I make my noodles the way I like my noodles, and only an ajumma will tell me otherwise

25112023 and then 25112023 again

Departure day, our return flight was planned for 2000 with the hopes to do some things during the day, which ends of being kind of a mixed back. My getting to airports on time anxiety kind of colors the whole day, but in this case having a whole 10+ waking hours before the flight we were actually able to get out and see some stuff.

The second hotel in Seoul was labeled as a 3-Star hotel, but had great reviews, the pictures looked fine, and we have stayed at other 3 star hotels (namely in Japan) that were just fine, this Hotel Nafore was not. Firstly, its tucked deep back in an old industrial neighborhood.

which was fine for us, but a less adventerous Western travelly may not be comfortable with. The lobby was fine, and the staff was friendly, but when we got into our room the first night it was very hot, like 80F+ in the room, there was also boot prints on the walls. The heat we figured could just be turned off/down in that first night, and the boot prints were under the finish of the wood. While less an indicator of cleanliness, it did imply the amount of attention to detail/concern for presentation went into the construction/finishing of the rooms. And comparing our hotel room, to the pictures on the website, we believe we got the not-recently-updated rooms. After literally sweating through the first night (its november in Seoul, it was in the mid 40Fs all night) we complained about the heat and the front desk showed us the Air Conditioning is operated via the TV Remote...OK...I have some ethical issues with blasting AC in the wintertime when we could just turn the heat off, but I think the place had in floor heating (as mentioned before https://danswritingsonnonsense.blogspot.com/2016/11/consorts-and-calendars.html) that was probably controlled at the entire floor/building level. Over the course of the night the automatic light in the entryway of our room (meaning IN our room) would randomly turn on off throughout the night. We woke up on that second day and investigated moving to a new hotel. All of the hotels in the area were either booked up or very expensive (like 300USD+/night), we also tapped the concierge number on the back of our Chase Sapphire Reserve card* so we resolved to stay at the place, armed with the knowledge of at least how to cool the room. On the second night I went down stairs to talk to the front desk regarding the light, but the night guy was clearly the night guy that knew very little about the job, he gave my about 5 feet of electrical tape and scissors to try and cover the light. This did not work. So the next day when the best English speaker was on duty we brought him to our room, and he turned the light to "always off" (I would point out that I also flipped the switch on the base of the light fixture and it seemed to do nothing, I guess he knew to cheat the switch by setting it to a middle position). So ultimately it was only our last night that we got any good sleep in. I mention all of this only because it cemented a lesson for Laura and I; if we both have a gut feeling about a place upon walking in, start complaining immediately. I think if we had, before opening our bags, gone to the desk asked for a different room we may have had a more pleasant experience, or stepped up our dilligence to find a new place.

With that rant out of the way, the rest of our day.

we elected to go over to the Bukchon Hanok Village (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukchon_Hanok_Village) which we had been in before, and was nearby enough to not stress us out about being too far from the hotel. The

The area has many sturctures that have been around for the last 100+ years, many have been beautifully maintained. As typical of us, we stopped to get coffees, Laura went to a little espresso bar, and holding to my earlier declaration to only get the elaborate drink did not get anything from this spot, because nothing was exotic enough. And I am so glad I did,

I dont often evangelize for a specific product on this blog, and I do not get anything for you clicking their links but this place had butter cream coffee, check out their insta for promo pics of the drinks as my pic didnt show the layers https://www.instagram.com/halff_coffeeroasters/
It was one of the most decadent things I have ever had, the cream was so fine, but still thick, was butterscotch-y, but a little biscoff-y.

After walking and coffeeing we were pretty hungry, we went to Mukshidonna in Samcheongdong (which is the neighborhood surrounding the old timey village).

I am unsure what this style of stew/soup is called, it is not really Korean "Army Stew" but its not shabu shabu/hot pot. The broth and ingredients are brought out not-hot (though unsure if raw) and the hotplate in your table brings it up to temp. This spot specializes in the tteokbokki in the broth. You get to choose if you want regular, spicy or seafood broth, then choose the type of noodle, and meat goes into it. We got spicy, beef, "chewy" noodles, and extra ramen noodled (yes the instant kind). I prefer my instant ramen very slightly underdone, and as such, I began pulling some noodles into my bowl to eat, and the lady running the place yelled at me, and gave me the crossed-hands no no no no no, and put my noodles back in the broth and poked around the pot for a few seconds and went off to service another customer. And then about 25 seconds later gave us the OK to eat. I am sure foreigner make plenty of mistakes in there (I mean, we already made some cuilinary mistakes on the trip) so I don't begrudge her forcing me to cook my noodles beyond my preference...

We then walked back to our hotel, through the neighborhood we were previously staying in. We chose to do this because we were certain there was a grocery store that carried the ginseng extract for a fair price that we could bring back as gifts. All of the tourist spots that sold those kinds of products were marked up pretty aggressively. On the way to said grocery store we stopped in the little local makers market, and now being a midafternoon Saturday we found some really cool stuff. We got a tshirt and poster from a shop selling from TimidTales collective (https://www.instagram.com/timidtales_creativestudio/) and from another cool artist (will update with insta link later, a significant proportion of my readers will soon be recieving gifts from this artist, and I dont want to ruin the surprise), Laura got some traditional Korean crafts too.

Retrieving our things from the hotel, we started our trek to the airport, via subway, and then special airport subway and then feet, we got to the airport with plenty of time to get dinner at the lounge our fancy travel cards get access to.

We drank probably 7 glasses beer (admittedly 330ml) between us, and tried most of the things out of the buffet. Considering this was "free" to us, all of the food was pretty good, If we had paied for lounge access, I dont think it would be worth the 40USD/person entrance fee. We got onto our flight, and 9.5 hours later we arrived in Seattle at 1230. Which as you may recall was basically 7.5 hours before we left. With the fancy travel cards, we got the renewal fees reimbursed for Global Entry, which puts you in the short line for customs (kind of like what TSA Pre-Check used to be). Mine was approved within hours, but Laura is still awaiting judgement. I dont fully understand way, but customs in the new international terminal at SEA was a shitshow. Despite all of the lanes being open, the line was probably 3 hours long? Like well beyond the zig-zagging line dividers, they had personnel snaking the line around the baggage claims. While in line (and throughout the international terminal) the loudspeaker was advertising Mobile Passport Control App for US citizens. Laura downloaded that while in line, and scanned her passport, and answered the same 4 questions that the CBP agent would have asked, and she got to go to the MPC line, where the CBP agent asked for clarification on her "yes" answer about having food, and she was through. My Global Entry CPB officer asked more questions, but also sent me on my way after 30 seconds of interaction.

I did make it home with the Nuruk

The Makgeolli starter is here, and I will begin experiments next weekend. We were in our home by 1400.

I will try to go back through this trips posts and include links to restaurants that we ate at.

* I have feelings about upper-end travel credit cards, one of the services that comes with the 400USD+ annual fee associated with these cards is access to a travel concierge service, in the case of the CSR the Visa Infinite services. I had suspicions that the number on the back of the card has access to almost nothing that I dont already have access to, and in most cases would have less knowledge of the places I am visting than I gained through my pre-travel research (for example offering someone in a hotel in Rosemont and calling in Chicago), and this experience cemented my opnions. I love the travel rewards that come with these cards, especially in the first year when getting sign-up bonuses, but it gets very hard for me to justify a 595USD annual fee when your travel portal prices or availability (including cash/points back) doesnt beat aggregators and hotel/airline/etc direct prices or availability, and your concierge services need as much prep time to properly service me as I need to service myself. I also have specific (free-to-play) credit cards in my wallet that optimizes rewards across my spending categories such that I only use these cards for travel purposes.
I recognize many may not want to, or have the time to do the kind of research (or credit card churning) that I do, in which case, spend those big bucks to get a solid product.

Meat Sleeve > Hot Dog Bun

17052019

Today's stop in Copenhagen, Denmark. My mother scheduled a Segway tour in the afternoon, one that had originally been a shore excursions through the ship, but apparently didn't get enough participants and was cancelled. So in the morning we planned to walk around the Freetown Christiania area and maybe a museum.

Unfortunetely it was pouring, making the walking very unappetizing. We took a cab to the entrance to the microstate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

In addition to the pouring rain, it was like 0800, meaning almost no one was awake, and none of the businesses were open. We only walkend a few hundred yards into the are before we decided to try a museum for the morning activity instead.

On the walk towards the old town we stopped in a bakery to use some wifi and decide on a museum. The place was actively making bread so it smelled delicious, placating some of our frustrations over the weather and the walking.

We decided on the Thorveldsen Museum, as it was in the heart of the museum area, and we could decide on something else while travelling there, and it appeared smaller, which would give us enough time to get back to the port area to hop on the Segway tour.

The museum building itself is spectacular.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorvaldsen_Museum

Every room has different murals on the cieling and different tile patterns on the floor. And obviously they are full of art.

Thorveldsen was a prolific sculptor and many of his final works were presented, and nor interestingly almost all of the surviving plaster test/model scultures were presented.

Marble sculptures typically weren't simply birthed from the imagination and skill of the artist. Typically they would sculpt the figure out of clay, and then make a mold, and then cast the model in plaster. From here the artist would scale it up to the intended final size and use the plaster cast as the model from which they sculpt the marble.

Pretty neat.

After meandering through this museum my mother decided to try and sneak on the noon segway tour as the weather was supposed to get worse in the afternoon. We hopped in a cab back to the cruise terminal area.

Aaand it started raining harder, and the Segway staff was on a different tour. My parents, somewhat defeated, were willing to wait until the 1300 tour (it was then 1130), but were still on the fence all together in participating in the tour as it was raining so hard. Laura and I were not ready to waste 90, minutes of our 6 hours in Copenhagen waiting for a tour that might not even be running. My parents decided to head back to the ship (only a 5 minute walk from here) while Laura and I headed back to the older area of the city.

Our first stop was a hot dog cart. Many years ago Laura came to Denmark with a school trip, and the hotdogs here left a deep impact. I have, prior to this trip, prior to even planning for this trip, heard about the hot dogs. She described them as the most efficient delivery of cased meats to your stomach beyond hot-dog smoothies. Rather than splitting the bun longitudinally placing the sausage, and slathering in condiments, they core out the middle of the bun, squirt the condiments into the bun and slide the sausage into the bun.

It is honestly a superior method, the condiments end up more evenly distributed along the bun/meat, the enclosed bun tends to be less messy, making walking and eating easier. And then the regional advantage of just having good sausages just put it over the top.

While walking and eating said sausage and bread pocket, we heard quite the hubbub nearby, and spotted flares getting launched into the sky. Approaching the fray we realized a Dannish sports team must have won a major event, and writing this several days later, I am still unsure who won what. But the streets were wild, the streets were blocked off by police and there was a sea of people wearing yellow jerseys drinking and singing nationalistic/sport songs. Without Danish currency, or the right colors we just observed.

Laura was physically satisfied by a light meal, and emotionally satisfied by the vindication of 20 year old memories. Which was great cause then I could convince her to come with me to another museum.

I wanted to go to the Danish National Museum.

https://en.natmus.dk/museums-and-palaces/the-national-museum-of-denmark/

This was a really great museum, it was a little busy, it was a rainy weekend, so there were lots of kids around. The museum was accessible to children, but not a kid's museum. The primary section Laura and I walked through traced the life of a Dane from each class of life from 1600-2000.

They had a bunch of artifacts and informational displays (including English). It was very cool following the timeline of the both the lower classes and the aristocracy through the last 400 years, this exhibit naturally moved into a but about the Danish empire. They had small colonies in India, West Africa, the Caribbean and Greenland. And most of the Danish wealth came from a form of triangular trade, slaves from West Africa being taken to the Caribbean to work the plantations, and then raw materials coming back to Europe for sale or manufacturing processes. The museum appropriatly tackled the reprehensible nature of slavery, it wasn't apologist, but it recognized the suffering of the humans being exploited. By this point in the museum we were getting worried about time, and overwhelmed by other patrons, and thusly didn't read every plaquard.

Beyond these two exhibits we also zoomed through Denmark in the Dark and Medieval ages, and about ½ of the special Viking Exhibit.

This museum deserves a second visit. And Conpenhagen deserves another multiday visit.

We’ll be back.

We wandered around town a little more looking for a grocery store to buy another bottle of wine, ultimately got a bottle of French Rose (perfect for a visit to Denmark) and taxied back to the ship.

The rest of the day was uneventul, I'm pretty sure Laura and I fell asleep watching whatever movie the ship was playing.

200 mile an hour naps

02112016

We woke up, ate the yogurt we picked up from the corner store last night, when buying drunk munchies. It was citrus yogurt, pretty tasty. We also got to the post office to mail off the box. In so doing met, quite possibly the nicest man in Japan. He helped us through the process despite they language barrier and was very helpful. I think when the package arrives in the States, we will send a list card to that office thanking them for their help. We shipped the package surface, so we might beat it home.

We left our AirBNB and went to the train station to start our journey to Kyoto.

We had to go to a larger station than or Shimotikazawa station, so we headed to Shibuya, and activating the Japan Rail pass was a little complicated we stood in 2 lines and spoke to 4 information desks before we were directed to the right place, but once we got there out read very ready, and the agent got us reserve together on the next train to Kyoto. We had to metro to Shinegawa to get the high speed rail, we had enough times in Shinegawa for laura to grab some steamed dumplings at the station before getting the train.

The train was pretty nice. The seats were very accommodating, they were any the size of US domestic first class seats but much more foot room.

I promptly fell asleep.

The only picture I got.

Apparently we went through mountains and approached the ocean, I dunno check with laura she was busy working post cards.

First impressions of Kyoto:

it is much smaller than Tokyo, maybe we aren't in the downtown area, (i think we are), it looked alot like getting off the train in Milwaukee, you know your still in a big city, but not sky scrapers as far as you can see.

It is older than Tokyo. There are more traditional buildings tucked away in the neighborhood, I think primarily because it wasn't bombed to ticket during WWII.

More Westerners, I don't know if this is because there are more of them here, or because Kyoto is smaller and they are more concentrated, but there are a lot of young Westerners, French, Australian, and American from what I can tell.

Laura trying to take a picture of the cat outside the Ryokan.

We walked to our Ryokan, which is a traditional style Inn in Japan. The floors are the bamboo tatami, the walls very thin, in some cases, only paper. A family gets one room, with the folded out futon mattresses, sharing a bath/toilet with all the other rooms in the building.

We headed out ultimately for ramen that was rated very highly, near a major shopping area. The shopping area is actually built on the bones of the old main street, so while most of the structures were obviously new, there were a few 500+ year old shrines nestled in there.

The ramen place had a 46+ minute wait when we showed, so we took a number and wandered the mall. I was too hungry so we got a kebab, and we spotted a cheese tart place, mentally noting that for after the ramen.

The ramen was good. Laura loved it, I think it was her favorite, but I didn't think it was as good as that random place we stumbled into in Ueno. The slices of pork that came with the soup was fantastic, the most porky pork I've had in a long time.

By the time we got out of there, the cheese tart place was sold out so we settled on a "super crepe" a fresh made crepe with Ice cream, blueberry jam, whipped cream and a slice of cheese cake. All rolled up and ready to eat on the go. It was decadent and an acceptable alternative to the tarts.

After that we found our way home, and slept very well on our tatami floor.

Zoo

15712 after sleeping in for the first time in a while, we woke up and decided to meet some people going to the open air market we went to last week. however we got off the subte too early, because some people thought it was closer, it was not closer, so we decided to hit up the zoo. now i must say my only experience with animals like this outside of the United States, is the circus in Russia, which was kinda fucked up, so i wasnt sure what was going on here. entry was 47 pesos, so 10USD. there were some kids outside protesting the zoo, at first i just figured they were the treehugging type, but i was soon proven, they were kind of right. they had all the animals one would expect to have in a zoo, the Milwaukee zoo I would say is definitely better, this zoo is how i imagine zoos were in the United States back in the 1960s, lots of cages, like actual cages. anyways the only stuff i was really interested in was the more local critters, so i got some pictures of them.

there is a herd of llamas (yes a herd, i looked it up) fighting eachother for the pellets of food you can buy to feed the animals in the zoo (all the animals eat the same pellet thing) and some. and the other thing that looks like a llama, but isnt is a vicuña, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicu%C3%B1a ) its apparently the national animal of Peru. anyways there was nothing too awesome in the zoo, there was one point where i made eye contact with the camel, and i saw the deepest sadness ive seen in any animal ever, worse than those sara mclachlan ASPCA commercial kittens. after seeing the despondence in a camel i realized i wasnt emotionally prepared to see the apes. so we hurried through the rest of the place, and headed home. i was torn, i dont know if i should feel bad for supporting the zoo, or feel good for supporting the animals. like if people stopped going, and the zoo stopped generating revenue, what would happen to the animals? anyways, enough with such moral quandaries, class is soon, sleep time must start now.

BONES!!!

16512

On the bus early to Kutná Hora, a silvermining town about 100km outside of Prague, firstly i want to note that on this drive, and our drive up to Berlin, the terrain reminded me very much of home, its no surprise there were so many Germans that settled in the midwest when coming to the US. first stop was at the Kostinice Ossuary,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary) it was designed as a knock off of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, this was built during the crusade times, some dirt of jerusalem is spread on the grounds of the chapel, making it a part of the holy land, this then led to many many people wanting to be buried there, hence the abundance of bones. in addition to the Holy dirt, various relics from jesus were deposited here, splinters of the true cross, thorns from the crown, maybe a few of the nails with which he was crucified, stuff like that. These bones are older than the decorations themselves. The chapel was decorated in the baroque era with those piles of skulls, and then the rest of the wall decorations were put up in the 19th century.

The geographic area, has lots of silver mines, and thus this was a major money making for the king serving as the royal mint, he gave special support to the monasteries in the area, until the 14th century, when the city took over these lending purposes from the monasteries. The Templars (who had a monastery here) were eventually hated by the kings of Europe cause they owed too much money to the Templar order, eventually the Templars were declared heretics, and subsequently killed. The Cistercian monks werent big on lending money, or ostentatiousness as can be seen below, survived a but longer, up till the Hussite Wars ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_wars ). we then wandered our way into a Gothic Cathedral.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Assumption_of_Our_Lady_and_Saint_John_the_Baptist ) Cathedral built in 13th century, the eastern most cathedral type church in Europe, Cistercian, they were missionaries of the Gothic style however they could not over decorate, hence the planness of this cathedral. However the greatest Czech baroque artist was forced to paint for the church, they locked him in to keep him sober and paint, cause he owed the church money but he managed to find drink, and did drink, and subsequently some of the paintings of his tend to lack appropriate scaling and perspective. Ultimately he died, drunk on the stoop of some pub in the town.

also pictured is a reliquary of some saint. his skull has a wax face put onto it so you can stare upon his long dead visage. The Czech museum of silver, small castle, 15th century, seat of the rich families, over 100 silver mines have existed in the area, however today, only one of them is currently accessible. we wandered around 500 year old silver mines. there were points were it was as low as 70cm tall, and only 40cm across, some claustrophobic cats had difficulty, other than my needing to pee real bad, it was pretty cool. the walls looked slick, covered in wax almost, but it was actually just mineral deposits. it was pretty bad ass. We the went to another church which our guide claimed was a cathedral, but wiki says otherwise, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Barbara%27s_Church,_Kutn%C3%A1_Hora ) began in 14th century, finished in 16th, the Hussite wars delayed the construction, as such, the style changed, making it in late gothic style. here there was a fresco of coin making dating back to 1460, as this was a silver mining town...

these churches were nice and big and awe inspiring so, i liked them, i have a soft spot for Gothic architecture. the busride back was uneventful, came home read, ate some food, will likely go out to sample more of the Czech Republics number one national product and go to sleep.

Tuesday 12711

busy academic day.

first we visited the Serbian Parliament building, very cool building, started in 1905, finally finished in 1935, there were a number of wars and attempted revolutions delaying the completion.

we met with MPs of the Democratic party, the party holds 64 of the 250 total seats in parliament. the two MPs we met with were young in their early thirties, apparently representative of the Democratic party followers. they are currently working on changing up the way elections work, it works like the classic parliamentary elections, in that the people vote for a party, and the party gets a representative number of seats in the parliament, and then fills those seats accordingly with people. however they want to change it so that the voters know who exactly they are voting for, and to what position within the party and eventual government.

we asked them all kinds of questions, the Democratic party is all for EU accession, and doing everything they can, proposing laws and whatnot that will expedite that process.

they also spoke to what their party is doing to address the problems of Serbia, not surprisingly unemployment is an issue, due primarily to the economic crises the world over, but they also point to the education system being inadequate for the Serbian people to compete in a globalized market, so the Democratic party is working to attract FDI, and overhaul the education system to address the unemployment issue.

also they noted that industrial output was at 50% of what it was in the early 1990s, due in part to the economic slowdown, and then the sanctions of the 90s, and the us bombing the crap out of them thing. so the Democratic party wants to attract that FDI to help reinvigorate Serbia's industries.

regarding Kosovo, the Democratic party will likely not ever recognize Kosovo as an independent state as long as it is unpopular to do so, however they respect the Un mandate and will not do anything to upset that issue.

and as far as Bosnia goes, they respect to sovereignty of Bosnia, as well as the Dayton accords, and the agreement between Bosnia and the Republica Srpska, and will not do anything to aggravate that issue at all.

then later in the day we met with some members of CANVAS, which is an organization that provides advisory and training services to people opposing oppressive regimes through nonviolence.

CANVAS is a growth from OTPOR, which was the primary youth, grassroots-ish opposition movement against Milosovic at the turn of the century (i love being able to say that).

CANVAS organizes workshops to help (generally) young people to organize nonviolent resistance to authoritarian regimes, and has since helped advise groups in places like the Maldives, Ukraine, Georgia and Egypt.

The group was certainly interesting, particularly because they refuse aid from governments so they can maintain their freedom, however, as Ionnis pointed out, they are willing to work with anyone as long as the group is pursuing nonviolence, including far far right (neo-fascists). so in my opinion the group loses some respect because they are willing to help extremist groups like that...

then later that night we went to a free show at the Kalamegdan fortress hosted by the Serbian branch of MTV, it was some Serbian DJs, it was... interesting, not really my kinda music, but it was cool to see, an experience. afterwords me and a few other made our way home, stopping at a fountain to drink some of the coldest water ive had in the country, and met a dog, that managed to follow our roundabout prolly 3km walk home, and sleep in front of our hotel.

overall a good day, sorry i missed this post yesterday, ill prolly double post later, and relate todays lazy events.