Living octopus

The time had come. We found the place with the baby octopi swimming in an aquarium in the front. We went in. I attempted to pronounce the words on my little note and the man seemed to know what I wanted but told us there were none left or so. There seemed to still be quite a few in the aquarium though. We found a Korean with a reasonably solid knowledge of English and asked him to help us. We had to order drinks along with it, he translated. No problem. And more food as well. More food? No, that did not seem like a good idea. So maybe no octopus tonight. Evidently the place was too busy to waste a table on four westerners curious to try a cheap specialty instead of having a real dinner. We left and spent some time at a traditional Korean bar instead. On the way back to the hotel, Mirsada decided to go and ask again. This time there was no problem. It is hard to say whether happiness or shock overcame me realizing that now there was no escape anymore. Neither for me nor for one of the octopi about to get eaten. Thanks to Don you may here witness the preparation of our food and the moment that I actually eat my first piece. It's actually quite a challenge to pick up a squirming, slick piece of moving octopus with chop sticks. Once successful, it turns out it's rather gooey, utterly indestructible and quite lively in the mouth. However, it does taste a lot better than one would expect and probably better than its boiled older brethren. We actually managed to finish the whole plate. Guess for the four of us there is nothing much left in the world that we wouldn't dare try to eat now. Seconds, anyone?

Downtown

On the last day for most conference attendees, Mirsada, Don, Victor and I did a quick tour of some of the most interesting sights in Seoul: the Jogyesa buddhist temple, the traditional shopping street Insadong and the Samsung tower. Weather turned out to be rather mediocre, but that didn't spoil the fun of a traditional dinner, the view from the Samsung tower and the admiration for exotic lamps, paintings, dishes and more. Finally, we also managed to find a place serving Dakkalbi: chicken, cabbage, spicy sauce and noodles or rice mixed in a hot pan in the center of the table. The glorious trip to the Insadong area was completed with an icecream by Cold Stone :-)
However, the most exciting part of the evening was yet to come since Victor and I wanted to try live octopus and we had found out that there was a place close to our hotel offering just that...

Skiing

Yes, you read correctly: skiing. After three days of hard work, day number four took us two hours away from Seoul to the skiing resort Phoenix park. While the slopes were neither as long nor as difficult as one might be used from the Alpes, the truly exciting part was being able to ski at night up to ten o'clock. Besides, not having had the chance to go skiing in the last two and a half years, I was absolutely thrilled to be given the chance again.

Conference days

Nonetheless the true reason for this visit was work and not just fun and games so the following days were spent in a lecture hall during the day and in good restaurants in the evening and pubs and bars thereafter. Highlights were the traditional Korean beef BBQ and a dinner consisting of over a dozen different courses. The evenings were spent with beer, soju and dong dong ju and all kinds of dried fish and other side dishes to accompany them (not like anyone would have still needed extra food, but that's the way it is). At this point it seems appropriate to mention, that Koreans thoroughly enjoy mixing beer with other types of harder alcohol such as soju or whiskey and have devised many interesting ways of mixing, multiple of them involving the ever-present chop sticks...

Day two

The next day was intended for the next best thing to do in Seoul: shopping. And so we started from Namdaemun at noon, moved over to Myeong dong in the afternoon and ended up in Dongdaemun in the evening. Namdaemun is the fabulous street market, where we ended up buying everything from sweets to scissors to backpacks to... We were quite surprised to see, however, that we could also have bought living turtles. Assuring ourselves, that they were probably intended
as pets, we may yet have missed a specialty of the local cuisine so far.
In the evening, Dongdaemun presented itself in beautiful winter decoration and even revealed a fully restored city gate, that had so far been under construction.
All in all it was very much worthwhile to have arrived early.

Return to Seoul

Thanks to a shift in the usual schedule, our once-a-year conference in Korea took place in February this year. Thrilled to have a chance to go back, I decided to arrive a day early. Any visit to Korea must be started with good food, so we started with shabu shabu for dinner. This corresponds to raw beef (or seafood), which will be boiled along with vegetables in the center of the table. Always makes me wonder why in Asia there are so many exciting do-it-yourself dinners, while in Europe you usually just get your plate with food.