A Story About An Evening Out In San Salvador

This is a little story about how it can be, going out in San Salvador, a city in a country where you don’t know the language or any people.

I had heard from reliable sources (Lonely Planet that is…) that there was an Irish pub close to where I’m staying. The reliable source also told me that they had Guinness on tap. Well, I thought, isn’t that the golden opportunity to meet someone that speaks a language I know and at the same time remember good old days in Dublin. So to the Irish pub I went.

The place is called La Arpa Irlanda, which in my head should mean the Irish Harp (correct me if I’m wrong again…), and at first sight it all looked like the way an Irish pub normally does outside of Ireland. Irish memorabilia on the walls, harps painted here and there and all set in dark, polished wood. This Irish pub was a bit different though from the normal Irish pubs I learned to know and love in Dublin. It was different on several accounts: nobody, no staff nor customers, spoke any English, the owner was German, they didn’t serve any Guinness at all, and the beer they had was really cheap. I did stay for a while anyway. First one to guess the right reason for me staying in that place will win a pint from me next time we both are in Dublin…

After a while, just sitting in the bar watching the El Salvadorians and Germans doing there buisness (the German owner played a game of chess in the bar with a local guy, that’s how lively this place was…), did I decide to move on to something more “happening” place.

The pick for the rest of the evening was a bar just around the corner from my guesthouse. I had walked past it a few times before, both in daytime and in the evening, and it always sounded like it was a good craic. The big neon lights in the front of the building said “Karaoke Bar”, but I could hear some live music from inside. Nothing much to argue about I thought, and went inside and ordered a beer. I hadn’t more then received my beer when the band declared that that was the final song from them for the day (don’t ask me how I know what they said since it was in Spanish, but I did get the point…).

So we’re all in a karaoke bar and the live band stopped playing. Can only mean one thing? Right? Oh’yes, that mean a video concert with Sepeltura (for you who don’t know this Mozarts of our time, look them up, it’s pure quality… and yes, that was irony…) on the TV screens. During the video concert was there one guy that started jamming on an electric guitar on the stage, and another guy jamming, on a completely different melody, on a bass. After a short eternity of Sepeltura/guitar/bass was there some brave soul that started singing some karaoke… It sounded the way karaoke normally sounds, so at that point I went home…

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