Soccer in Seongnam: BYOB, chopsticks, and vuvuzelas

Well tonight sure has been one for the record books.

Within the last week or so, I have been mentioning to people how badly I want to go to a soccer game. We recently found out that there is a soccer stadium just a few blocks away from the apartment, so we had no excuses not to go!

Julie, Eric, and I decided to hit up a Korean Champion’s League Quarterfinal game between Seongnam (us) and Suwon (them). We bought the most “expensive” ticket for about $10 (because we can), grabbed a couple of vuvuzelas, and aimlessly wandered into the stadium. Our tickets were entirely in Korean and didn’t have any numbers on them. We really didn’t know where we were going. We assumed a ticket guy would direct us in the general direction but no such thing existed. Lucky for us, I apparently look like one of the two Caucasian players on the home team. Cuz ya know, all white people look alike blah blah blah. 

Anyways, the guy looked star struck and offered to have us sit with him and his cohorts. Only problem was that it was on the $8 side of the stadium. We bought $10 tickets. We had suddenly become Korean stadium snobs. We decided to check our superior, lavish egos at the door and grace the general masses with our humble presence. That and we were afraid we would break the guy’s heart if we said ‘no’. After settling on seats, we got cold feet and pretended that we were gonna go look for beers but come back (we weren’t gonna come back). As we walked away, the guy seemed to panic and held up 3 beers that were apparently for us. He clearly didn’t want us to leave his company. We decided that we couldn’t pass up free beers and returned to the section saturated with Seongnam fans and our new best friend (according to him). After a few faux convos with this guy (of the we-speak-in-English-he-speaks-in-Korean variety), we apparently were hittin’ it off. Before we knew it people from all around us were sharing stuff with us. (sidenote: this stadium seemed to be BYOFAD, bring your own food and drink; I know, pretty sweet) After receiving 2 cans of Cass Beer each, we were showered in dokk (Korean rice cake), fried peppers (and chopsticks to eat them with of course), Korean Doritos, glorified Chips Ahoy cookies, fried walnut/rice balls filled with a sweet paste, and an emptied-out soda bottle full of more beer. It was as if the Concert On The Square in Madison and the ’88 Seoul Olympics had a love child. It was outlandish to say the least. At one point during the game I asked our drunken friend, who claimed to be the “leader” of the Seongnam fans, if I could beat his drums. He agreed and I followed the one other drummer’s lead and we banged out Seongnam battle cries for a few minutes. It was quite the experience.  Towards the end of the game, the guy aggressively muttered a few drunken Korean words to Eric and I. One of our seat neighbors translated and told us that the guy wanted to take us out for drinks and food after the game. I’m sure it would’ve been a blast, but it’s a school night and this guy seemed a little too into us. Maybe next time Korean guy! Seongnam ended up winning 4-1 and at the end, all the fans in our section were singing “nah nah nah nah, hey hey, goodbye” Twas fantastic. All in all, a very memorable evening with some great people. And who knows maybe we didn’t have to look like a soccer player, maybe Koreans are just that hospitable to friends and foreigners alike. 

The infamous dude is on the far left, he would periodically throw on his jersey over his straight-from-work dress shirt