We knew we would be travelling back to Seoul today, and we pre-booked out ticket so we didnt get stuck standing on the train. We booked a train for 1420, which gave us enough time to wake up late, pack and get out of the hotel, but still do something of note in Busan. We alked up to the Busan Citizens Park, which is a park on the grounds of an old US Military base, which itself was built onto the Japanese Army base during the first half of the 20th century occupation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busan_Citizens_Park) It is a large park, in which it is easy to forget you are in a bustling megalopolis of 20+ million people. They also have a very sobering piece of art reminding us how far away we are from irreversible climate catastgrophe (https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20221228000491) as of the time of our visit we had 5 years and 243 days until global temperatures rose enough to alter human life as we know it, so thats chill to have in the park.
Given that a belligernt nation some 50 miles north is constantly threatening nuclear annihilation of the nation, and the United States, you would think we would feel the threat of holocaust more accutely, but really it was seeing this clock counting down the slow, seemingly uncontested end of current human civilization to put the feeling of doom in me.
After a meander around the park we headed to the train station.
While there I did grab a cup of chicken and tteokboki for a cool 4000KRW, it was exactly the kind of quick snack I wanted before the train ride, poorly heated food, slathered in sauce, that was made at some indeterminate point in the paste by this lady talking on the phone barely acknowledging my existence, all told it was tasty. Also upon entering the train station we got hooked by a lady giving Makgeolli samples, and subsequently bought a bottle of specialty rice wine, that we have yet to drink (even as I write this late night a whole day late, but we are opening a different bottle of Makgeolli, so maybe by the end of my catching up on blog posts, Ill have a quick review on it...). We also grabbed a few Busan local beers to drink on the train.
we loaded the train, sat in our seats and made use of an outlet to charge our WIFI dongle, battery and phones. For most of the train ride we alternated between looking out the window and mindlessly scrolling our phones. The train got is back to Seoul at 1700ish, we took the subway to our hotel neighborhood. Upon exiting the subway in the Myeongdong/Euljiro neighborhood it felt very much like the Hutongs in China. Very much a working neighborhood, that has not been scrubbed for tourists. I think I stated earlier we have been using Kakao as a mapping app, so it had no issues getting us to our hotel, but it took us through lesser (by foreigners) travelled streets. This neighborhood appears to have been a bustling industrial supply area, with a bunch of print/engraving shops and construction supply stores. We havent seen any other foreigners in the area. This is the up and coming hipster neighborhood with a bunch of breweries and experimental restaurants. Which follows a familiar pattern as to what we are used to; depressed post-industrial neighborhoods struggle, hipsters need cheap rent for their housing/business ventures, they start taking over industrial spaces, locals get upset their neighborhood is being gentrified, but really like the increase in property values, hipsters attain success, and then the neighborhood becomes too expensive for the new artsy types so they move to another area. Myeongdong/Euljiro feels like its right in the middle of that cycle: there are new restaurants (that will get a description shortly) and breweries, but still cottage industry mom and pop (mostly pop) shops doing speciality engravings for employee 20th anniversary appreciation pins. Some googling took me to Eulji Darak (https://www.instagram.com/euljidarak/) a Italian-Korean fusion restaurant tucked into an old workers drinking district. The area felt kinda like what I imagine Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood did in the 1950s, there were bars everywhere that clearly served the blue collar workers, getting them drunk after their overly long/hard shifts, and before going home and doing whatever they did to their wives/kids to set them up to fuck up their kids (ie late Gen Xers and Millenials), meaning there were still bars that served only one kind of inexpensive beer, and one kind of inexpensive snack (the most popular snack being a salty dried fish snack which would also fit the Milwaukee workingmans palate)
Anyways we went to Eulji Darak and their food was spectacular, not necessarily the most novel bites, but probably the most well executed food we have had in Korea.
The first plate was a ragu spaghetti, with a dollup of whipped cream on it. Which sounds crazy, but I have had plenty of Italian dishes that have a spoonfull of ricotta ontop of a meaty/spicy sauce. Really, imagine a spicy Ragu with Ricotta, but through the lense of someone that uses gochujang and sweet cream. The second dish was a creamy sauce on big noodles and pork neck, with a raw egg on top, again, imagine a carbonara through an east asian lens. Both weere excellently executed.
After dinner we went to a brewery that was established by a european that had some good beers on their menu, and then went to Another brewery that I believe was run by a native Korean and had some other good beers on the menu, and a better vibe. We then headed out to trek across the neighborhood to check out a Makgeoli speacilty place, but as we pulled up they said they were cvlosing. We were ready to go home at that point, so it wasnt a big deal, but we got about 10m away when the chef ran out and gave us an apology bottly of makgeolli for our troubles.
We managed to finish this bottle on the 1km walk home.
I am da lil drunk, and cynical writing this, so feel free to ignore my opinions leaking into the monologue here, but then again, if you didnt want my writings on nonsense, why are you here?
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