5

15.08. 2016

You have no idea how much I’m doubting my decision to study in Korea. I had no idea that all this stuff would happen in my short time back in Jakarta. After all, it’s just supposed to be a transit to my real destination, Seoul. To keep things short, I’ll sum it all up.

So I randomly matched some YouTuber on Tinder and met up with him. At the time of the matching, I had no clue who he was. So we met up and I was instantly greeted by a bunch of drunk dudes. My alarm bells immediately went off. A drunk sausage fest?

No, thank you.

They were loud, kind of rude, and a bit obnoxious, but somehow something still held me, which is why I didn’t immediately run for the hills. I was overwhelmed, but at the same time, something had piqued my interest. One could say I was oddly intrigued? After a heated debate over an uber, we ended up making it to some beergarden, which actually turned out to be really nice.

Good vibes, a nice atmosphere, and a sort of calm serenity as opposed to the drunk baggage I was dragging around.

It was located outside, in a cozy courtyard behind an office building. We stepped through a small passage and were suddenly surrounded by small trees, dimmed little lightbulbs floating like garlands over the garden, tropical plants, and seats made out of car tires. The barnyard explosion I had in tow seemed to know the people behind the bar and immediately started conversing with them in the loudest and drunkest way possible. I just shook my head, however, was not unable to suppress a tiny smile. I had already sort of made friends with one of them along the way. He seemed to be the only relatively stable one, and so he nicely offered to buy me a beer. Since I was born and raised in the capital of Germany, I was not, nor will I ever be in a position to turn down a good beer. Before he was able to get it for me, however, I was handed a beer by the actual tinder dude I matched.

His name is Tom btw. I can’t continue this story without pointing out once again that the level of intoxication was very high. Even more so in comparison to my very sober self.

To skip ahead a bit: the speakers of the entire place were controlled by an aux cable that we all had access to, subsequently setting things into motion. Music was played, beer was chugged and stories were told. Turns out Tom was actually one of the most interesting people I had ever met. Sadly I kind of messed things up but I’ll get to that later.