Daegu Trip

Now that I've finally finished the Epic "Max's Visit" series, it's time to get back to more recent events, like our weekend trip to Daegu. It had been quite a while since we had made it to an away game, and Daegu is the worst team in the K-League so we were excited. Following our Saturday morning class, Lon and I met up with Lisa, ate some food, and headed to the train station. There, we ran into Liam, possibly the biggest foreign Daejeon Citizen fan there is. He made the trek from Seosan in the west and informed us that due to the holiday weekend the transportation situation was tricky. We weren't aware it was a holiday, as our school doesn't DO holidays. Indeed, the KTX was sold out of regular and standing-room tickets, leaving us with the horrible fate of having to ride first class. It's only 5,000 won more and comes with a ton of legroom and a complimentary water. I slept for the entire 45-minute journey so I didn't really get to enjoy it.


We arrived in Daegu to warm, beautiful weather: perfect for a soccer game. It was about 5:30, an hour and a half until kick-off, so we hopped into a taxi for the 30-minute ride out to Daegu World Cup Stadium (recently renamed Daegu Stadium). It's in a lovely area, surrounded by wooded hills and complete with a weird sculpture. On the inside, it's not quite so perfect. It's actually the largest of the Korean 2002 World Cup venues, bigger than Seoul even, but they have one of those ridiculous running tracks, which should be illegal in soccer stadiums as far as I'm concerned. They make it hard to get a good view of the game, and they don't help the already moribund atmosphere caused by the dire attendance. Really makes you appreciate Daejeon World Cup Stadium.


The game got off to a great start with Park Sung-Ho scoring an early brace (that's two goals for you Yanks), including the below penalty, our first of the season I believe. Daegu were absolutely shocking. DCFC is not a good team but we ripped them apart in the first half and looked like Brazil in the process.





The second half did not go nearly as well. We should have seen it coming given the bad omens at half time. First, we ran out of beer. Second, thanks to a combination of bad planning and the lack of a nearby ATM, we didn't have enough cash to buy beer in the stadium AND take a cab home, and we reluctantly decided that not sleeping in the stadium > beer. Finally, when we attempted to exit the stadium so we could make it to the convenience store and use my bank card, we found ourselves locked in the stadium.


Those portents of doom proved accurate when we pissed away our 2-0 lead in the second half. Having drawn 2-2 with the worst team in the league, we decided to check out Daegu nightlife. We asked around and found a hip-looking district, and the presence of other foreigners was encouraging. However, when we attempted to find a motel to drop of our stuff, we found them booked to capacity. The last one we checked out actually told us we shouldn't bother looking in that area. Damn holiday weekend.


It was getting close to the time when the KTX stops running, so we decided to cut our losses and head home. Sadly the only food establishment we could see in the train station was the wretched Lotteria, Korea's answer to McDonald's. I believe we spent the entire 45-minute train ride home complaining about how crappy the food was.