Irish bar solo trip

Last night I went out alone for the first time in China. I went to the Irish bar that we discovered when my friend from Songyuan was in town, that just so happens to have a name very similar to one of my old favorites in Phoenix (Dublin Irish Pub / The Dubliner aka The Dub).

The place was pretty dead when I got there, so I just sat at the bar (so happy Tianjin has actual bars, not just restaurants to drink in), ordered dinner and wrote a bit. They have Irish food, German food, the best pizza in town and now I know they also have a very good Chicken Tarragon.

After a while I struck up a conversation with an older, middle aged foreigner that was obviously hammered but completely harmless and good company. He apparently teaches at TEDA Maple Leaf School, right across from my apartment. Some Korean guys pretending to be Chinese (I don't understand that part, so don't ask) down the bar from us bought us a round and kept us entertained for a while. Then one of the other teacher's high school students came up to him and somehow we got into a conversation about how to pick up foreign girls. This is what happens when bars don't care how old their patrons are and drunk high school teachers can mingle with their sober students, lol. I don't think China has a legal drinking age, and the Chinese don't really drink so that's probably ok and the conversation didn't get too crazy, it just sounds funny.

Everyone I met was really nice, one of the staff even went in back and grabbed his English notes to introduce himself to me and ask me to be his friend. I was able to tell the cab driver where to take me both to get to the bar and to get home in Chinese too, so I left feeling pretty good. If only going out in TEDA weren't so darn expensive.