Last Bit of Korea

So I'm finally out of South Korea and spending some days in Gold Coast, in Australia. The Australian experience deserves another post, but I'd like to talk about Korea a bit more before that...

When I left, I felt relieved. The last period of my stay hasn't been easy, and I've grown pretty tired of the place. I think that's because a number of things that I noticed and I just lost patience over them.

The main problem that currently South Korean society needs to overcome is its deeply racist and sexist roots. Most issues come from this core idea. Not unlike Russia, the Korean men are celebrated and considered more important than women, and you can see that everywhere. Women are not taken as seriously, are not thought as smart as men, and are though to belong taking care of the house most of the time. At the same time men are pampered and protected from birth, and thanks to its good economy a lot of parents are directly buying apartments and houses for their sons. There's also a strong patriotic undercurrent, with the clear feeling that Koreans are superior, especially to people with darker skin complexion. Added to the situation there's also the fact that Korean culture has a very hierarchical structure based on your age, where being old automatically makes you wiser and with more authority, and others needs to serve you.

All this combines into a poisonous mix where there's a lot of men with a self-inflated ego and sense of worth in middle/upper-management positions, that are actually utterly useless when performing the most basic tasks. These people are rude, sexists, discriminate against foreigners and are a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you're familiar with Sense8, Sun's brother would be a perfect example. They're good at misplacing blame and trying to involve others on their own faults, since it's unthinkable that they are the ones that should actually improve, being as they are the culmination of evolution on this planet. Another good example is the train company manager from Train to Busan.

The thing here is that because of the hierarchical nature of society, there's a lot of structures and attitudes that protect this behaviour and these types of people. Other societies, including the occidental one, overprotect their men, but society is more open to discuss and argument and counter comments no matter who says them, while in this society since the one saying it is an older man, he automatically is right and worthy of respect.

In this atmosphere it's not nice to work, or to live for that matter.

I have to say that this also causes that women tend to be 1000 times more competent, since they need to prove themselves time and time again to reach similar positions than men, and it's really noticeable how much better they are at pretty much everything.

Of course not everybody is like this, but enough people fulfil these patterns to be noticeable. In general, you can notice that people more open, that have travelled more, that have learned other languages, are better and don't fit these patterns. However there's a problematic number that still do.

Regarding the patriotism and racism, during the games you could notice one thing: These games were meant for Koreans. That's all good and nice, but these types of event tend to try to include all the world, and a lot of visitors mentioned they felt lost or abandoned when it comes to proper information about transport and timetables, among other things.

In general this situation made things a bit harder and you could notice everybody in this place was being drained because of these issues.

However, I also have to say that I've had really good moments in there of course. It was amazing when you met people more open, and it was really great to interact in these situations. Special mention to places like Malmi, Warehouse, Rush or Bon Voyage, restaurants/bars/clubs where you ended up almost being part of the place, where we could put music, control what happened, organise parties or just ask to cook one last meal for you even when the kitchen was closed. We survived and had fun thanks to such places and the people in there, and I'll miss that part for sure. And I hope my Korean friends forgive my previous comments, but I'd include them in this latter section as the people that made it all better :).

In this period after Japan I should also mention Busan, the second biggest city of South Korea, situated in the cost. I managed to visit it for a few days, and I have to say I really enjoyed the place. It felt more...cohesive, if that's the best way to put it, than Seoul. It felt like a more relaxed place, with beautiful beaches and parks, nice neighbourhoods with plenty of bars and restaurants, and in general a calmer attitude for being still a big city. We stayed next to a going out area purely by accident, but it was a nice addition and it was quite enjoyable overall.

Last but not least, I did manage to go back to Seoul other times, and one thing I discovered there is Hongdae, a neighbourhood close to Hongik University.

Same way that I said in previous posts that Seoul felt just like any other city, this region felt special. Maybe it was just the moment when I visited it, but it's true that this area is more "artsy", more underground/alternative, and I really liked it. I spent only 2 weekends/nights in there in this year and a half that I've been in Korea, but they were almost perfect stays and nights. In both cases all the restaurants, all the bars, all the food and drinks and people and music and atmosphere were pretty much perfect. I even found an extremely nice club (Club FF) with live rock music first and then a nice mixture of songs that allowed for a great environment to spend a night out, while at the same time being a place that is not very crowded and leaves you room enough to enjoy it while not feeling you're alone in there. I really loved Hongdae, and it may be extreme to go back to Seoul for just this area, but I would not mind that at all and would consider it.

I also have to say that after the train from Gangneung to Seoul opened, this city felt much closer. For my goodbye, I took advantage of that and escaped to Hongdae for just one night, one of the two I mentioned. I'm really happy that my Seoul goodbye was in there, almost perfect again, making me feel I was leaving a great place and countering some of the issues this stay inflicted on all of us.

Summer in Japan

It´s been some time since then, but this summer we spent 2 weeks in Japan, taking advantage that it was close to South Korea, and before I can get back on track to writing sometimes (work and schedules have been crazy for a very long time now) I wanted to explain a bit about that.

We've never been to Japan before, but it always has been an attractive destination for us, of course. As anime/Manga fans, technology fans and just travel enthusiasts, there's a lot of things that make Japan interesting for us. However, it's an expensive place and quite far, so until now we had not really organised anything to visit it. 

So this summer there was a break between two intense work periods and we booked a flight, and some places to stay. We decided to visit Osaka and Kyoto first, and then decide from there but finish in Tokyo. For Tokyo, when we talked with our friend Sara who lives there, she offered her house (for which we're really grateful, plus it was nice to know we'd see her).

The flight to Osaka had issues becasue of typhoons, and we had to reroute to Tokyo at the last minute. That was annoying, but we managed to grab the Shinkansen (High speed train) to Osaka right after the flight and we were ok. 

The first impressions we got from this arrival was that Japan is a lot more prepared for tourists/non-japanese speakers than China or Korea. It was really easy to get all the necessary information, and at any time there were plenty of indications. That is not to say that it was very very easy, since Tokyo, even just form the airport, seemed to have quite a complex railway map....

The shinkansen is like any other speed train, but it is amazing how often they pass, the one going to Osaka takes 3 hours but there was one every 5-10 minutes. We arrived to Osaka and it was raining,  of course,  but the typhoon felt mild,not sure if it was but it felt just like rain. 

After arriving to the station we had to get to our apartment, but Osaka also had a very well defined subway line and it was easy to get there. The place we got was close to the center and it was quite nice, it had all we needed, plus some touches that are very Japanese, like the sliding doors. We arrived quite late and destroyed from the trip, and we just went to sleep.

Next day we started visiting Osaka and our impressions were good. The city felt very curious, with shopping streets covered with glass/plastic roofs connecting the buildings, protecting us from possible bad weather. There were lots of people of course, and lots of flashy thingies lile giant king crab figures,including movement, in front of restaurants and other shops. The streets were narrow, and not many cars were moving around. Cars in japan are really curious, since there's a surprising amount of very square,box like cars. They looked very strange for us, but they seemed popular. Also there was a lot of people just using bikes or walking.

In this city we visited the aquarium, which was really impressive. Without considering the morality of it, it had whale sharks and other really big types of sharks and rays, and it was quite amazing to see at such close distances. We also visited an owl café,  which was pitiful but the diferent animals that were there were very cute. We also visited some playgrounds for Elay, and some small attractions, and in general he loved it.

We also went for dinner one night to a shabushabu restaurant,and we had special beef. I don't think it was kobe beef,but I have to say it was incredibly delicious. The beef seemed to melt in the mouth, and it had an amazing taste, very noticeable without being too strong,and it was also very tender. In general we also tried different places to eat, it was not always easy but we tried very good Japanese food in there. We didn't eat sushi though,that was harder to find (apart from places that seemed too expensive or touristic).

We really liked our stay in Osaka,and next we would visit Kyoto. It was around this time that,when planning what to do next,we saw that we were visiting things in a vacational period for Japan and it was hard to book places, so we decided to go to Tokyo sooner than we thought and move around from there. Sara had no problem with that, which was perfect for us,plus there is a lot of things to do in and around Tokyo anyway. We also decided to buy aa special train ticket that woild allow us to travel with no limit using most trains,including shinkansen, for a week. After deciding that, we checked what to visit in Kyoto.

Kyoto is pretty close to Osaka,and it had a more traditional feeling to it,being also famous for temple areas and some old streets. We spent only 2 days in there,but we also liked it very much. We went to one of the temples, we're not fans of them but what we visited was nice and had curious details. We also managed to walk around the bamboo forest,that we loved, and through some old districts with very traditional -looking small wooden houses all around. Kyoto felt somehow older than Osaka, with more traditional places,but we enjoyed it. 

All these days we were warned it would rain,and in the end it was sunny and hot and we kept finishing the day totally exhausted, but we kept liking what we were seeing^^.

On our last Kyoto day, that we needed to move to Tokyo at night, we decided to visit the famous deer Park in Nara, also close by. We went by train, and it was again easily indicated since lots of tourists wanted to visit it. I thought we may see some deer or need to walk a bit for them,but quite soon we started seeing grass areas full of them. They were quite calm and quite used to tourist, also clearly asking for food since you could buy special crackers for them. Of course, we bought crackers,and it was quite a funny experience. The deer when they see you have some surround you and try to eat and nibble at your clothes and have no shame whatsoever. It's even scary because they keep surprising you when you don't expect them touching your rear pocket and similar,but it was a funny moment in general. We spent a very nice and calm day feeding the deer and visiting a bit of the park, but we were mostly focused on the deer^^.

After this,we went to Tokyo. Well,actually Sara's house was in Chiba, but Chiba is part of the big metropolitan area that Tokyo is part of. This area is monstrous, full of people and with a big train and subway network that is sometimes hard to navigate. In Tokyo we spent the rest of the days, but travelling around.

On the next days we did several activities. One of the first ones was to visit the Hitachi Seaside Flower Park, which was not in a very colourful season but was really nice and calm, easy to move around with a rental bike, and quite beautiful nevertheless. There were some very funny-looking round plants, for example, that seemed to bounce with the wind. The area had also attractions, and in general we spent a nice day in there. The only problem was to get back, since there was no information in English and in general people didn't speak much of it, so we were not sure exactly about the time we could take the bus, and we used one that took forever to reach the station, since it went all around the place. It was much cheaper than the first one we used to get there though.

Another day we visited a bit of Yokohama, another city in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Well, Yokohama alone is huge, so we visited just a small coastal area with some shopping malls and other attractions. We used again the Shinkansen to get there, and we had the luck to reach a station where only a few types of them stopped. Because of that, you could see the ones that pass every few minutes going through the central tracks, without stopping, at full speed, and it was hypnotic how fast they went. Yokohama itself looked pretty modern, and we visited the Mitsubishi museum, which had interesting machines and games, like a flight simulator where you needed to take off and land.

We wanted to see mount Fuji, so we used another day to do this very long round trip that used a lot of different trains and transports. However we were unlucky, and all the trip that day there was an intense fog covering everything. We did use plenty of different vehicles and what little we could see looked really nice. It was also eerie sometimes, how little you could see, making this nice effect for example with cable cars, where the cables disappear and it seems you´re floating in the middle of nowhere...

The rest of the days we stayed in Tokyo per se, and visited a bit of the city, although it's such a huge place it's hard to cover much. We visited Akihabara twice, and it was quite an experience. Akihabara is the "geekiest" neighbourhood, with lots of electronic shops plus also lots of anime/manga shops, weird bars (like maid bars, or gundam bars, or such other things), old arcades, some erotic shops and just a mixture of geeky things and toys of all kinds. The place is frankly overwhelming and full of people, and there's just so many things that are curious or nice that I basically got blocked and didn't really buy anything almost,just a couple of presents for other people and a few practical things. I really enjoyed the retro video-game shops, but again, I ended up not buying anything anywhere, which is a shame but oh well...I was really just blocked from too much choice and things.

We also visited a theme park area in the centre, which was a lot of fun and Elay loved it. It was very nice to go up to rides with him, and the whole day was tiring but nice. It was also good that there were not many people, and we didn't have to queue much (we still had to queue, but considering how many people live in there, it was not much).

We had some nice evenings with Sara, tried good sake (still not a big fan but well, it was definitely different), and ate quite well (although there's not as much sushi as one would thing). Finally during the last day we saw a very old friend, Lisa, one of the first persons I met when I was in the Erasmus in Sweden and that we had not seen in years. It was very nice to have the chance to talk a bit again and spend an afternoon with her.

All in all, it was quite an experience, and we really liked the trip and our stay there. Definitely not ruling out going back some other time^^.

Finally Seoul

In theory part of this blog was to talk about trips, but in the end I keep making rants^^'. Oh well...

I wanted to explain that, finally, after a long time living in South Korea, I have visited Seoul.

Seoul is not that far from Gangneung, but it is at an annoying distance: 3 hours by bus, more or less. 3 hours is enough that going there and back during the same day seems a waste, and therefore it's something to do during a weekend. Thanks to a different number of activities at work, for a long time we didn't have weekends free, and also there was people we knew around here and we didn't feel like organising a trip to Seoul during those moments.

The end result is that my first trip to Seoul happened on May 2017, 7 months after arriving to Korea.

The trip and organisation itself was not as dramatic as it seemed, and it's rather easy. It is a bit expensive, being a big city, but after the initial trauma was over, I´ve been there 2 more times and plan to go back from time to time.

The city itself is huge, and visiting every corner is impossible, but I did manage to see a couple of different neighbourhoods and places. There is a quite wide river that divides it into two sections, connected by bridges but pretty far away form each other. Apart from that, there's lots of hills and little mountains in this terrain. The combined effect is that it feels as if Seoul is just  a combination of little towns linked between themselves with roads and subway.

The subway lines, by the way, are quite good and extensive, and make it easy to move around (which is a great difference from Rio, of course). We didn't use them on our first trip, but we moved around with them on the others.

The city itself has plenty of big streets and buildings, in areas that seem a bit cold, financial-district style....but then you turn a corner a find a small grid of little streets and houses full of bars and restaurants. The result just increases this "island" effect of each city section, the sensation that there are lots of small independent areas interconnected.

One of the most famous places we visited is Itaewon, which is the "tourist" neighbourhood. In there for the first time in South Korea we saw plenty of other foreigners on the streets, and of course lots of clubs and bars. It's a pretty small area for the concentration of locals it has, and since it's on a hill its streets are narrow and very steep. It has a great selection of foods, and after Gangneung we took the chance and ate some occidental things, which were pretty good. Korean food can be nice, but well....

The city also has plenty of shopping malls and shopping streets, and it's populated enough that it does get a bit stressful and crowded in those areas. Still, it is curious to see that between these malls there is still a lot of small food carts and street shops, with very traditional things that seem to clash with the occidental brand shops.

As part of my second visit, I went to a festival called Ultra. It's an electronic music festival, which is not my thing really, but once I was there I loved the atmosphere, and it also allowed me to visit the Olympic Stadium (for 1988 Olympics of course).

It doesn't matter the location, festivals always have this nice feeling around them, of having a big party with lots of people and enjoying the experience. Here it was no different, just with more Koreans and their peculiarities^^. I did see that there is a lot of USA military people around, both in the festival and in Seoul itself, something that is surprising to me (even if it's a known fact). And I can see that USA has a big influence in lots of details, in Seoul and South Korea in general....

All in all, though, Seoul left me with conflicted feelings....

On one side, I feel it lacks a bit of...soul. Identity. I felt it has nothing special to offer, that it's just a city...it's a feeling hard to express, but well, that's my impression. It's not bad at all, it's just...unoriginal? I know, that's too much to ask for to a city, probably. Maybe it's just that it seemed to me, more than a cohesive city, a collection of small towns in a very big area. I'm sorry to my Korean friends for saying that, but that's the impression I got.

On the other side, it is a big international city. After (happily) living in Gangneung for a while, to go back to such a place, full of movement and life and things to do, is refreshing and interesting and exciting. I enjoyed my visits there and I definitely want to go back often while in this project.

Gangneung: Reminiscenses Of Lund

It's been a bit more than a month since I moved to Korea.

I did visit it before, so I already got some ideas about the place, but living here has showed me a bit more of the life here.

And it heavily reminds me of Sweden....or to be fair and more precise, of my particular experiences while in Lund, Sweden.

First of all, most apartments have wooden floors and floor-based heating. This is a small but important detail. Because of this, most apartments also have an entry area where you leave your shoes and jackets. This is rather common in winter areas, but this in Korea is very very similar to the same thing in Sweden, with different tiles and height, to really delimitate that you should not step on the wooden floors with the street shoes. The apartments's style is also familiar, with thick walls and windows, quality details and big living room/kitchen areas, and then one room or more apart, a distribution based on big spaces more than in compartmentalising the floor.

Then of course there's the weather, which is not as cold as north Sweden by far, but it is similar to the weather in the part of Sweden where I lived (although Gangneung is colder than Lund), more temperate but still pretty cold, where it snows during winter. By the way, it snowed already a couple of times, and it was cold enough that it accumulated and lasted for 2-3 days each time, plus in the mornings there were ice layers everywhere. This of course poses problems, especially because I move around with a bike, and I need to be careful about this ice....

Moving around with the bike is also a nice reminder. It's not like I don't move around with a bike in Barcelona, but here in Gangneung the town is small enough to allow using it almost everywhere, while streets and roads are, if not prepared, at least open to the fact that people use bikes around. Adler was also small enough to use a bike, but the reality was that the culture there was unused to this so nobody did it...It is true that Gangneung has way too many cars, and cars are the transport of choice of most people, there's not a lot of bikes going around....but there's some. And again, this is from my point of view, and both here and in Sweden I had similar experiences while using a bike (like going towards some party in a bike, going shopping in a bike, crossing snow with a bike, using a bike while slightly drunk, etc.), in part I guess because it's the two places I've been where it's easy to have your own bike, and it's not stressful.

This brings me to the security thing...I can leave the bike unlocked in the street or just with a locked wheel and I know no one is going to steal it. I love this feeling of security, not even Barcelona has this....here I know I can have my bike to move around and I will probably be fine, and it's not a source of worry. The same applies for using mobiles on the street or having money in the wallet. After Rio, this is incredible and allows me to be a lot more relaxed and calm at any moment.

Internet is also pretty similar, with rather good speeds, although I believe the intercontinental connections and the state censorship that is applied on websites slows traffic down considerably depending on what you're trying to access....

Finally, there's also the social atmosphere. One thing in Korea that is pretty awesome is that all English teachers need to be natives, so from an English-speaking country. This, plus the Olympic travellers, means there's a big group of people from all around the world, even in such a small town. So it feels you're meeting people from lots of places, and because of that there's also a "party" atmosphere, in a way.....I really like this atmosphere, and in other projects there was also a certain feeling like this, but it was usually Olympic-related while here it's more open (well, in the sense that there's also this other group, the English teachers). There's even people who will be happy to meet to play board and card games...

Of course, there's also things that are not similar at all (starting from the population, not many tall and big, blonde, blue-eyed people in the streets here...)

For example, the culture here seems a lot more closed to foreigners and changes, and there are social issues that are light-years behind in Korea compared to Spain (and let's not compare it with Sweden which is more advanced that Spain in plenty of those...). There's a big cult for looks in here, and women are still treated really bad in general...also, work follows a very capitalist model, where you cannot get sick and stay at home to rest (which is worse for the company as well because you're less productive at work and you can get other people sick). SIM cards and phone numbers are ridiculous hard to get. The food is evidently completely different, usually spicy even when they say it's not, or very sweet. There's plenty of dishes with lots of green vegetables, mushrooms and leaves(and rice, of course), and meat is common in dishes but not in big quantities outside barbecue places (and in supermarkets it's expensive). And as I already mentioned, traffic is very car-based, even for small trips that with a bike would be 10 minutes or less, and driving is rather aggressive and chaotic (but well, I was in Russia and Brazil, nothing new or worse than that, really) , with plenty of intersections that are rather badly-designed and cause waits for everyone involved. One surprise I got was that, in general, cars do not respect pedestrians, but they do watch out for them, it's just they don't give way to pedestrians unless they're about to hit them or so...

So yeah, plenty of differences actually, and more I have not mentioned...


Still, the atmosphere has a certain similarity for sure... 

Gangneung: First Contact

So, I’m in Gangneung now:


This is situated in South Korea. I’ll be here until this Friday, and then I’ll come back at the end of November.

South Korea is a very interesting place. After Brazil and Russia, I really wanted to try and live in a country more technologically and socially advanced, just to check the differences and enjoy the better level of live.  We lived very well in Russia, but Adler had plenty of issues. In Brazil, we lived adequately but the problems of the city and the country really affected us, and we managed fine but we would not want to live there for long periods again, we would go back just for tourism and in a while….so, South Korea sounded attractive. The only thing is that my son has started school and after considering this and other variables, we decided that this time I would go alone. This is not the best thing in the world, but just for a year and 3 months and with a total of 5 trips back while being there we thought it would be ok after all…

The trip itself was nothing special after having done plenty of other transoceanic flights, but it’s true that Turkish airlines is really good, nice food and nice movies to watch while flying^^.

The first contact I had with the country was of course in Incheon Airport (Seoul). On the passport control, after scanning mine with a machine, an automatic voice told me in Spanish to put my index fingers in two fingerprint readers. IN SPANISH. After that the check lasted 2 minutes, if that much. This is the first thing I loved.

The second thing I loved was free wifi without registering anywhere. Just connect to the open network and use it….after other airports, this was amazing. The third thing I loved was going to the airport shops and seeing signs about leaving the suitcases outside to not bother people…and people doing so, with suitcases in the corridors, unsupervised, while the owners could not see them. Do you know how that feels, especially after Brazil??

At this point I knew. Whatever happened later, and whatever problem I found in the country, culture or in the project, I was going to love this country….

Since Gangneung is actually pretty far from this airport, I went to the information post. I had been told there was a bus that went directly, so I asked about it. They told me its timetable, which exit to use to get there and what to do and wrote everything in Korean, so no problems there^^.

The bus was pretty awesome, its seats were huge, only 3 per row, soft and comfy. The only problem is that the trip was more than 4 hours…the last 2 felt very long, especially because we got a couple of traffic jams.

During the trip I looked around, but I got a bad day for sightseeing since everything was covered by a low cloud and it was raining. I could see it’s a very green country, but not like Brazil (which is green but clearly tropical, with really huge plants and trees), more like France or Germany, but with different vegetation. There was a surprising amount of agriculture going on, I could see plenty of people working in small fields under the rain, even if it was Sunday. And lots of lights and leds in the road indicating different things, I noticed that too, they seem to love leds and lights….

Gangneung is a coastal city after the mountains where the Winter Games will take place. The mountains themselves are rather low, 700-1000m, but I’m told it snows enough in winter to do snow activities in there. The feeling I got was like a big town or small city, with some main roads but afterwards plenty others with no sidewalk, areas with small houses and not much people or traffic. Unlike the airport, nothing was in English and people don’t really speak it apart from at the office and at the stations (and even then, at the office I’m really surprised by the fact that plenty of people working for Olympics do not speak English well enough to communicate without help, which is not ideal….), so I realized it would not be easy to live there without getting the basics of the language…but I had been warned about it, so it was ok.

The first days were very nice and interesting. The area is very calm,  as I said like a small town, with some particular details that you associate with east-asian culture like plenty of neon lights, (k-)pop, cuteness everywhere, typical school uniforms, some big shopping malls (but it's a town so it's shopping streets full of little shops), very well packaged food even if it’s fruits, extreme politeness, face masks, etc…. It has stuff to do around, with bars and clubs, restaurants, bike paths and parks, and a curiously varied expat community, bigger than usual because in this country English teachers need to be native and there’s plenty of people from abroad teaching.
I found a very small apartment for me on the second day, small but ideal for this period, and it even included a bike (well, “included”, it was the bike of someone that lived there before and left it, and the man renting the place said he was going to throw it away, so instead I’m able to keep it^^) I will be using to move around. I also already ordered some furniture online, which is currently travelling towards it, and in general this first contact went very well.

The only thing it may still cause issues is the food. Food is amazing, similar to Chinese and Japanese, really tasty and healthy…but there’s plenty of things that are spicy, very spicy. And I cannot handle that…so unless I’m with a local or an expat with experience, I go to a place I already know and order the same thing, which may make me bored of the thing fast if I don’t manage to get a wider selection of places…

I’ve also heard that some processes of the burocracy are very very slow, and for example getting a simple SIM card will not be easy…but there’s open wifis with really good speeds everywhere, so it’s not a big concern at the moment….

Anyway, all in all I’m very happy with this new place I’m getting the chance to discover^^