1st day in Daegu
So... after my unvoluntary hiatus, on with the tale:
We got up pretty late the next morning - remember, we had been drinking and partying quite a lot the night before. ^____~
By the time we made it out of the hostel (after having expressed our appreciation to our wonderful host Jin) it was already around 12 o'clock, so we didn't have any time left to do or see anything special in Busan.
Our next stop was to be Daegu, the third largest city in Korea (after Seoul and Busan) with a large army base. Daegu is where my boyfriend used to live and work and a lot of his friends are still working off their 10 years of army service. Those friends had invited me and any friends traveling with me to come visit them and have a couple of days of living 'Korean style'.
His best friend picked us up from the express bus station in Daegu in the afternoon.
(*Korea is laced by a complicated system of highways, some with extra lanes for the express buses. Buses are the most popular form of travel, being much cheaper than trains and usually just as comfortable. The seats are huge and far apart, there is plenty of room in the belly for luggage and the bus stops regularly at restaurant/convenience store/bathroom sites by the highway. Besides, you can travel the length of Korea for around 10 Euros - a cry away from German standards...)
He took the guy in our group, M., and me out to dinner with another friend (by the way, we didn't pay one cent the whole time we were in Daegu, as M. was with me and I was automatically part of the group). It was a great, huge meal and I was ready to go to sleep afterward, but next stop was a Korean public bath called a 'jimjjilbang'. One level is for women, including showers and warm baths (where everybody walks around naked with no problems but stares at me!!), the same on another level for men and the third level is full of different sauna rooms with different temperatures and humidity levels, snack stands, television and movie rooms and ice cream! This level is mixed, so you have to wear the pajama-like clothes provided. A family could spend an entire day in a jimjjilbang and never get bored. (And they do - I can't count the number of different reactions children show when they see me... from scared to curious to shy yet inquisitive...)
Afterwards I thought we were going home but we entered another place famous for its chicken bits that you eat while drinking - you guessed it - more soju! Two more people came and even gave me lots of photos they had developed of the time when they went out with my boyfriend every weekend. There are a few very interesting photos I am definitely keeping as future blackmail material - they should prove to be quite useful! ^______^
Then we were driven to the shared appartment of two of the guys (who had to work on base all night) and were given their rooms to sleep in until they came back in the morning at 8. 8a.m.!!!
I was very nervous about the impression I would be leaving on all of the people who had been very close to J.J. for much longer than I had... I was worried that we were taking advantage of them and they might feel obligated to me solely because of J.J.
But thats for another day...
We got up pretty late the next morning - remember, we had been drinking and partying quite a lot the night before. ^____~
By the time we made it out of the hostel (after having expressed our appreciation to our wonderful host Jin) it was already around 12 o'clock, so we didn't have any time left to do or see anything special in Busan.
Our next stop was to be Daegu, the third largest city in Korea (after Seoul and Busan) with a large army base. Daegu is where my boyfriend used to live and work and a lot of his friends are still working off their 10 years of army service. Those friends had invited me and any friends traveling with me to come visit them and have a couple of days of living 'Korean style'.
His best friend picked us up from the express bus station in Daegu in the afternoon.
(*Korea is laced by a complicated system of highways, some with extra lanes for the express buses. Buses are the most popular form of travel, being much cheaper than trains and usually just as comfortable. The seats are huge and far apart, there is plenty of room in the belly for luggage and the bus stops regularly at restaurant/convenience store/bathroom sites by the highway. Besides, you can travel the length of Korea for around 10 Euros - a cry away from German standards...)
He took the guy in our group, M., and me out to dinner with another friend (by the way, we didn't pay one cent the whole time we were in Daegu, as M. was with me and I was automatically part of the group). It was a great, huge meal and I was ready to go to sleep afterward, but next stop was a Korean public bath called a 'jimjjilbang'. One level is for women, including showers and warm baths (where everybody walks around naked with no problems but stares at me!!), the same on another level for men and the third level is full of different sauna rooms with different temperatures and humidity levels, snack stands, television and movie rooms and ice cream! This level is mixed, so you have to wear the pajama-like clothes provided. A family could spend an entire day in a jimjjilbang and never get bored. (And they do - I can't count the number of different reactions children show when they see me... from scared to curious to shy yet inquisitive...)
Afterwards I thought we were going home but we entered another place famous for its chicken bits that you eat while drinking - you guessed it - more soju! Two more people came and even gave me lots of photos they had developed of the time when they went out with my boyfriend every weekend. There are a few very interesting photos I am definitely keeping as future blackmail material - they should prove to be quite useful! ^______^
Then we were driven to the shared appartment of two of the guys (who had to work on base all night) and were given their rooms to sleep in until they came back in the morning at 8. 8a.m.!!!
I was very nervous about the impression I would be leaving on all of the people who had been very close to J.J. for much longer than I had... I was worried that we were taking advantage of them and they might feel obligated to me solely because of J.J.
But thats for another day...