro in Zurich’s District number 7 in October,” he said. It is here where predominantly beer from smaller breweries will be served.
 
Alfredo Godenzi has been appointed to take over responsibility for the running of the Mr Pickwick pub, with its four full-time and seven to eight part-time staff.
 
And how will Dave he spend his free time in future?
“Free time? What is that?” he asked jokingly. “If you do something you enjoy, works is not so much a problem, is it?” he replied. What free time he did have, he said he would be spending with his family.
 

Ale drinkers will be interested to know that the brewery in Baar was given an award at the end of last month for the way it transforms water from the local St Martin source into excellent beer.