Pubs

I want to set some things straight. I realize that I have told a lot of stories from Ireland that involve pubs, and I want to be clear that the pubs of Ireland are not like bars in the States. (Disclaimer: I don’t even really know what bars in the States are like, so these comparisons are based off of my rather primitive and non-firsthand understanding of the bar culture of home). The pub is the center of Irish social life; the best thing I can compare it to is the coffee shop of the States. The whole community goes to the local pub for food, conversation, and live music, not just for a drink. It is a place where people hang out and talk, where the bartender knows your name and, more than that, is your neighbor. I met so many wonderful people, got a lot of free cups of tea, heard some great music, and all in all fell in love with the atmosphere of pubs and wish that back home in the States it were more like this.

The bars in Spain are also very different from what I understand the bars in the States to be like. When I was in Granada, we met up with a friend and she took us out to eat at her favorite tapas place, which was obviously a bar because every place that serves tapas (or any food, really) is a bar. But this was not like any bar I had ever seen (or heard of) in the States. We sat at the tables in the front left section of the bar, with the bar itself along the front right; but in the back section of the bar, there were couches set up around two or three coffee tables and some bookshelves along the wall with books, magazines, a checkers board, and some other games. There were two families sitting on the couches, the parents talking over a bottle of wine and children playing checkers and entertaining themselves. It was something you would expect to see in someone’s home, not in a public bar, but that is the way (some of) the bars of Spain are. There is a park near my apartment with a small outdoor bar/café, and it is perfectly normal to see parents sipping a glass of wine while their kids climb on the jungle gym and swing on the swing-set. It is just a very different cultural attitude towards alcohol and a different atmosphere as a result. Alcohol is an important part of the culture and a part of everyday life in a wholesome kind of way that is different from the States. Not that it is better or that I want bars opening in public parks at home, but I do think that the US might have less alcohol-related problems if alcohol were something people learned how appreciate socially and to enjoy in moderation from a young age. I also don’t want to say that all bars in Spain are like that—of course there are clubs and things, but as a general observation, the attitude towards alcohol and the consumption of alcohol is very different here in Spain and in Ireland as well. Something to think about and talk about (especially in view of Point Loma’s Covenant)…