Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Wrapping the Dumpling: A Final Serving of Seoul
We’ve had a good time, have we not, laving our eyeballs in the beauty and curiosity of a city big enough to eat my own home town and still be hungry enough to enjoy a good brunch afterwards. Seoul: seat of mystery, lanes of lore, and tower of power. There is so much to remember I don’t even entirely know what to start missing. However, I do have a few visual tidbits left over to share with you, and - like the dessert in a Korean meal - they’re light and amusing and not designed to sit around being savored. Rather, these LAST photos are the ones that I took for pure amusement and nostalgia for walking those crazy diverticulated streets. Let’s enjoy. That is not a suggestion, it is an order. (and as always, feel free to click-and-embiggen.)
Let’s begin with Hong-Ik University, as seen from our 7th floor hotel room at dawn. This place is completely hopping from 8 pm till 2 am, so this is a particularly serene time of day and a nice way to start things off:
Here’s the alley behind our hotel. The big street in front was way too wide and crowded with cars to be fun for strolling, but the rest of the ‘hood was more like this - fascinating little lanes chock-full of delicious smells, fashionable clothing, and tiny shops shoehorned into rambling, ramshackle buildings:
And while we’re on the subject of our hotel, let me share one thing about it: it had the most complicated “facilities” I’ve ever encountered. I was afeared of it at first, what with all the warnings:
Don’t smoke on it with your legs spread apart! Don’t squat directly on it! Don’t, um, procreate with it! Don’t bottle it! Don’t, er, child it!
But when the matter was no longer of my own choosing, I squelched my fears and embraced the technology:
“Keep my grace” is right! It’s got special buttons for “W fountain,” “ladybell fountain,” and - my own favorite for sheer impertinence - one I call “the puffer.” Once I’d gotten used to eastern sanitation, I never wanted to come back home!
Moving (as it were) on: our first full day in Korea, the foster family took us with Jesse to a very cool park on an island in the middle of the Han River, which bisects Seoul pretty much straight across the middle. The park was beautifully designed, and in fact featured an actual design center and museum along with a cool post-industrial playground, lattice plaza, and other provocative landscaping like this:
But let me not leave you with the impression that this town lacked the human touch. Any regular reader here (hi, sis! hi, mom!) knows of my fascination with vernacular art forms - the ones put in place by regular folk just making their mark on society with whatever is handy. Here’s a taste of what I found painted on walls around my hotel, and at the funky mid-river art-park:
On the other hand, some of the “establishment” art left me confused, or amused. Here’s a few examples:
This poster was up in the lobby of the enormous tower with awesome city-wide views. It’s for the Korean version of Fiddler on the Roof. For a country that seems to be the polar opposite of “kosher” (I was served a whole baby octopus with my breakfast stirfry), it was an incongruous choice - but the poster makes it look like they make it work. I would go back just to see that show. If I was a rich man, I mean. Di-de-bum-de-bum-de-diedle-diedle-bum. (which in fact requires no translation.)
Moving from the sublime to - elsewhere: on the way to the airport in Incheon (a very beautiful, modern, and well-equipped facility if I do say so myself), we saw this piece of public art (photographed from inside a van moving at 60 mph or so, so please forgive the angle and clarity). I think it’s supposed to remind me of an airplane taking off. In fact, that is not what it reminds me of. Comments are open if you want to offer your own interpretation.
Commercial establishments also were stamped with eastern uniqueness. I lost a lot of the best photos of these, but some good ones survived anyway. For example:
The morning after the camera malfunctioned I took a one-block walk to a digital imaging studio to get a new SD card. The woman helping me spoke no English (and god knows I speak no Korean) but she treated me right and got me what I needed quickly and at a good price. To memorialize her graciousness, I wanted to take her photo. She wasn’t crazy about that plan and ducked out of the way at the key moment - leaving me to see what it’s like to have a camera stuck in my own face:
There were a lot - a LOT - of places in Seoul named “Bobo.” I’m not sure why but most of my photos of them got eated by the camera. This one survived, and I’m particularly glad because it is a defining moment in my own Bobohood and that of my elderson:
And finally, Mr. Wow. It appears he’s left the building. If you go to Seoul, look him up, won’t you? There is a lot of wow in Seoul, and anyone who personifies it probably is worth a bit of your time.
That’s it for the photos. Stay tuned for a word scrapbook - the tiny details that I couldn’t or didn’t photograph, but that gave the city such sublime texture. For now, though, I am feeling like I’m pretty much back at home. Speaking of which, Jesse had his third first birthday party a couple of weekends ago. He enjoyed his cake, and now you can enjoy him doing so. I think this image leaves nothing left to say, so now I will shut up.
