Pub Culture

Pubs are where people of all ages go to socialize. Families go, middle-aged businessmen go, and of course college students go. There aren’t one or two big nights like the States’ Fridays and Saturdays, but it’s really every night. There’s really nothing to compare it to… But they aren’t drunks! They go to socialize, not necessarily to drink. Unlike the US, it’s perfectly acceptable to go and hang out and not drink, even when out with loads of friends. But there are still many who do drink, naturally. It’s really interesting and I haven’t got any of it figured out yet; these are just my observations and what I’ve been told. Then there’s rounds. They keep telling us not to get involved in rounds because it works as such: ‘A’ goes up and buys a round for all ten of his friends and now, all of them owe him a drink. When the pint is about half drank (so as to not go dry), ‘B’ goes up and buys a round and everyone but ‘A’ owes him a drink. And they keep track, not of who owes them, but of whom they owe. So, rounds basically don’t stop until everyone has bought everyone else a drink. It’s easy to get in but harder to get out because they are so punctual about buying the next one and then you start owing more and more people drinks. Basically, you come home drunk and broke.

One pretty remarkable statistic I heard was that, per capita, Irish people drink more alcohol than any other Western European country, but they also have the highest amount of people sworn to sobriety. So that means that not so many people are drinking one heck of a lot, which is being a bit of a problem.

Another incredibly interesting social dynamic is who the groups of people are at the pubs. Especially at a college age level, people go out with their group of same-gendered friends and stick with them. For the most part, they go out to socialize, not to hit on everyone- or at least until they’ve paid their dues to their friends. So they don’t go and immediately split up, buying girls drinks, as I’ve seen in the States. It’s incredibly intricate, but really fascinating.