Bars, cafés and company

Taiwan is, from what I have seen, a very different place in some aspects; familiar in others, but with a very hard to understand language. Starting during my first weekend here, I have had the chance to visit some places that could be qualified as curious: the bars around the Taida (NTU) campus. It's no surprise that there are bars there; nor that they have a westerner look, this is a country with many american-looking things; but if you go to a bar where most of the beers are from Belgium, that's surprising. And not any kind of beers, most of them are the high alcohol content kind. Of course, it can be surprising to be surrounded by japanese people there, but it is very normal here. This is a very international environment, but there are many japanese; taiwanese do not generally drink much alcohol, but japanese sure do. The perfect storm.

The first bar where I was is named "Cafè Odeon". Postdocs and such know it as CO2 (chemistry joke included), because it is the second one with this name, even if the original one has already disappeared. It is in a street near the avenue that is the western boundary of campus. A few meters from that bar, we find the "Cafè Bastille" and "Cafè Lumière", the former one owned by rivals/ex-buddys of the owner of the first bar, and the latter owned by the same guy as CO2 —gossip runs fast. How french!. It must be because of the beers.

That's not all, there is also a "Cafè La Comune" not far from there, with a commemorative plaque outside in honor of the dead of the 1871 Comune, where I have not been yet, and a cafe, very nice, called "Norwegian Wood Cafè" (because of the Beatles or Murakami?), where I had a latte in very good company, surrounded by good music and posters from very different movies.

I was also in a supposedly english bar (the owner said he was english) a little farther away. Of course, in company of japanese. In fact, I was the only non-japanese there. I do not know if I will ever learn any chinese, but if things keep going this way, I may learn japanese.