South Korea’s got Seoul
There’s different flavors of excitment in the Irish family. Some of it is mutual: mainly food. Some of it is not: Star Wars. Sister was excited about a McDonald’s breakfast, I was excited about what we’d be eating it on — a Korean KTX bullet-train.
McDonald’s turned out an even-more-rubbery-than-usual bacon & egg McMuffin and a sharp iced coffee.
We split another cab to the newly constructed Pohang KTX station. We had our most interesting driver yet: a 74 year-old gent who had been driving cab for 52 years. He pointed at my father, then at me. “Same same?” Yes indeed.
“Bullet train”…doesn’t that sound cool? Heck, the word “Bullet” in front of anything sounds pretty damn cool. Especially in front of words ending in “ain”. Bullet rain, bullet brain, bullet cain, bullet lain, bullet strain, bullet main.
My current land-speed record had been set by the German ICE trains at 317 km/h or 197mph. I didn’t know much, but 2nd grade taught me that Asia was the home of the high-speed trains, so I hoped it would be broken.
Sadly…it wasn’t. 305 was the fastest we went; about 187mph. It was a smooth fast ride though some beautiful countryside. We didn’t see any crazy rice terraces like I was primed to, but there was an impressive amount of farmland and plenty of tunnels to get us through those mountains.
The skyscrapers of Seoul began to sneak into the greenery, and we hit the hot, humid epicenter of Seoul’s train station.
We would connect with the city’s metro: a daunting task in a system servicing a city of 10 million. No really, Seoul’s Metro is one of the largest in the world with 521 stops covering 206.8 miles servicing 2.6 billion passengers annually.
With 5 suitcases and a heavy back-pack, add an order of magnitude to the difficulty factor.
We found our apartment eventually; hidden in a rather industrial looking building just west of the government square district.
The first order of the day would be food. Tosokchon chicken, something Sister had been anticipating for months.
Y’all ever been to Brook’s? I’d reckon this was a Korean version of Brooks except they take your little chicken and drop it in an uber-hot bowl of soup. They also stuff it with rice and nuts, and cork it all with a radish.
Heading east, we would run directly into the Korean equivalent of the Imperial Palace.
We were able to catch a guard processional as it changed guard of the Heungnyemun Gate.
The guards stood rigid, seemingly in defense of the ancient culture behind them from the sky-scraping modernism looming before them.
Continuing east, we climbed the serpentine streets of Gahoe-dong. The chic shopping district would seem at home in an American Northeast small city.
Soon the gentle hills turned into back-alley staircases, and we found ourselves in a historic village currently inhabited by quiet-seeking citizens.
We rejoined the shopping district, and took in its eccentricties as we headed back to apartment.
Sajik-ro, the street running past the gate, seemed to be the cultural line dividing the new and the old.
A long rectangle ran down the center of Government Square. At its east end, the U.S. Embassy stood surrounded by credible amounts of razor-wire and walls. It was a comforting thought to have some “free soil” just a 5 minute walk from our apartment.
I took a picture of Old Glory which caught the attention of a nearby policeman.
“No no picture here”
“I’m an American”
“ok ok”
Back at the apartment, we plotted the metro-route to the Seoul World Cup stadium southwest of our apartment on the river. For Sister’s birthday we would be seeing Seoul FC against the Busan professional team.
The stadium was impressively large, not AT&T large, but of the 66,000 it could hold, only about 2,000 showed up. This was no affront to us as we got great seats with no neighbors to squeeze inbetween.
The game was just what you’d expect from professional U.S. soccer game. There was the same chotshky pump-up section with two dancing mascots and two dancing girls. There was no national anthem which I found odd, and the official song of Seoul FC was “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” with Korean words.
The game ended in a 0–0 draw.
