More Seoul-searching (oy)

Sunday morning was Seonyudo Park, a former water treatment facility turned into an urban park. Think post-apocalyptic Zen garden. It was super cool, and for this reason, seemed to be the favorite haunt of amateur seoulite photographers, who pooled their money and got a model for the morning. There were groups of these men all over the park, taking pictures of women in western clothing, in animae inspired costumes, and dressed as catholic school girls. It was highly strange. I wandered that afternoon, trying to get a feel for the city.

Seoul is odd in that it’s probably the best signed city I’ve ever been to, with bi and trilingual signs everywhere, and big maps every 500 meters or so. These maps would be incredibly useful, except that each one has a different orientation, so that the streets shown look more orderly. I’ve mostly gotten over a childhood handicap of directional challenge, and I can read a map as well as the next guy, but forgive me for asking that be oriented on a north south axis. These maps, each one different, were oriented south-southwest, or northeast, or, I don’t know, something else. They were almost completely useless.

Monday was taken up almost wholly by the bureaucratic bullshit for which I’d gone to Korea in the first place. I went to the Chinese embassy, or rather, where it had formerly been. A very friendly but not really useful desk person told me it had moved, and gave me the new address in Korean. This was not helpful. I asked some questions, got a subway stop out of her, and left after she told me to get off the subway and buy cable car tickets. Turns out, the embassy was next to the cable car ticket office, so she wasn’t completely off her head. Waited in line, handed them my paperwork and scampered.
Back on the subway I spent more than an hour heading out back to Incheon, to secure a ferry ticket home. There were two international ferry stations, and obviously my taxi driver took me to the wrong one. The mistake was easily corrected by a 45 minute bus ride, which was actually quite interesting, as we passed all manner of things you see in an industrial port, and then I got everything figured out, and headed back to the subway.

Sunday had been gorgeous and warm, t-shirt weather pretty much. Monday night as I got off the subway to see the fish market (open 24 hours apparently) it started snowing. Crazy weather, and the fish market was mostly shut down, but still rather cool looking. Took some pictures and headed back to my hostel to make friends.

Tuesday I spent wandering more, seeing museums and generally trying to soak up as much Seoul as I could. That was easy to do, given that it rained intermittently all day, though it got nicer in the evening. That evening. I went back to the hostel early, in a move calculated to get me an invitation to dinner with the Europeans I had met the previous night. A Hungarian manager named Zita, a Belgian sax player named Bruno, and a Basque dancer who went by Laida (with the emphasis on the i). They were part of a dance troupe who’d flown over for some festival or other, and were generally friendly and out to have a good time. We started with dinner, along with two of their Korean contacts, and then wandered out into the night to decide our plan of attack. It was decided (by my suggestion actually) that we head to the university district, which was rife with bars, pubs, clubs, and of course, KTV parlors. There we met Max, the Moroccan brake dancer, and his Korean friends, ate some, drank some, and moseyed on to Karaoke. They made us take out shoes off there, but made up for it by giving us free ice cream. It was all very Lost in Translation, and I loved every minute of it. We got back to the hostel around 5, and they went to catch 40 winks before a 7:30 departure, and I settled in for a good sleep.

Hang in there, I’ll get back to Beijing one of these days.