Daegu

Fifty-two Weeks of Adventure #30: Daegu Chicken and Beer Festival

This past week was the second annual Chimac festival in Daegu. Chimac is a made-up word jamming together “Chicken” and “Mekju” which is the Korean word for beer. This festival is a marriage of two of Korea’s favorite things, fried chicken and cheap beer.

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The festival was held in Duryu Park, a large park just one subway stop from our place. I went to the festival with some girl friends on Friday night and scoped out the situation. Then Jonathan and I returned on Saturday afternoon and hung out for a few hours. Is there anything more fun than summer festivals? It doesn’t even matter what they’re for, I just enjoy sitting outside, listening to music, and enjoying the festival foods.

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Potato spiral proved a but tricky to eat without impaling the roof of my mouth.

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As you can see, there were tents for food and drinks EVERYWHERE so there was no shortage of options. We had fried chicken and kebab and a potato spiral. There were also several tents with craft beers from small local breweries. As popular as beer is in Korea (Korea has a VERY strong drinking culture), they primarily drink one of two beers, Cass or Hite, both of which are sort of the equivalent of Bud light or Miller. Very light and very mellow. We tried a Heffeweisen from one of the craft brew tents that wasn’t bad. It reminded me of our life in Raleigh, which feels like a thousand years ago, because  North Carolina is just bursting with little independent breweries.

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Jonathan was getting artsy.

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We watched a couple of performances as it started to get dark, including these girls who were pretty bad at dancing and later a band comprised of what looked like 6th grade girls plus one boy who was the drummer. I was much more impressed by them.

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How cute are they?

Being at the festival made us very nostalgic about our time in Korea and a little sad about leaving. In particular I think we will miss living in a big city and having unique cultural experiences at our fingertips. We spent a while dreaming about the places we might go in the future. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our whole Korea adventure it’s that you really never know where your life might end up if you stay open to possibilities.

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Of course, no festival is complete without the dancing light-up beer bottle!

View of Daegu Tower at night. Which we are hoping to go up to the top of in the next week!

View of Daegu Tower at night. Which we are hoping to go up to the top of in the next week!

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure about our final trip to Seoul you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure #28: Hiking Palgongsan, Featuring Lawrence the Slug

One thing we love about Korea is the mountains. I grew up in Louisiana which is so flat, part of it is actually below sea level, and hubby grew up in Indiana, which is possible even flatter. When we lived in North Carolina we loved that the land had a roll to it with lots of small hills and there were real mountains within an hour’s drive or so. Here in Daegu, we live in a geographic bowl surrounded on all sides by mountains. You can see them any direction you look and you can hike most of them. When we move back to the US we’ll be in South Carolina which might have a few hills, but doesn’t have mountains, and I know we will really miss seeing them every day.

On Saturday we went hiking at Palgongsan which is the tallest mountain in the Daegu area. We’ve only hiked to the summit once since it takes a solid 4 hours to do, but thankfully there are lots of smaller ridges and peaks you can hike to more easily and still get a nice view.

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The view from the highest place we climbed to.

We decided to go on Saturday because it had rained during the week and was supposed to rain again on Sunday so we wanted to take advantage of our window of opportunity. What we didn’t realize was that all of that rain made it unbearably humid and sweat was dripping from our fingers and elbows and noses within minutes.

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Apart from the heat and humidity, the hike we did wasn’t too strenuous and there were some temples and shrines along the way that we could stop at.

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We took my parents to this temple when they visited last year and at the time it was decorated with lanterns for Buddha’s birthday.

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The ubiquitous rock pile.

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A jillion tiny Buddhas! Dreams do come true!

We originally intended to continue on across a ridge to get to another peak, but as we headed that direction it started to thunder. Thunderstorms are extremely unusual here (at least down in the city) so we figured we should probably get off the mountain before it hit.

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We did get to see this amazing slug that was half the size of my hand. I shall call him Lawrence.

Since we only have four weekends left in Korea, this was probably our last time hiking at Palgongsan. Like everything these days, this was bittersweet. While I’ve moved many times in the past few years, this is the first time I’ll be moving away truly not knowing if I will ever come back to these places again. So while part of me is counting down the days, another part of me doesn’t quite know how to say goodbye. I am so thankful for the adventures we’ve had here, even as I look forward to the adventures to come.

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure about our visit to the cat cafe, you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.

Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure #16: Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Growing up, my family weren’t huge baseball fans. None of my siblings played baseball or softball (or even tee-ball as kids) and we didn’t live in an area with a Major League team. My grandfather was something of an Atlanta Braves fan, but apart from catching pieces of  those games on television when I was at my grandparents’ house, I had no experience with baseball.

Jonathan, however, grew up with a sports-loving father and played baseball from a young age. He has many childhood memories of playing or watching baseball. He took me to my very first baseball game on our first wedding anniversary. We were in New York City so naturally we had to go to a Yankees game. It was an incredibly low scoring game, so I wasn’t overly impressed with the sport, but I enjoyed the atmosphere.

A few years later when we lived in North Carolina, there was a minor league team in Durham (the Durham Bulls) who actually had a really nice stadium not far from where we lived, so we went to a few games there as well as at least one Charlotte Knights game with friends who live in Charlotte. I could take or leave baseball, but I enjoy it as a social event.

Baseball is all the rage in Korea. In fact, our city has its own team (currently ranked #1) and stadium. So last Saturday evening we ventured out to Daegu Stadium to watch the Samsung Lions play. Fun Fact – Instead of teams being named after the city they play for like the Atlanta Braves or the Cincinnati Reds, in Korea the teams are named after their corporate sponsors. So Daegu’s team is called the Samsung Lions and they played against was called the KT Whiz.

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Unlike at American sporting events, people are expected, even encouraged to get food outside of the stadium and bring it in with them and the food/drink of choice for baseball games is fried chicken and beer. Food carts line the street outside of the stadium where people sell fried chicken, squid on sticks, tteokbokki, and kimbap.

Another fun fact about baseball in Korea is that there are cheerleaders who dance around in front of the big cheering section. Maybe this exists in other places as well, but in the US, cheerleaders are typically only present at football and basketball games and it would be strange to see them at a baseball or soccer game.

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There was a rowdy cheering section of the stands complete with Korean drums and lots of organized cheers, but they were on the opposite side of the stadium from our seats, so we were able to enjoy them from a distance. The stadium isn’t all that large though – in fact, it’s similar in size to the minor league stadiums I went to in North Carolina.

The Samsung Lions won 3 to 1.  I think. I was obviously deeply invested or whatever. (Actually, it’s not my fault because there was a family sitting in front of us who clearly live on the American military base and they kept pulling out insane snacks I haven’t seen in years. So I was obviously distracted). Go team! Score some goal point units!

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Injury. Ambulance Minivan to the rescue!

Injury. Ambulance Minivan to the rescue!

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few – no pressure. If you missed last week’s adventure you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.