The Road to Hell

Two weeks later, and still trying to blog myself home from Daegu. Part 2 was getting way too long, so here's Part 3.

And so I came "home", by myself because after I bought my bus ticket, Sarah stepped up to get 2 for her & Obi and there was only one seat left. If we'd been in the US, I probably would have tried to change my ticket, but I was too exhausted to play charades. My ticket was for 6:25 (even though there was no 6:25 bus to Seoul on the board), and theirs was for 6:40, so no big deal. I had seat 25, which I really, really hoped was a window. Obi'd had seat 28 on the way down, and it was the window in the back row, so it looked promising that 25 would be the window on the other side. Not so fast. The back row numbers go, from left to right, 26, 25, 27, 28. Whatever. I got settled in the middle. But nobody sat next to me. As we pulled away from the station, I moved to the window and got my phone out to indignantly text Sarah that there were plenty of seats on the bus. And then remembered that we had to stop at the North Daegu station. Where someone did, in fact, get on and claim my coveted seat. I was consoling myself with the thought that the elevated back row gave a nice view out the front window, when someone else came along and claimed seat 25. She was miming to me that I should get up, and I thought she wanted to switch seats, which was ok with me. This didn't seem to be the case though. I got out my ticket to prove my right to the spot, when she suddenly switched to perfect English and explained that my ticket said 6:25 and this was the 6:20 bus, "so I'm sorry, but you are wrong." I got up and the driver came back to see what was going on. He looked at my ticket and sent a torrent of Korean at me, or maybe just by me. And suddenly, I was That Immigrant. The one that just stands there dumbly when being questioned and ordered about. For a minute or two, he talked in a steady stream while I stood doe-eyed and expresionless, and then I caught the word "computer", and then a couple more times, and he seemed calmer and gestured to an empty seat by a window. I felt very fortunate. But not for long. Soon the windows fogged up, so it was like riding in a cardboard box. I traveled with Least Heat Moon for a bit, figured out the order in which I'd drive to all 48 contiguous capitals if I were doing it in 48 days, then dully wondered which layer of hell I'd achieved. The bus was stuck in mile after mile of Sunday-night traffic, the side windows were completely opaque, and every time I looked through the windshield, my eyes were drawn to the 25-minute-long segment on pig hunting & slaughtering playing on the bus' tv. It was a long ride. Kinda like this post. But it's over now.