The Flip Side

Last night, I walked up to the university near my apartment and spent some time with trees and pretty buildings. I took a chance and walked home a different way, finding all kinds of businesses (many of them open at 10:30 on a Tuesday--Koreans really don’t ever sleep) and beginning to piece together a mental map of my neighborhood. Starting to make sense of things means starting to feel less surreal and more at home.

On Sunday, I completely forgot that I was on the other side of the world. Ramsey, Summer, and sometimes Amanda gave me a first-class introductory tour of the awesomeness that is Seoul. I got acquainted with basics—where to find international ATMs, riding the subway, how to locate a bibimbap restaurant (there’s one in my building!). I tried all kinds of Korean street food: fresh waffles with honey & cream (the best!), fruit on a stick, ginger & honey candy (sticks your teeth together in cartoonish fashion), and a spun-honey and nut confection that reminded me of Lebanese sweets. (I skipped the silkworm larvae) I met Insadong, one of the best shopping streets in Seoul. And I saw a startling number of Seoul’s primo attractions.

When I say Insadong is a shopping street, I don’t mean like Kensington High Street or 5th Avenue. I mean small shops, stands, and a nifty multi-story mall where the walkway is a spiraling ramp, so if you walk past all the stores you find yourself on the vertigo-inducing 5th floor. Tourists mix with Seoulites, so while you find postcards and souvenirs (and can stumble onto a traditional Korean drum demonstration), it’s not all schmaltz. If I’d had money, I could have knocked off both my Christmas and household shopping lists. My favorite was the chanting candymakers. They took a solid block of honey and spun it into thousands of strands before wrapping it around a nut paste, all while keeping up a bilingual sort of verbal Stomp: “Whooooaaaa! In English! Oh my God!” I recorded some of it, but always seemed to have the camera off during the best bits. We finished off with dinner at a traditional Korean restaurant—shoes off at the door, sitting on the floor—but with everything vegetarian. I finally got to try some of the dumplings I’ve been coveting on every cafeteria line. The large television broadcasting some kind of Buddhist cult programming at the end of our table really made the experience.

There is a lot of beauty to be found in Seoul between the featureless high-rises. I was surprised at how much green space we encountered, and am hoping it won’t be too hard to find when I need it. There isn’t a lot of grass, but I guess you can’t have everything. In the first park we came to, I had my introduction to storybook Asia. There was a stone pagoda with many stories, encased in glass. Koreans have numbered their national treasures in order of importance, and I’ve forgotten what number this was, but it’s less than 20. While we were looking at it, a man approached us and asked what country we were from, then pointed out the pagoda’s features and explained its significance. The entire story of Korea is wrapped around the lower part—you can follow it by walking around the thing repeatedly. The man even offered us some mouthwash to combat swine flu! In the evening, we walked to National Treasure #1, Namdaemun Gate, still listed in my guidebook, but burnt to the ground by a protestor last year. They’re rebuilding it (Asians take a very pragmatic attitude to these things), and in the meantime have covered the scaffolding with a mock-up of the gate, complete with lights that change color. Sounds gaudy, but it was actually quite fetching. Across from Namdaemun Gate is a huge boulevard that’s been recently covered with beautiful gardens and topiaries of Haechi, the symbol of Seoul, a creature that must have been invented by those responsible for the Teletubbies and Boobah. Again, it was really beautiful despite the schlock factor, and I definitely want to revisit. I also plan to be a regular at the Chyeoggi Cheon (sp?—I’m not very good at this stuff). It’s a recently resurrected stream flowing through the middle of Seoul, and the city has built a walkway along the entire thing. There are diversions all along the way—tiled murals, light shows, waterfalls—and merely being by running water is soothing. It was crowded of course—you get used to this quickly and learn not to mind—but really pleasant all the same. All along the way, Ramsey and Summer told me over and over how great a place this is to live, and I had no trouble seeing why. A busker sang under a bridge, and even though he was really awful, people clapped for him.

We finished the evening with a look at Dongdaemun Gate, National Treasure #2, I believe. It’s not a stone gate in the way you might picture, but a traditional Asian building with the tiled roof and the ornamentation, and remnants of the medieval wall around it (rebuilt of course). And at last, I realized, with conviction and a certain amount of surprise, that I’m in Asia! I went to bed really excited to be here.