Business trip ;-)

True enough, it was getting up early again for me. We had decided to meet at 8:30h a litttle bit away from my place to ensure that we would make it to our destination in time. The destination of our group excursion being: Caribbean bay :-)
Caribbean bay is probably the largest water park in Korea and certainly the largest I have heard of, seen or been to before. It was huge. Sadly, it was also equally crowed. Nevertheless, we head straight for the wave pool. Evidently, security is taken a bit more seriously here, so we all had to wear life jackets before going into the pool. However the big waves and especially being tossed around by them in the water made up for the jacket hassle. It also turned out that there was another major advantage to having the life vest around. Upon meeting the others after changing, Mark and I had already noticed, that most were wearing t-shirts or so and we were the only ones leaving our upper body bare. Turned out later that the sun screen - 45 sunblock - probably said goodbye after the initial wave pool visit and left Mark with a red face and me with deep red shoulders, that are still burning today. At least the life vest protected the rest... Other than that, it was very fun, though. We took a couple different slides - there wasn't time for anywhere near all of them, mainly due to very long lines - my favorite being the boomerang slide, where three to four people share a tube, which slides down a very steep incline only to rush up a steep slope and plummet down into a stream again. It is at the end of this ride that I stumble out of the tube in the picture. For all of the attractions go and look at: http://www.everland.com/htm/MultiLanguage/english/htm/Ev/EvCb_Att_01.htm
or just type Caribbean bay in Google. We spent a bit inside, with a tube slide for two and a single body slide, eventually ending up in the spa, where we spent some time in a really hot pool, until we finally hit the cold pool and the showers before leaving again. All in all it was a great day, but obviously my digital camera didn't enjoy the prospect of water, so I took a few pictures before we went in and ran back in for a short moment before leaving to take some more. However, Kyung Hwan was brilliant enough to bring a waterproof camera. As you might imagine, it was not digital, so I scanned the pictures today in the office. I assume, you'll be able to tell which pictures were made with which camera ;-)
I sure hope there will be more group trips to come while I'm here.

Food, dinner & fun

While I was struggeling with force field parameters, quantum mechnical calculation results and worse it suddenly occured - for the first time since I am here - that me and Mark where utterly alone in the office with everyone else being at meetings, in the lab or wherever. So it was the perfect moment to take an undisturbed picture of the office.
In the evening me and Cheol went out for some beer with side dishes. As I learned during our conversation we visited the first japanese style bar in Seoul, luckily very close to my home in Nok-Du. We started drinking Sake, japanese rice wine, which was served warm in a teapot. This was accompanied by an impressive platter of many different little skewers (hopefully this means the same as Grillspieße in German). And despite the fact that I am describing food yet again - it is the most amazing thing in everyday life here. So let us just take a look at the left side of the plate:
first are little sticks made of crab, followed by small pieces of something in the stomach of the chicken, followed by normal meatballs, fourth are pieces of chicken heart, fifth pieces of chicken breast, next some Korean fruit we could not translate and last but not least Garlic (very tasty). So, yes, I ate chicken heart today. And by heart I do not mean the center of the best piece of meat or so, but the part of the body that was beating and punping the blood through the little thing's veins, while it was still walking about. It was actually quite good and Cheol was impressed, that I dared to eat it without hesitation (it looked pretty tasty as well). Afterwards we drank some Soju cocktail out of a similar tea can, but this time cooled by ice cubes. Being pretty drunk by now, it seemed like a good idea to head home especially due to an important business trip the next day. On the way back we passed one of those places, where you can attempt to hit baseballs being shot at you with a baseball bat. Since it's only 500 Won for 20 or so shots, we gave it a try. It was enormously hard. I hit virtually nothing and those little balls were pretty darn fast. I will have to try again prior to drinking some day... Anyhow, this is another one of those 'sports' places, that are common in Korea and nonexistant in Germany, so I figured I should let you know before going to bed. I will have to get up earlier than usual yet again tomorrow.

The first hike

This day was absolutely amazing. Since I don't really know where to start, I'll start from the beginning: The alarm rings. It is 7:31h in the morning. I cannot believe I'm doing this to myself. A few minutes later, I force myself out of bed, shower, put on shorts, a polo shirt and shoes and hurry to the appointed meeting place. Steffi and Kalle, the only ones joining me on this trip for some reason, arrive a little later, equally exhausted from the last evening and less than five hours of sleep. We hurry to take a bus and multiple different metro lines to our desired destination: Dobongsan. Nonetheless, we are ten minutes late, but meet up with our German "tour guides", who are here on business for a year, without trouble. We then follow the enormous stream of Korean hikers away from the metro stop into an area full small food and hiking shops on the bottom of the mountain. We are advised to buy some gloves, so we do. I notice for the first time that Steffi, Kalle, Axel and Klaus-Jürgen are all wearing professional hiking shoes as well. Should I be worried? But then again how bad can less than one thousand meter high hills be? I am about to find out...
A few hundred meters later the shopping area ends and we pass a ranger station indicating
the beginning of the national park area. The hiking starts with moderate incline, well-made paths and lots of Koreans surrounding us. At the first intersection, we choose right and this means up. The incline increases substantially, the path is now made of some man-placed rocks and some very naturaly rock. It is about time to put on gloves to be able to use the stone bottom and sticking out roots as handholds. It's wonderful. This is the type of hiking I always enjoyed as a little kid. After about an hour we reach the first view point looking over right at a Buddhist temple complex on another hill across from us. Only last weekend I bought the hand-painted picture of such a landscape and decided to visit an area like this during my stay and there I am. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, even the path has gotten a little less crowed. Around the next turn we see an impressive rock formation and all of us are perfectly happy to be on this beautiful, if slightly more exhausting than expected, hike. My shoes don't give perfect hold on the stones, but it is more than sufficient. A little later we arrive at an area with steel ropes lining the sides of the path. The incline changes dramatically. Upwards. No way to go up without clinging tightly to the rope and aiding the steps by pulling oneself upwards with the arms. This is where I start to really regret my shoes. Not giving perfect hold, especially on slightly wet or smooth rock, I need to lean back more, hold the ropes a bit tighter and press against the rock harder. The thought of slipping scares me quite a bit. All of us make it past this part without severe problems, though. I scratch my knee on a rock - I suddenly seem to be the only person wearing shorts in this area - but it doesn't hurt and only bleeds very little. The path continues as before, but another, even more difficult part is about to come. Luckily, I gained confidence in my abilities and even a little in my shoes, so it has turned into more of a challenge than a danger. Steffi, Kalle and I acknowledge that our parents would probably be more scared than us, if they were to know what we are currently doing. Arriving at the top, sweat is running down our faces and our shirts are drenched. Evidently, this is a rare experience for Steffi and Kalle. We marvel at the fact that still uncounted numbers of Koreans of all ages are coming up the path we took. How 60+ year-olds can handle this climb is beyond us. We believe, that 50% of any German highschool class would probably have given up by now. We climb up a few more nearby hill tops to get a pretty view, but then start heading down. Using yet another steel-cable path along a little creek we eventually make it back to the shopping and eating area after a solid five hours. On the way we even run across another Buddhist temple and take a little detour to get a close look at it. We are dead tired and exhausted, but also extremely happy. We accompany Axel and Klaus-Jürgen to a restaurant they know and eat the first soup, that contains extraordinarily tasty fish - although the head swimming in the soup did make a scary impression at first. A good meal, a few beers with cider (Korean for Sprite) and a bottle of Soju later, we head home completely exhausted and happy. I will definitely do this again, but first I will buy appropriate shoes.

Sports

To slightly revoke the imression that all we do here is eat, I would like to point out that I've actually been going to the university's fitness center for some training on friday. It is in the same building as the swimming, which I did on tuesday and thursday. However, I do not dare to take my camera into the swimming area. Anyhow, since this was the first time in years I have again visited a fitness studio, it was quite exhausting: cycling, running, dumb-bells, machine training for arms, back, legs and finally sit-ups and stretching. All in all about one and a half hours. It was actually quite fun, too, since we were four people and had some guidance from Johannes, who is a (quite substantial) bit more experienced. After that the friday evening ended rather quiet. Saturday was a day of replenishing fridges, washing clothes, sleeping late etc. until we finally decided to go to Gangnam for some clubbing. It took a while (2+ hrs) to find the clubs we had been told about and the we were then faced with a 20000 Won cover charge. We decided to decline and have some Korean cocktails and Czech beers instead, since some of us had decided to meet up for hiking the next morning at 9:30h beyond the other side of town. It was still a fun evening and it wasn't til 2:30h the next morning that we returned home in quite a good mood. We will deal with the clubbing some other time, when there is no hiking the next day and we no longer have to search for the place. This turned out to be a very good idea...

Birthday party for Kalle

Today is Kalle's birthday so he is obviously partying with his Korean group somewhere. This left only one choice for us: to party with him until past midnight last night. So we did. Actually, for him it started with a peaceful beer accompanied by Philipp which the rest of us joined 'unexpectedly' a bit later. Then, after moving to a nice Korean beer bar and eating lots of side dishes, a little before midnight Steffi and Mark had to leave for some made-up reason and reappeared with lots of presents and a cake. We sang 'happy birthday' which made every Korean in the bar look at us in amazement and even got us another side dish plate for free. It was a glorius, very beer-heavy and extremely funny evening, that all of us intend to repeat. One of the higlights depicted here was us attempting to eat the birthday cake with chop sticks - amazing thing is, it actually worked really well. Don't worry, I'll buy some chop sticks here, so you can all try this yourself, once I return ;)

Group dinner

Finally the day arrived that we got to do something with all the Koreans in our group, 'our' referring to Mark and me, who are both working in the same office. Initially there was a vote on what we would like to eat and the options were plentiful ranging from pig stomach to Thai food to duck and more. Luckily, duck - my personal preference - turned out to be the winner. We went to a traditional Korean restaurant, which means sitting on the floor and eating from very low tables. Dinner was brilliant. We got four complete, stuffed ducks for all of us along with the usual assortment of side dishes, most of which were really tasty. Afterwards, we hit the bars for a few drinks. Again, sitting on the floor and low tables. Todays drink: rice wine and varieties thereof accompanied by an exciting assortment of side dishes, of course. I personally had rather bad memories from my last visit, but the wine there was quite decent. Not a minute after the drinks arrived, the drinking games started. The clear objective: get the two German students drunk. Luckily, we can hold ourselves reasonably well and did quite alright in some of the games, too. Nonetheless, we certainly had a few drinks more than most Koreans. Nonetheless it was over too quickly and most decided to go home, about to leave me a tad disappointed that it was only 9 pm and I had been really enjoying the evening. But then luckily, four of them decided to ask us to join them for Karaoke. So off we went. The Karaoke bar featured multiple little rooms with comfortable sofas, multiple tv screens - one of them showing a music video and the lyrics, one the olympic games - and comfortable sofas. It came as it had to and we were absolutely amazed by the skill with which all the Koreans were singing. No matter whether lyrics were Korean or English. Luckily, we were drunk enough to dare to sing anyways, but I'm still afraid that after 'self esteem', 'paint it black', 'my way' and more we caused quite a bit of pain to our host. Although, not nearly as much as some of the people singing in the other rooms caused me on the way to the bathroom ;-)
All in all, the first evening with the group turned out to be lots of fun and I hope there will be more to come...

Cheonggyecheon River

Another day, another part of Seoul we have not yet visited. According to what we learned, there was initially a little creek running through what one might consider the actual downtown Seoul. To have more land available for more and more skye scrapers and what not, this stream was dried out and filled up. Not too long after, the people regretted this decision, missing the nice little creek, where one could relax listening to the sound of water and children could play. So they decided to rebuild an artificial creek right in the center of some of the most impressive skye scrapers in Seoul. It starts with a waterfall near an event area and runs for quite some time a little below the surrounding crowded streets offering a little bit of quite in an otherwise busy center, that wasn't quite so busy on Sunday. We also learned that while even Johannes and me as blond and tall Germans don't really impress too many Koreans on the street anymore, there is still something that can: a long red-haired girl. Thanks to this, Sibylle immediately got interviewed by a Korean (student) camera team that was scavenging the area. Surprisingly, the new stardom didn't seem to appeal to her all that much.
Due to the clouds in the sky and out everpresent fear of rain, that cannot be warded off by an umbrella, we decided to have a coffee and cake and head back to Nok-Du afterwards. We again took the Insa-dong subway stop, this time coming from the other direction and passing by another traditional Korean building as well as the amazing Jongno (Samsung) tower, featuring a bar and restaurant on top. We actually had wine and beer up inside the Samsung tower the day before after our shopping frenzy, to complete the blow out of money. A beer there cost 14000 - compare that to between two and three thousand, which you'd be paying in Nok-Du. But therefore you have an amazing view over the city, classy live Jazz music, stylish interior (rather mediocre plastic chairs?!?!), a majestic bathroom with yet another amazing view, very nice looking cakes and the best dressed crowd we've seen so far. We were terribly underdressed and decided to return in appropriate suites in the near future to match the Korean guests and the surroundings. For picture of the view you will have to wait til I get them from Johannes. His camera is way more capable of dealing with darkness than mine.

Insa-dong

Saturday, we were in cultural mood and the weather had significantly improved - at least for the day. So we chose to take a look at the Jogyesa Temple, the main temple of the largest Buddhist community in Seoul, which is also intended to present Buddhism to outsiders. It's quite a beautiful site and one of the few buildings in Seoul, that are strikingly asian in architecture. There was currently a worship going on, so we decided against intruding and instead continued on to the traditional Korean shopping street, also located in Insa-dong. Of course, these kinds of visits always end with lots of green, pretty bills leaving our wallets toward strikingly smiling faces of Korean shop owners. We tried all kinds of little foods, that were prepared in little stands on the street, tasted a handful of different Korean teas and looked at everything from wooden pencil holders, to artsy curtains to chop sticks in every imaginable design. I fell for one of the hand-painted curtains of an asian temple in rough nature, which will certainly look glorious on my wall at home next to the world map and Jessica Alba. We all decided that an areas such as this must be found and visited before leaving here. With darkness slowly falling over Seoul, we moved on to the night-life and dining area a few steps further. We had a typical Korean dinner - not quite as extreme as the octopuss might suggest, though. Afterwards we settled for an extremely American desert: Cold Stone. For all of you who are unaware of what that is: change this as soon as possible. At Cold Stone they mix a variety of soft ice creams with all manners of delicious deserts: brownies, apples, chocolate sauce, orio cookies,... They basicly mush and crush it all together on a cold stone right in front of you (hence the name, in case you hadn't guessed) to create a glorius composition of ice cream you really should try.

Lazy days...

On Friday there was a national holiday in Korea and since none of us intends to offend Korean traditions, we were unable to work that day. Which meant sleaping late and meeting for an interesting lunch in Nok-Du. We decided to go to a place specializing on the Korean version of 'Maultaschen'. Here they are called 'mandu'. Being six people, with six different undecipherable choices of Mandu, we decided to do it Korean style and ordered everything to share among each other. Should you actually count the dishes on the table, you will notice only six, since I took the picture a bit too early.
Afterwards, we spent some more time being lazy and eventually set out for the COEX Mall, which is certainly among the most classy and most expansive here. This time not for shopping, though, but mainly to see the new Batman movie on a really big screen. On the way there, we got a nice impression on how they clean the skye scrapers here (in the rain!). Anyhow, a lot of other Koreans also decided for the movie option on a rainy friday, so the first one with six seats in a row was at 23:20h, but we took it anyhow. There are actually still movies starting at 3:20h in the morning here, so we figured, it wasn't really the late show anyway. After the movie, so at three in the morning, we had to take a taxi back. It drove for about 30 minutes and cost a magical 15,000 Won, i.e. less than 15 €. If only German taxis were that cheap.

Group lunch

Today was another one of those really exciting lunches. First, a little bit about our mensa: there are three main floors. On the bottom floor, where we usually eat, is the cheap food for the normal students at 2500 Won per meal (about 1,60 Euros) with three to four different choices. A level up it's only a tad more expansive 3000 or 3500 Won and there are two choices. The very top level has meals for 4500 Won in a really classy looking dining hall with very nice wooden chairs and even an a la carte section (10000+ Won), which only Professors seem to visit. Anyhow, today we went for the upper floor dining area. The meal choices were tofu vs. chicken. Not a difficult decision there. The chicken turned out to be marinated, which might lead the unsuspecting Westerner to believe he would be eating something like chicken nuggets - but no. Lo and behold, underneath the cover the chicken was pretty much intact - bones, skin, meat and some sort of spicy sauce. So far so good, but how to eat a marinated chicken with chop sticks? Our Korean host elegantly parted the meat from the bones using the chop sticks to pull and cut everything apart, or to lift it and just take a bite. Most did the former, which I was completely incapable of, so I did the latter. Still, it was a difficult time for me and Mark, that I judged to be worthy of pictures. Every time we managed to eat some of the meat it was quite rewarding, though.
Afterwards - seemingly my office mates and group members were in luxurious mood - everyone had ice cream. Except for me, who declared this day and tuesday a sports day without sweets but with swimming. Instead, I used the opportunity to take a nice ice-eating picture of all of them. On my way back to the institute, I also had the opportunity to take a picture of the empty seminar room, which is usually either occupied by important meetings or dark and looked. But it's really nice as you can see. The respective group leader or professor sits at the head of the table with the students in the circle surrounding him and usually one lucky guy giving a presentation.

Rainy days

In all honesty, I must say I haven't seen a single completely rainy day so far, however: if it rains, it pours and pours loads of water. To give a wonderful example, before all of us got anywhere near Seoul downtown last weekend, such a downpour began. All we had to cover were maybe one or two hundred meters from the bus stop to the metro, but it was certainly enough to have all of us drenching wet - even those 'lucky' enough to bring an umbrella. Unwilling to waste over an hour to go back home and change, but also certain to catch a cold in the air-conditioned subway with our wet shirts, we found a third option: buying completely new shirts at a nearby outlet mall. Of course, it had already stopped raining and would never do so again the entire day, so check out our group with all but one of us newly clothed. Actually a very awesome idea, because we got extremly nice sports t-shirts 50% off the already fairly decent price.
Another thing that always strikes me about Seoul is that at seemingly every corner, awe-inspiring skye scrapers rise up in rather unimpressive areas. The most astonishing part about the buildings here, even the ones we stay in, is that they are made largely of marble. In our houses this holds for the staircases, for many sky scrapers the entire fassade is made of it. In Germany it seems to be present only in the most classy hotels and even there only on the inside. Is marble cheap and common here? I will have to look into that.

Park mall & Namdaemun market

This weekend we yet again plunged right into the heart of shopping in Seoul by visiting two of the most famous, but utterly different places. Shopping centers, such as the park mall reach unrivaled sizes here and nine stories can easily be expected. Ideally including food courts and entertainment areas. Part of the Park mall is a gigantic electronics center - whatever you cannot buy there is either outdated or nonexistant. Awesome. Korea also seems to take a slightly different approach to legal issues compared to Germany. You can actually buy 4 burnt CDs for roughly 10 Euros here featuring movies that are currently running in US cinema. The new Batman, for example.
Before continuing onward to a completely different shopping experience, I picked up my Korean home gawn, that I had ordered last weekend in Itaewon. While trying it on, everyone else decided, this would be a great opportunity to take a picture. After this experience, I decided to rule out modeling as a future career option ;-)
Second major place for shopping this weekend was Namdaemun market, which is an enormous maze of tiny alleys filled with little stores and market stands filled with anything from clothes to shoes to fish to vegetables to pottery to...

Sports & eating

To begin making some progress on my plan of losing some weight in Korea, I decided just eating Korean style might not suffice to do the trick - especially with all the Dunkin Donuts and ice cream places around. So we decided to go swimming in the sports center on campus, wich is a rather impressive ellipsoidal building. However, our attempt was hindered by the fact, that you had to wear a swim cap to enter. Luckily, such a large sports facility includes a little store selling such things. I also figured you might enjoy the beauty of it as much as the others, so I put a picture of me & Steffi wearing the forsaken thing.
Also, I decided to give a little insight on how in the world we manage to order food in the restaurants here, because waitors and waitresses aren't usually the most skilled in English and neither are we in Korean. Also, do not believe that all menus are translated - this is only the case in the bigger ones or in the tourist areas. Most contain English titles and advertisements here and there, but that is usually it. Luckily, Koreans love pictures and show cases. So in front of many upper scale restaurants - but also the school cafeteria - there are usually show cases containing the offered meals. Theses are either aritificial, such as in the picture, or just a plate with the food of the day, such as in the dining hall, where it changes every day. Inside, one may then consult the menus, which usually also contain lots pictures. Whether the fried stuff in the picture represents chicken, shrimp, squid or worse is a slightly more complicated matter, however.

Arrival of DAAD students

So it's finally a week that I've been in Korea and five DAAD students form Mainz are about to arrive in Seoul for a six to seven month stay. But before I got to meet them, my colleagues decided to order some food. I was given the choice between noodles in soup and noodles with red sauce, which were described as very spicy. I leave it to you to guess what I chose, despite not being the biggest fan of Korean soups. A little later, we all gather in one of the offices and I'm given a large metal bowl, that is ice cold. And so was the soup inside. If you look at the picture closely, you might actually see some of the ice blocks floating around in it... In the center there is the Korean version of a 'Maultasche', which is actually really good. A few were delivered along with the meals, because we had ordered so much. There is was also a piece of meat, half an egg and stripes of pear along with countless noodles.
After meeting up with the students, setting up their housing and going shopping for bed stuff, we hit the bars for a first traditional dinner. Therefore, we set on the floor and had Korean barbeque again. Note that Hyoseon cuts the porc with a pair of scissors. It's the first time since I got here, that we also drink 'soju' again, a typical Korean liquor with about 20% alcohol. Another really nice thing about Korea is that you shouldn't really drink alcohol alone, because someone else should fill your glass for you. This is the part were I learn to enjoy being the oldest of the German students, which in Korea is equivalent to having a higher status, i.e.: if one of them pours me a beer he must do so with both hands, while I may hold my cup with one hand. If I pour it for them, I may again do so with one hand, while they should use both to hold their cup. Wonder how many other 'benefits' I will get to enjoy here because of this... Happy to be able to stretch our legs again after dinner, we decide to hit one of the beer bars and enjoy another fruit plate before calling it a night. Seated around the table are four of the DAAD student along with me and Johannes, all making the typical 'v' sign, that Koreans make whenever there is a camera around. Most of the Korean students had to return either to their labs or their wives prior to this moment ;-)
Btw: I am afraid that if you want to see the interesting part of 'language lessons' you will have to install Korean language support files. At least my windows shows only question marks, while Linux actually displays Hangeul, but I obviously installed the required files there to run my keyboard.