Out Drinkin

*So recently, both the US and Korea were in a little program called the World Cup. Heard of it? Well, here in Korea it’s a huge deal! They even keep the subways open later on the nights that Korea plays. Although, I did just learn that the subway stays open later during the week then it does on the weekend!!! Like me, you might be saying, ah waaa? That’s right, the weekends are to be spent with your family, not out drinking with your friends! Silly, that’s what week days are for!
Anyways, back to the World Cup. Vicki and I, although not huge soccer fans we are well aware of the rules of the game, so we decided to give it a go and join the fans in Gangnam. It was pouring rain and every bar we went to we were turned away. At first, I thought it was because we were foreigners and the bars were full of Koreans so no waygooks allowed! But no, some young Korean girls with their skirts up to their hoo-ha’s were turned away too so we knew there must be another explanation. Well, the deal is most places you needed to have a reservation. There is no such thing as standing room only. You can’t order a beer and stand near the bar and drink it, noooo! You have to have a seat and a table or nothing at all! Strange right? Yeah, I thought so too.
So we ended up watching the first half of the game out in the rain, under umbrellas, drinking canned beer from the GS. The game was televised on a huge TV / billboard so we got to see if just fine, although my shoes were filling with rain water. At half time we decided to start out search for a bar with an open seat once again. We finally found one! Hooray!
Now this whole “much have a table thing” seems really strange, but the deal is that most places require you to buy ‘anju’ or snack foods in addition to your beer. So you can’t just order a 30$ pitcher of beer, you have to order squid, pancakes, or French fries too. Yet, Vicki was not aware of this rule after living in Korea for 7 years so its really just a law they enforce if you are with a Korean. If it is two waygooks then they don’t bother. Trying to translate this requirement for us in addition to having to translate their menu that has no English on it would be near impossible so Vicki and I are safe as long as we are just hanging out with each other.
*Vicki and I went to a bar near my house and got really excited when we saw the following on the menu: Red Beer, Blue Beer, Purple Beer, etc. So we thought, yes! We are gonna get a picture of us drinking every color of the rainbow! This is gonna be sweet! So I ordered the purple beer and she ordered the orange beer. Oh god! It was the worst beer I have ever, and I mean ever, drank in my entire life!!! In fact, I could only have 3 sips before abandoning it and ordering a regular beer.
What makes this beer so terrible you ask? Well, it was cheap Cass, which is not all that terrible by its self, but what makes it “Red, Yellow, Blue, etc” is the addition of fruit syrup. I know it might not sound that bad, but trust me, it really is worse then you are imagining. So the “purple beer” I had was full of raspberry syrup, and the “Orange Beer” contained peach syrup.
Dear Korea, stop making your already poor quality beer even worse.