Korea: my life, my story: Lunar New Year ( 설날 ) [Daegu]

( Daegu Station )

This trip really was, quite simply put, a drunken mess. It was a marathon party, that consisted of non-stop laughing about inside jokes. We got off work on Tuesday night and dropped into Jurok, our local bar. Not to mention, the establishment owned by the man who straight up rented our car for us. We paid of course, but nobody would let four foreigners rent a car, so we had to convince a Korean to do it for us. We owed Honey quite a bit for going out of his way to help us, so we stopped in for a couple drinks.

After this, we went to visit Oma for some food, and afterwards, Erik returned to Jurok. We didn't know this at the time, but he stayed there until about 7am. We were supposed to leave to pick up the car at 9am. As you may have guessed by now, this created some problems for the following morning's plans. I called everybody to make sure they were up and ready to go, but I could not get ahold of Erik. I then went over to his apartment and proceeded to bang on his door for fifteen minutes... No answer. I called again... No answer. It was Justin's turn next. He banged for about ten minutes... No answer. All the while, we could hear music playing inside his apartment. We know he was there, but he wasn't answering the door. Eventually, he called me to ask if we had called. He had no idea that we'd been trying to reach him for close to a half an hour.

With this said and done, we were out the door and on the way to the rental shop. After a quick inspection, Erik was behind the wheel maneuvering in and out of Korean traffic. The number of cars on the road was somewhat unbelievable. Lines of cars for as far as the eye could see. We thought we had figured out something that all of the other Koreans hadn't and were cruising comfortably at 100 k/hr in the left lane. After awhile we figured it was just the bus lane, but there were no cops on the road, so we figured, "Screw it." After about 45 minutes of this, we realized that there were traffic cameras every 4 or 5 kilometers. We are still waiting for a fistful of tickets to show up in the mail. Whoops.

( Fueling Up )

( Trash Cart )

( Seolnal Traffic )

6 or 7 hours later, we arrived in Daegu. We promptly checked into a love motel and unloaded all of our stuff. We were ready to hit the town. After about an hour, we found ourselves in what seemed to be a happenin' part of town. We ate and proceeded to look for bars that were on a list of recommendations for Justin's friend. Before I go any further, let me just say that Daegu is awesome. We met so many fun people and found a number of great places.

First we found a basement bar, where Calvin and Erik were able to play drums, so we hung around there for awhile. The guys played, and we watched music videos on a projector screen. After the videos lost their luster, we went searching for more entertainment. We found another basement bar that was music oriented, but this one was a little different. They actually had a whole band layout set up to play on. I played acoustic, periodically accompanied by Erik or Calvin on the drums. It was amazing, and after that short experience, I realized that I needed a guitar again. This past weekend, after we got paid, I quickly went out to Insa-dong and bought one. Best idea ever. Back to the important stuff. After Erik tried to pick up the bass to jam with us and was yelled at by the owner, we realized that we had worn out our welcome and decided to move on.

( Calvin & myself jamming at Commune )

( Did I mention that Daegu is pretty much the Vespa capital of Korea? )

We found another bar from the list, called Thursday Party. This place was great. We ended up running into a guy that Justin had met the weekend before in Busan, Muhammad. He introduced us to some fun people, we drank, some dude named Chris tried to take Erik home, I tried to fight a guy who was being more than uncool, and we ended up passing out at the love motel around 4 or 5 in the morning. Day one, finished.