Lotte Brew-Ha!

During the last couple months of getting settled into Busan life, Amy and I caught what some refer to as "Lotte Fever." Now, don't worry; we're not breaking out into a rash.

Lotte is a company that owns the major league baseball team here in Busan, the Lotte Giants.

Rather than refer to their teams by the city they're from, all the team names are coupled with the company that owns them. Big Korean companies like Kia and Samsung have teams. This actually brings me to a topic I've thought about a lot since I've been here.

Corporations in Korea have their names EVERYWHERE. Lotte owns the baseball team, tons of grocery stores in Busan, and high-rise apartment complexes all over the city. LG and Samsung are the same business. They own apartments, stores, and businesses everywhere; and their names are everywhere, accordingly. LG and Samsung are like this all over Korea. Lotte is a more of a Busan thing.

When I first noticed this, it bothered me that a very small amount of people, or like three big companies, control a massive chunk of the culture/lifestyle/consumerism here in Korea. It was the blatancy of it that truly bothered me. This got me comparing it to life back in America. I then realized that the outstretched corporate control is no different in America. The big difference is that corporations in America do a great job of concealing the fact that their hands are in every aspect of your life. Companies in America avoid putting the 'head company's' name on all its products. For instance, how many different things does General Electric own and operate? Or how much control does Mars Bar or Pepsi Co. have in the market? The list of companies owned by GE and Pepsi is insane and extremely diverse. In addition to the obvious products, Pepsi owns: Gatorade, Frito-Lay, 7-up, Tropicana, and Quaker Oats. Each of these companies in turn, own hundreds of different products that all come with a separate name. The vastness of GE would take too long to research and talk about right now.

I realize this is a bit of a rant. I just wanted to say that, to a certain extent, I appreciate the straight-forwardness of corporations in Korea and Koreans in general. If something is owned by Samsung, you know.

Ok...back to our awesome Saturday!

So, Amy and I caught Lotte Fever pretty quickly. It was kind of easy, since they made it to the playoffs this year! Our gracious friend, Ryan, who pitches for the Lotte Giants, was able to get us and some friends of ours, tickets to the 3rd game of their first playoff series, which is against the Dusan Bears, from Seoul. Lotte won the first two games. They won the first 10-5, when they scored 5 runs in the top of the 9th! They won the second when their clean-up batter hit a 3-run homer in the top of the 10th inning, to break a 1-1 tie.

The third game of the series was in Busan on Saturday. Before the game, we met up with our friends Matt and Hailey for some Mr. Pizza across from the stadium. Then we loaded up one of Amy's trusty Blue Avocado cooler bags with brew and met up with Pete and his brother Chris outside the gates.

Ryan got us great seats along the right field foul line. Before this, we'd had the pleasure of making it to two regular season games. The fans were pretty rowdy then. They stepped it up big time for the playoffs. People from the stadium passed out massive banners that stretched over the heads of about 50 fans' heads.

Lotte had a great start, with two runs in the first inning, taking the lead 2-0. They held this lead until the 4th inning, when da Bears exploded with a 5-run inning.

During the game, I sat next to Chris, an English teacher from Ireland/England. He was born in Belfast and moved to London when he was about 10. His Irish accent didn't come out until about the 6th inning, or 5th beer. He was gracious enough to educate me on the intricacies of Cricket and its similarities/differences with baseball. In return, I tried to explain why pitchers check the runner at 1st, how often people actually steal, what a squeeze play is, and many more wonderfully obscure rules of our beloved pastime.

Lotte answered the charge from the Bears a couple innings later with a solo home run from Lee Dae Ho, the cleanup batter. 6-3, da Bears. This was right around the 7th inning when they pass out the orange rally trash bags/hats.

We scored another 2 runs in the next inning to make it 5-6.

The Giants put up a great fight, but couldn't make up that last run and we unfortunately....lost :(

Delirious and hungry, we grabbed our first meal from McDonald's in two months, which is pretty impressive for me. Unfortunately, we took it to-go with us on the subway, where it was thoroughly smashed by the THOUSANDS of people that crammed in after the game. I haven't been that crammed since I tried to get in the front row of a Rage Against the Machine concert.

A gnarled meal, a short nap, and a shower later, and we were heading to meet up with some friends at the subway in Seomyeon. They took us to a german-style brewery and restaurant.

This place was AWESOME!

The Korean waiters and waitresses dress up like Germans at Octoberfest in the 19th century. Hilarious. A German/Korean fusion band plays in the enormous mess hall (it's about the size of a school cafeteria). The girl lead singers got into it after a few rounds when they started sing/dancing on the tables.

The atmosphere was incredible, and the in-house made beers were even better. The massive 2000 liter fermenters are on display in the mess hall. They usually have three types of home-brew on the menu: Pils, Weizen, and Dunkel. The Weizen, wheat beer, was alright, but I'm not much for wheat beers anymore. The Dunkel was fantastic! And I left the Pils to be tasted on another date.

After the much needed visit to 'good-beer-land,' we met up with some more friends for some late night dance partyin in Kyunsung. We eventually made it home from our fun-packed day of awesomeness around 3am, when I still managed to have the energy to cook and eat some ramen.

What a day.