Gonzaga in Berlin: Kpop Concert

Today was a free day for the Gonzaga in Berlin students, which gave me a chance to attend a concert happening in the city! Red Velvet (a South Korean girl group who I’ve been a fan of for nearly nine years) played Verti Music Hall at 8pm. Before the concert, I met up with some friends from Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands who had also traveled for this concert.

We went to a local boba tea shop that was having a fan event for the concert. They had special drinks based on the group’s songs, and if you ordered one you got two fanmade photocards of the girls in the group. Events like this one are very common for kpop groups, but this was my first time actually attending one! Afterwards, we got Vietnamese food before heading to the concert hall.

The concert itself was amazing! The group performed I Just, which is one of my favorite songs ever and I was so elated to see it live. They also performed many other fan favorite songs, and the crowd was absolutely amazing. One thing that was very funny to me, however, was that the Korean the members would speak during breaks in the concert was translated into German. This meant I couldn’t understand what they were saying as I do not speak either language. Luckily my friends were able to translate the German for me after it was said.

After the show, my friends and I got drinks and hung out for a little bit longer. It was an amazing day and it was really fun to experience many aspects of familiar fan culture in a different country. I was also so happy to finally meet my friends in-person as I met them in online communities due to our shared interest in Kpop.