First of all...
Happy New Year to all my friends around the world! I hope it will be a great one for all of you!!! ... and better than the last two for some ... including me... :)
And welcome to my blog which has been overdue for a long time. Me wanting to archive my pictures in a convenient way never quite worked out, so I am trying it this way! ... with some inside info to what I've been doing, ... and what better way to start with the beginning of 2007, which was very exciting for me.
It happened the Korean way... :)
I travelled from Frankfurt to Seoul on December 29th, arriving midday-ish on the 30th (Korea is 9 hours ahead of London). Taey and her mum were so kind to pick me up from the airport. We went straight to have some lunch in Ilsan which is a town between Seoul and Paju where Taey's mum lives. There, in a Japanese restaurant, we had a whole menue but in Korean style which consists of many little dishes. Very nice and very filling when not telling me that after all the sushimi and sushi another two courses were due!
Taey's mum lives as said in Paju, an apartment town an hour North of Seoul. Such apartment towns are springing up everywhere and usually almost only consist of high rise apartment blocks built by different companies.
The next day, on the 31st, we met 4 of Taey's friends in Seoul. Dongwon, Hyunsun, Mina, Jae-hyung, Taey and I made our way to Kanghwa-do - the island of Kanghwa - where Dongwon has rented a room for us. The 6 of us on the floor only, which was a nice experience cause Korean houses usually have all floor heating, so sleeping on the floor is actually quite nice (as long as the pillow is right :) ).
The Koreans say good bye to the old year by watching the sunset, and they celebrate the new year by watching the sunrise. So we went to a beach on the island, joining many other people. As soon as the sun was down fireworks were let off. We then went for some food - we had a traditional BBQ of seashells. You sit around a table with a grill in the middle. You then get a load of mussles - living! So the shells are closed and put on the grill. When the shell pops open the muscle is dead and ready to eat. If the shell takes a long time to open or doesn't open at all it's too old. Sounds a bit gross but it is very yummy.
After dinner we went back to our accommodation were I fell asleep at around 10pm still very jetlagged - probably the first time in 25 years that I slept through new year's eve! However, that was really good cause we had to get up at 4.30am the next morning to track up a mountain to see the sunrise. First I thought we'll be the only ones doing that, but it seems a real mass sport for new year's day, cause hundreds and maybe thousands had the same idea to cimb up that mountain. We started out at 6am (after spicey noodle soup for breakfast at 5am LOL) and finally made it to the top around 8am. The sun was not seen because of the clouds but it was nice to be up that bright and early.
Tracking down was a real experience cause the hundreds or thousands of people tried to do that all at the same time! I have to say, I have never seen a human traffic jam on a mountain! Needless to say, it took another two hours to get down. They tried to form a queue - a one-liner - which Jae-hyung didn't want to queue in, so I said: 'Well, I don't understand Korean so I don't know what they are trying to do, so just follow me and blame me when they start complaining.' So we did, and later found out that they queued cause only one side was walkable as the middle had loads of ice on it. After landing on my bum once we decided to join the queue... :)
Getting back to our accommodation, and once again having another snack (eating is big over here) we took a nap which totally killed me (still on jetlag), and we took off back to Seoul in the afternoon. I just about made it through dinner at Jae-hyung restaurant which specialises in Ddouck-bo-gi, which spelling was just made up by Taey and is too difficult to explain what it is right now. I'll take a picture and post that here. Dongwon and Hyunsun were so kind to take us back to Paju by car, again I didn't see much of that journey cause I was falling asleep again.
So, if anybody has made it through the end of my first entry (I know I can ramble), I'll put another post for today, my first day in the centre of Seoul.
night night
jx
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