Getting out of Seoul was a bit of an odyssey. Eunkyung had to work early, so I had a head start into the day. Unfortunately that also meant that I was trying to get across Seoul with my large and heavy backpack during rush hour. Yong Jin had mentioned a subway connection, which sounded easier to handle than the bus - so following Eunkyung's suggestion I wanted to take a taxi to the subway station, rather than walking for 20 minutes and possibly getting lost. Finding a taxi was easy, but when I tried talking the driver into taking me to the station, he replied with a stream of exasperated-sounding Korean, and by pointing in the general direction of across the road. I realize now that he was probably telling me to flag down a taxi going in the other direction (apparently Korean taxi drivers are generally unwilling to do a u-turn across 4 lanes of heavy traffic - which kind of makes sense if you put it that way...), but at the time I guessed that for him the short distance was not worth the trouble, and he was showing me in which direction to walk. I had no map of the area, and was at first reluctant to try finding the subway station without better directions, but one look at the packed bus changed my mind - I could not even imagine trying to fit in there with all my baggage. You see it coming of course, and indeed that's what happened: I found no subway station. Instead, after about half an hour of happy early morning walking, I completed a half-circle that brought me back to the main road, just one bus stop further away from the city center. Obviously I was going to have to resign to the fact that I had no choice but to somehow squeeze in. And then luck smiled on me. The very first bus looked just like the one half an hour earlier - packed to the doors. But there was another one right behind it; clearly that was my chance! I got in, paid the fare, and was going to simply stand with my backpack on - but I had not counted on the kindness of Koreans: an Ajossi who was standing right next to me organized a place for my backpack in a corner of the bus (a lot of pointing was involved), and the Ajuma who was sitting just next to where I was standing offered to take my second bag onto her knees (again, a certain amount of pointing). Ajuma and Ajossi are honorific titles f
From that point on, finding the Express Bus terminal was more or less straightforward. But I hadn't left the city just yet, and I had two hours to do some last minute exploring. I stuffed my backpack into a locker again, this time putting much thought into how I could prevent the mechanism from jamming again, and headed off towards the Han river, along which I had detected a riverside park on my map.
Seoul can be a very green city. The residential area just by the Express Bus terminal is positively lush with trees and other greenery, and I even saw some hot chili peppers drying in the sun.
But Seoul can also be confusing, and - from a pedestrian's point of view - a bit frustrating. According to my map, to get to the riverside park, all I had to do was walk northwards. But after a while I came to a wall, which clearly separated me from the riverside park. It was still in a very green area, so I didn't mind much walking along it - but after about half an hour I was beginning to wonder how long exactly this wall was going to be. Behind it, I found out after a while, was one of Seoul's city freeways, and eventually I came upon an underpass, and finally entered Jamwon Riverside Park. What struck me as odd though, was that the park was less green than where I had just come from. There were fewer trees and bushes, and the paths were concrete and even straighter than the one along the wall had been! My guess is that this reflects much of the Korean way of life; a park is not a place where you go to sit in the shade, smell the flowers and read a book. Instead it's where you go to exercise. There are bicycle freeways instead of gravel paths, and workout-machines instead of park benches.Well, I didn't have a book to read with me anyway, and I needed to get back to the bus terminal. But because it had taken me such a long time to find a way past the wall, I was now closer to the subway station a couple of stops away from the terminal - so instead of walking all the way back, I decided to make my way there. The orientation principle involved: find the next bridge across the river, and follow that road until you get to the subway station. But again my plan was foiled by the same city freeway. I found a way onto the bridge, but needed to cross the freeway that merged with the traffic coming from the bridge. There was even a red light, which I was sure would turn green eventually. There were two buttons on the pole, and to be sure I pushed them both. Nothing happened for a couple of minutes. I pushed the buttons again, tried pushing them both at the same time. Nothing kept happening. Traffic kept flowing by me at speed, so that simply crossing the road was out of the question. Eventually I began looking for an alternative route. I had seen what looked like a bus stop on the bridge, and turned back to investigate that option - but upon closer inspection it lacked the telltale signs of a serviced bus stop, such as schedules and route plans.
On the way there I had crossed paths with an Ajuma, and had been wondering how she would master the amazing red light that never turns green. So after waiting a perfunctory couple of minutes during which none of the passing buses showed even the slightest inclination to stop at my "bus stop", I returned to the red light. The Ajuma was still there, and so we waited together for another few minutes, trying out various combinations of how often and hard to push the buttons - until, eventually, we both resigned to having to brave the flow of traffic. At least there were two of us, not only a crazy tourist, and not only a silly old lady, and somehow we made it to the other side. We parted ways shortly after that, and I finally made it to the bus terminal and my bus without any further shenanigans.There's still a lot of writing to catch up with, but for now I think I'll call it a night.
