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Food

08th Sep 2021

Americans can’t comprehend the British concept of ‘going to the pub’

Kieran Galpin

Pub

Going to the pub is very much part of British culture

An American Reddit user has been left stunned after finding out what “going down the pub” means to us here in the UK.

Going to the boozer is a time-old tradition in Old Blighty, and almost all of life’s problems can be cured with a cold one.

Hard day at work? Well, go to the pub! Sunny day? Pub. Death of a relative? A pub trip will cheer you up! Zombie apocalypse with Simon Pegg? Pub, of course.

Even in TV shows like Eastenders and Coronation Street, the pub is the epicentre of drama, narrative, and character progression.

But apparently, things are not the same across the pond, so what do they even do with their time besides buying guns and voting against a woman’s right to choose?

A Reddit user posted on Ask the United Kingdom, the biggest board for the UK populous on Reddit, about the fascination with pubs.

“Is ‘going to the pub’ a real thing in the UK?” they asked.

“For example, here in the US if you go to bars multiple times a week and mentioned this to people they might think you are an alcoholic – which is fair because at a lot of bars the only people that are regularly there during quiet times really are alcoholics (as in they are drunk a lot of the time),” the person wrote.

“But it seems like in the UK people might go to a pub regularly and not be an alcoholic. What’s the reality, do actual UK people ‘go to the pub’ once or twice a month usually? Or do people really ‘go to the pub’ all the time?”

The comments beneath the p0st read like a love poem to pub culture.

“I popped in the pub yesterday on my lunch break, as I had to drop something off to the post office. was 29 degrees (C), only took 5 minutes, that left me with 55 mins of lunch time. To the pub!” said one user.

Another wrote: “Nowhere better encompasses the ethos of that beautiful coastal town than its pub, and when I drank that G&T you’d best believe I felt like I belong.

“Pubs are more than their community. They’re the community of the past, present, and future.”

A third wrote: “Yes it’s real, when my wife allows I’ll go Friday, Saturday, Sunday. But only until 6 pm on Sunday, Chinese and bed, ready for work Monday morning.”

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