Day 03 –
Today we’re going to the Gwiangiang and Jungbu markets. Gwiangiang market is huge. The agents in red are there with their maps. Côme is thrilled to take another one but this time, he won’t keep it long in his hands, there are far too many interesting things in here. There are clothes and furniture but what interests Côme the most are the many stalls preparing food and selling fishes. There is much to see here: identifiable things (octopus, sausages, fishes…) and non-identifiable ones (…like really… we can’t tell you, there are unidentifable). Côme is delighted and since we’re great explorers, we’re gonna eat here. Well, perhaps we’re just little explorers because today we’re settling for a noodle soup whereas other people are eating moving octopus. On that note, we are actually stopping by a woman who is filming her moving dish (the food, not the plate). Côme thinks the chopped animal is still alive and exclaims: “Oh!! Poor thing!!!” (in French). The woman, who is now ready to eat with her chopsticks in her hands, barely turns around and answers with an accent, her head down and a sheepish voice: “I am sorry…” (also in French). Poor thing too! Côme made her feel guilty. 😄 During this trip, he completely forgot that some people could speak French and doesn’t hesitate to say whatever he feels like in from of them. Anyway, what about our lunch? Well, we probably should have tried the octopus because our soup was not good at all. It tasted old fish stew because there were a lot of seeweed inside. 😥 Before we leave the market, Côme makes the stickiest acquaintance of the entire trip: a mini octopus a cook gave him to touch (“Côme! We don’t play with food!” 😁), we buy him an apple because he didn’t eat anything and we queue up at a donut stall that looks popular. Doo loves them! It tastes like “farturas” from Portugal. Some sort of cinnamon churros. He only regrets only buying one each to try them out (we don’t have the patience to queue up again).
We then head out to the second market: a dry fish market. Very surprising. There are dry fishes everywhere but unlike the previous market, there’s no one here besides the vendors. When we exit, we come accross the biggest and roundest pear we’ve ever seen. We even have to ask the vendor to identify the fruit for us because we would have never guessed it was a pear. And then we take a stroll by a river, we go to a park and in a cultural center. The center is rather peculiar. On the outside, it looks like flying saucers, and on the inside there are out of the ordinary exhibits. Côme is testing some whirligig chairs, we walk in a room with all kinds of weird projections on the walls, climb weirdly shaped stairs, go to an odd exhibition on cardboard that you can only see when walking in one direction and “crash” a futuristic startup symposium. There, an agent asks us to register on the internet to go to the symposium. We tell him we have no internet connection. He then asks the name of our company and a phone number. We tell him we don’t have either. Finally, he asks us an ID card. We tell him we haven’t brought any here. And you know what? He still prints us personalized badges after we wrote down our name on a piece of paper (we really feel we are crashing the event). The agent will even apologize not being able to write an accent on Côme’s name after asking us if it’s okay. Honestly, Korean people are just adorable. It’s impressive. We don’t linger too long at the symposium because it’s a bit complicated for Côme but we are glad nonetheless because we discovered a delivery robot able to climb up stairs and some therapeutic innovations (a video camera that scans the angles of the body for rehab and some sort of beacon that analyzes body aches). We will go back home through the junkyard street lit by the scrap dealers’ work.
Day 4 –
Today we visit the traditional village of Bukchon in the northern parts of Seoul. This “village” in the city is particularly beautiful. There, there are traditional wooden Korean houses, Korean arts and crafts (painting, patchwork, lamp creation, pins, chopsticks…) and numerous small shops. Artists and restaurateurs often expose a black and white picture of themselves taken by the village photographer. They are also exposed in his art gallery. The pictures are beautiful and really give the impression we are located in an isolated village where everybody knows each other.
As we stroll the many streets and alleys, we cross path with people wearing yellow jackets (no, they are not stranded French protesters). They are agents who are here to remind tourists not to be noisy. On their jacket, there is a huge smiley face signing us to be quiet (🤫). That is one thing we noticed here in Seoul. It’s quiet and calm everywhere even though millions of people live here. Drivers don’t even honk and they wait patiently until you’re finished taking a picture in the middle of the street (an embarrassed Doo apologized a few times because he had not even heard a quiet car waiting patiently behind him). For lunch, we’re having an omelette sandwich. Well, a garlic and omelette sandwich. Well, mainly garlic… So to get rid of a breath that would instantaneously kill a vampire 150 feet away, we go buy some gums. It’s Côme’s first and he tells us: “however, having gum in the mouth makes your jaw sweat.” – “Yes sweety, gum makes you salivate.” 😁
After taking our time in the village, we walk to the park of a palace we would like to visit, but the park is already closed so we postpone this walk. We’re really looking forward to going there because we’ve seen in the distance the beautiful colors of the autumn leaves. It’s now time for an afternoon snack so walk in a doughnut shop. They are huge, like in the American movies. We take one each. They are really really good so we all take a second one. In the evening we go the Itaewon neighborhood. A lively neighborhood at night but that’s where the Seoul tragedy happened a few days ago for Halloween. António had warned us that it would not be pleasant considering the circumstances and he was right, it was really sad to be there. Police roadblock, gigantic memorial, deserted streets… There are people mourning and monks chanting. We decide to leave rather quickly and go eat in our neighborhood instead. As we leave the neighborhood, we witness a couple of old people getting out of a selfie booth store (there are tons of them here). They are cheerfully looking at the pictures they’ve just taken. Isn’t that great?! Julia and Doo just hope to be that “young and crazy” at their age. Once in the subway, Côme falls asleep. Oh well, we’ll eat pastas home after all…
The past few days, Côme:
Did not understand: why the exhibition was just a corridor (“It sucked!”)
Learnt: that a pear could be enormous and round.
Loved: touching the octopus.
Julia:
Did not understand: why some tourists in Bukchon visited the village dressed in a traditional Korean outfit.
Learnt: how traditional Korean rooftops were built.
Loved: white chocolate doughnuts.
Doo:
Did not understand: why there was so much garlic on the bread.
Learnt: that the people of Bukchon were able to integrate tourism to their traditional arts and crafts.
Loved: the atmosphere of the village.