Hashing Love Is The Drug

or what you can do when alone in a foreign land.

Go to an internet Cafe and, in the search bar of the browser, type 'Hash House Harriers + [your City/Country]'
If you are fortunate enough (and there's a good chance you will be) a link to a group close by will appear, giving meeting times, dates, and venues.

Why would I want to go?

Hash clubs are usually a mixture of ex-pats from many countries (one of which may be yours) they have often been resident for many a year and are full of local knowledge. Some of them might be sober enough at the time to impart some of it to you.
And there lies one of the key points about Hash groups - they drink.

So it's just a drinking club then?

No!... Well.. Yes, mostly, but not all the time.
In the UK if you went to a Hash House Harriers (HHH) club chances are they would make you wear a sports vest and expect you to run cross country for a dozen or more miles before you could join. Well stuff that!
In other countries a Hash House Harriers is a club that has as it's motto 'A group of drinkers with a running problem'.

So what's it all about?

Hashers meet on a regular basis and follow a pre-determined route set by one or more of their kind. A bit like Hare and Hounds where the 'Hare' lays a trail and at some time later the 'hounds' try to follow the trail to catch the Hare or, in many cases, the Hare goes with them, having laid the trail earlier, just to annoyingly point out that they've all gone the wrong way.

But I'm not fit enough to run

In many clubs (apart from UK serious clubs natch) they would lose many of their participants through heart failure if they forced them all to run, as many are often inebriated beforehand or too old to be let out without a carer. So they organise the trail to cater for both superfit and not so fit.
On these outings the superfit candidates are often led up false trails and have to return giving the feebler members a chance to catch up. Also there are 'Hash Halts' where everyone must stop and await the arrival of the lagging multitude.

So basically it's a ramblers group with booze

Almost, except the HHH were formed around the traditions of rugby (the sport not the UK town) and the more genteeler aspects of the rambling society have long since fallen by the wayside (if they were ever present in the first place).
Hashing runs end with a bawdy ritual involving punishments, raucous singing of Hash/rugby songs and of course much imbibing of the alcohol.

Then whats the attraction?

I see you're not with me on this. Apart from the physical pain, severe mental torture and alcohol poisoning, it is / can be, a very sociable occasion, if not during the run then in the day to day meet and greet.
In my humble experience many of the people taking part in these events are often intellectual beings (in their more lucid moments) and as ex-pats they all have one thing in common - they are the foreigners.

For more information check out this website I did for the Cebu Hash House Harriers in the Philippines... www.cebuhash.org