Between China and Japan - Part 1

“I’ll give you a seat in the front row with more leg room.” This was the first sentence I ever heard from the mouth of a real-life Korean person. The words were spoken by a female airline attendant at Frankfurt International Airport and not only contained cheerful news for my body, but a powerful message from the center of the Korean soul: “We don’t know who you are, but we will go out of our way to help you.”

It’s hard to describe Korea to Westerners. It’s even harder to explain why one would go to Korea, voluntarily no less.

While Korea has its place in the North American culture, most of Europe, including my German homeland, is largely oblivious to the existence of this far eastern nation. Even if people were able to find the country on a map, they most likely would have no idea about its culture. In fact, they would be hard pressed to imagine what Korean people looked like or what currency they used.

When making arrangements for my flight to Seoul, I began researching online to see if German travel companies offered any package deals I might benefit from. I found offers for Thailand, Vietnam and China. Korea, however, was nowhere to be found. Finding a travel guide in a bookstore proved equally impossible.

As disappointing as this was, it was also a good sign, because it meant that I was very unlikely to encounter large groups of German all-inclusive tourist or any establishments catering to their needs. 

I booked a ticket with Asiana, a Korean airline, and decided to begin my trip in the capital city of Seoul. It made sense at the time to start with the biggest city and that hunch proved correct.

The flight from Frankfurt to Seoul was by far the quietest and most relaxed air travel experience I have ever had, certainly after 9/11. The Korean cabin crew’s attitude can only be described as restrained and respectful. No barking orders, no “You need to buckle up, Sir!” There was not even a safety briefing, or if there was one it was so unobtrusive as to be invisible. In short, I was left in peace.

The only time I was approached directly by a male attendant was when I was waiting in front of an occupied bathroom. The person inside took quite a long time doing whatever he or she was doing, so I sat on what looked like a designer chair to me. In fact it was part of the cabin door, which bulged out at its lower end for some technical reason, but was not meant to be sat on. There was even a little sign illustrating that fact, but it was covered by my rear end, which made it hard to see. At some point the aforementioned attendant walked up to me, stopped at a comfortable distance, bowed with a faint smile, pointed to the bulge in the door and quietly said something along the lines of “Please, no sitting there.” Realizing that I had done something wrong, I got up immediately and said I was sorry. The attendant bowed again, lightly touched my shoulder as to say thank you and it’s okay. Then he disappeared. Never before in my life have I been made aware of a mistake in such a gentle and respectful way. It was a truly moving moment.

The final 30 minutes of the flight’s entertainment program didn’t feature an episode of the Simpsons, but a video on a stress-relieving pressure point massage followed by another video asking passengers to collect unused coins for a Unicef initiative in Africa. I was beginning to love Korea, even before touchdown.

Incheon is Seoul’s intercontinental airport and a massive structure by any standard. Once inside, however, things take on a rather tranquil quality, just like they had on the plane. And every time I questioned where to go next or what to do next, some helpful soul would come from somewhere and point me in the right direction with a bow. I went through immigration, customs and baggage reclaim within minutes, had Korean money in my pocket and sat on a train, being whisked away to the city.

It must be said that the airport train and all the infrastructure surrounding it made me feel as though I had traveled to a future world, still on earth but far removed from the clunky transport systems I had seen in so many other countries. Everything was white and blue, rounded, cleaned and polished to perfection. A feast for the eyes with a smoothness that makes you feel completely safe.

There are a large number of inexpensive guesthouses and hostels all over Seoul and many other cities in Korea. These hostels are usually small versions of hotels or part of private houses with small private bedrooms or larger bedrooms with bunk beds. Bathrooms, kitchens and living rooms are often shared.

I had selected a guesthouse in a University district of western Seoul, called Hongdae. The guesthouse was run my Mr. Lee and his wife, who had themselves traveled the world as backpackers at a younger age, and thought it a good idea to open a business in this small but thriving industry.

Mr. Lee wasn’t there when I arrived at the guesthouse and the gate was locked. However, taped to the entrance was a letter-size sheet of paper welcoming me by name and giving me instructions on how to open the door. All I had to do was slide up the cover of a keypad, enter a 5-digit code and close the keypad again. To my surprise the procedure worked fine, although I couldn’t work out why Mr. Lee had not simply left the door unlocked instead of advertising the key code to everyone passing by.

I made my way into the main house and started searching for my room, when Mr. Lee suddenly appeared, greeted me and promptly asked me to take off my shoes. I had just violated the first rule of the Korean society. Luckily, the faux pas was quickly forgotten, as Mr. Lee launched into a well-rehearsed speech about all the other dos and don’ts pertaining to my new home.

My room was small but practical with twin beds, a window and a wall-mounted air conditioning unit, which was covered by some sort of hand-knitted hood, probably courtesy of Mrs. Lee. There were two separate bathrooms, shared by all the other guests, of which there could be up to 14.

The best thing about the guesthouse was the common area and kitchen. They too were shared and quite busy at all hours of the day, although never more so than during breakfast time. People who had never met before were sitting down to chat, eat, flirt and make plans. What a great way to spend time.

My first order of business in Seoul was simple: I needed food. Pleasant as the flight may have been, not even Korean airlines have discovered a way to make plane food taste good. Mr. Lee offered to show me to a Korean restaurant around the corner. I agreed and we arrived at a small and rather unassuming establishment in a side street. At the entrance sat a man with a heap of fried fishes in front of him. Mr. Lee greeted him and explained who I was. He apparently also placed an order for me, since I was never asked what I wanted. Before Mr. Lee left, he pointed to my shoes. Oh… yeah.

I was ushered into the main restaurant room by a woman and sat down on the floor. Everything in this restaurant happened at floor level. The table was about 10 inches high and held some napkins, plastic mugs and a water bottle. As I learned later, still water comes with pretty much any restaurant meal in Korea and is usually free.

The lady came back to my table with a large bowl of rice and six or seven smaller bowls containing various vegetables as well as the omnipresent Kimchi – a marinated type of cabbage that most Koreans eat every day. She also poured some kind of oil onto my rice and then left.

Luckily, I had practiced eating with chopsticks in Germany months before and now started maneuvering small amounts of rice into my mouth. It didn’t taste too good. Actually, it tasted pretty bad. Just as I was admitting that to myself the man who had prepared fish at the entrance when I arrived, came to my table, sat across from me, took my chopstick and said something in Korean. He then proceeded to put all the vegetables together with the rice, added some red paste and began mixing it all in the manner someone mixes batter for a cake. It appeared that I had not understood the way this meal was to be consumed and the friendly man couldn’t bear my ignorance any longer. Or he just wanted to help, as so many Koreans do. Suffice it to say, the meal became very enjoyable after his intervention and I fortunately knew enough Korean to thank him for his assistance.

Back at the guesthouse I collapsed on my bed and immediately fell into the kind of uncontrollable knockout slumber that often goes hand in hand with long-distance travel and a pronounced culture shock. Still, it only lasted for a few hours and when I awoke I still had most of the evening to go out and explore the neighborhood.

Hongdae is probably one of the most night-active and crowded parts of Seoul, which is largely thanks to its young student population. The density of bars, cafes and restaurants can only be described as staggering. Squeezed in between them are tiny shops selling clothes, gadgets and cell phone peripherals such as phone cases of dubious origin and small ornamental dongles one attaches to one’s phone. One shop even claimed to sell the iPhone 5, which at the time of writing this hadn’t even been announced by Apple. A preemptive marketing campaign perhaps?

If you don’t want to sit in a restaurant or live on a budget, you can buy your food from a street vendor. They usually prepare and sell skewered meals out of a wheeled cart. I had no idea what any of these corndog-style dinners contained and so I resisted the temptation to try. Sometimes there is also a large pot of a dark stew-like substance with small things floating on top that resemble bugs. I asked a lady once what these floating items were and she promptly responded: “Bugs”.

As I roamed the streets of Hongdae around midnight, I was surprised about the number of drunken people I encountered. And I don’t mean just tipsy. I mean heavily intoxicated to the point at which you forget how to operate your limbs. There were men and women collapsed in the street, being attended to by friends or members of their family, who themselves were barely able to stand up.
Even more surprising was the fact that these people kept their altered state of consciousness to themselves instead of sharing it with the rest of the population. The same level of drunkenness in German or English people would cause an entirely different behavioral pattern. A little more extroverted, shall we say.

I made my way to a bar to enjoy a couple of drinks myself and was happy to learn, that cocktails were quite inexpensive, while sizes were ample. My favorite cocktail, the Cuba Libre, was apparently unknown, but there was the ever-popular Long Island Iced Tea or Long Tea as it’s called in Korea, a very potent concoction of 5 types of liquor, which, if consumed like a regular soft drink, will only require two glasses to bring about as robust a buzz as anyone could hope for.

In a Bill Bryson book named “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”, the author recalls a childhood experience from the 1950s in which he had dinner in a restaurant with his mother. The tables of that restaurant featured a call button, which turned on a lamp to alert a waiter or waitress.
The Koreans have a similar system in a lot of their restaurants and bars. There is no lamp directly at the table, but if the button is pushed, a chime will sound somewhere behind the bar or front desk to get the attention of a bartender or waiter. I agree with Bill Bryson that this appliance is ingenious and its omittance from modern European and American culture all the more tragic.

It seems fair at this point to mention that Koreans are quite fond of chimes. There is not an hour of any day spent in Korea without at least a dozen chimes of some type being emitted from a speaker somewhere near you. The elevator in one of my hotels announced its arrival at and departure from my floor with such an elaborate sound scheme, as to rip me out of perfectly good REM-sleep several times each night. There are chimes on television shows to make viewers aware of remarkable moments, there are chimes on trains and subways to announce… an announcement, and there is a barrage of chimes in shops and department stores, most of whose significance remain unknown to me even to this day.

As my cocktail began to soften the blow of my long trip and these eventful first hours in Korea, I watched an old lady on the street below the bar approach a large mound of garbage, ready for pick-up. She sat down right in front of it and began pulling pieces from one garbage bag and placing them into another. It took me a while to comprehend what she was doing. She collected plastic and cellophane items, which led me to assume that recycling plastics can be a way of supplementing your income in Korea.
In hindsight this incident seems to fit into the strange relationship Koreans have with their waste. While most streets in Europe are literally lined with garbage receptacles, they are almost completely inexistent in Korea. This is something to bear in mind as a garbage-conscious person. If you purchase a bottle of water or a candy bar, be prepared to carry its remains all they way to your home, or do as Koreans do: toss it. Of course, this practice leads to considerably dirty streets, particularly at the end of a day. By next morning, however, the roads are clean again and the cycle starts over.

The alcohol had done its job and I happily started my trip back to the hostel. Walking home at 2.30 in the morning was like walking home at 6pm. The streets were still immensely crowded with people and even shops were still open. This town really never slept. But I had to.