Countdown to Doomsday, but not how you think.

22112023

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?

Basement beers and sneaky wines

Early day by virtue of checking out of the AirBnB, we packed up our things, tidied up the apartment and dropped our bags with the proprietor, a very nice lady that lives on the premises.

http://www.rose170.com/

We knew we were boarding the vessel that afternoon so we didn't get into anything to exciting.

Laura found a quick morning activity, a walk through the Berghoff. This was a little neighborhood that was made up of unmarried Catholic women that were involved with the church but not nuns. And after the Dutch adopted Protestantism as the official religion this became a ghetto of sorts for Catholics, and when the church in the neighborhood was handed over to the Anglican congregation of the city.

the Catholics had to build a secret church in some houses. It was pretty neat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begijnhof,_Amsterdam

We walked down the street to get a sandwich from a local cafe. ¾ of us got a grandma's meatball sandwich, which was very good, though I would have described it as a meatloaf sandwich, and I had the curry chicken sandwich just to change it up (I intended to get the grandmas meatball sandwich too, but figured we should get some variety). All of the sandwiches were exactly what we needed inexpensive, tasty food that didn't require much in the way of decision making.

After the sandwich we went accross the street to a bar to waste more time. While drinking the beers we were provided entertainment by the beer deliver guys. All of the taps, and seemingly much of the storage is in the basement of the bar, which isn't all that uncommon, but was unique about this place (and I'm guessing older cities in general), is they didn't have room to waste to put in a whole staircase, so the way to the basement is through a trapdoor in the middle of a bar, and down a ladder. Watching these guys wrestle kegs of beer down the ladder was impressive. They obviously do this all the time, in fact it made me truly appreciate he strong man competitions where they through kegs over field goal posts.

Laura drank her beer quick so we could run to the grocery store and pick up some more snacks and wine for the ship. The ship had a 3 bottles per cabin limit before they would start taking then away. And given the price of alcohol on the ship, bringing on a €8.50 bottle of wine was wise.

We returned to the bar to retrieve my parents and then back the 3 blocks to grab our bags.The proprietor’s son was left in charge of waiting for us to get put bags. He was very surprised to see a family of four when he was in charge of only my/Laura's 2 backpacks, and a small rolling carry-on, my mom's rolling carry-on, my dad's medium duffle and my mom's wierd stuff sack that she has had for at least the 30 years I've been around. So we said our goodbyes and or thank yous and got on the tram to the central terminal. With a transfer to another train we were at the cruise terminal and on the ship in about 45 minutes.

Given how easy it was to get the bottle of wine on board (no one remarked on it at all) Laura and I were tempted to run back into the city to grab some more. But instead decided to nap on the couch.

Given how Iceland never got dark after our 8 hour overnight flight, and Laura and I had stayed up late both nights prior to a location change we never got over the jet lag. So we welcomed having a privet space, and enough room to spread out our stuff. So we napped, basically until the ship was leaving Amsterdam.

We observed the departure and some of the canal/river exiting the area, and returned to our cabin to nap some more.
Eventually we got room service. Knowing that many people went through some kind of journey to get on the vessel, the room service offered the same food that was in the dining room, as many guests may not have been ready to make their way to the public areas of the vessel.

Anyways, the food was ok, again if I wasn't logging what I did and ate, probably wouldn't be writing home about it. The soups were probably the best part of the meal. I had a butternut squash soup that was probably 40% cream/butter and 60% squash, so it was delicious. Laura had minestrone soup. And then for our mains I wanted the spaghetti and I was feeling a little under the weather, and a bunch of carbs sounded great. Laura got the bacon wrapped scallops.

Then we watched the 4 hour epic of the 1996 full text production of Hamlet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_(1996_film)

And then went to sleep.

Fish heads and vomit (unrelated)

10302016

We woke up hungover, well collectively the two of us woke up pretty hung over, I was ok, but laura was near death.

But she was determined to go to the Tsukiji Fish market.

So we packed our bags, checked out of the hotel, and took a walk to the fish market. Stopping for Yoshinoya on the way, greasy-carb-laden breakfast was just what i needed. Being Sunday the inner market was closed, and no Tuna auction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukiji_fish_market .

The outer market was fill of shops and restaurants and smells. Lots of very strong smells. And also tuna heads. I guess they put the tuna heads on display outside as a marketing gimmick. After our experience with sashimi and larvae, I was not interested. Some how the sights and smells here didn't upset Laura's tummy and made it through without incident.

We did find a street vendor selling candied ginger that helped some with the discomfort.

After the fish market we wandered around the Ginza neighborhood. Again being Sunday, there wasn't much going on, we stopped at our first cafe of the day to try some wifi and laura Ave coffee. We signed up for stove free Wi-Fi that is good at over 40,000 locations around Japan, including most train stations. And laura puked here, then we decided to head back to akihabara to try and find boxes that would fit ask the stuff we are trying to send back. Akihabara being full of Japan-fetishizing Americans I figured would have boxes for shipping. On the train laura got sick and we got off early, so she could puke. And while walking the rest of the way to akihabara we came across a pile of boxes outside a clothing boutique. Snagged some and went back to the hotel.

I packed the stuff into a box, and Laura puked the hotel lobby toilet, so we wandered off in the Shinbashi neighborhood. we found a park, where she puked in a public squat toilet, which I'm pretty sure was a novel experience for her. Then she napped on my lap on a park bench. We went to our second cafe because I was getting hungry. I got a muffin and a maple latte, and laura puked in this bathroom too.

Then it was time for us to go to Shimotikazawa for our next stint. We definitely should have taken a cab, between Laura's glass stomach and the box of stuff, a transfer at Shinbashi was not going to happen. We ultimately didn't make the transfer and hopped a cab anyways.

Late on Sunday almost nothing was open on Shimotikazawa. We went to a place our AirBNB guy recommended. Unfortunately the menu was all Japanese and the staff knew 0 English. We struggled through with Google translate. Ordered chicken. Laura ate a bite, then felt sick. And we went home for our first night in the AirBnB.

free musuems

12712 another day of class, other than the grammar heaviness of the mid level class, it seems aright, ill stick in it for a while, it sounds like i can still prolly switch out if i so choose later. after class we were taken to an art musuem. we went here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museo_Nacional_de_Bellas_Artes_%28Buenos_Aires%29 ). ill admit im a lil spoiled when it comes to art museums, but its collection was certainly interesting. the building itself, though over a hundred years old the building wasnt too impressive, the first floor had art from the middle ages through the 20th century, including some famous catz, Picasso, Rembrandt, Monet, others. there was also a limited modern art collection on the 2nd (third) floor, but the 1st floor which had all the famous argentine stuff, was closed. i was a little disappointed, maybe ill go back there later and see that stuff. afterwords me and a handful of people wandered around the area, and hopped a bus home, sorry im so lame, im prolly gunna go to sleep shortly, we have exciting stuff going on this weekend, allegedly horses will be involved, stay tuned.

inconspicuous border

13512 we woke up today in Berlin, and checked out of the hostel, and the bus took us over to the Museum Island area, which was cool, i love museums, and considering we had already hit the Brandenburg gate, i and the girls i was with yesterday chose to make our way through the German Historical Museum. This museum was really cool, as i have not been through it before. the museum had a meager early history section from 0-1000AD. some roman stuff, mosaics, and armor bits. the museum certainly got more interesting as we progressed. the 1100s through the 1700s isnt really my interest, but the rise of Austro-hungary, and the city states of Italy and all them had their fingers in the German pie at various points. and there was the Napolonic stuff, they actually had Napoleons hat from the battle of Waterloo.

so that was pretty bad ass. they had stuff from the unification of germany too. here is a bit of early X-ray equipment, im sure my moms will like this one.

then the WWI stuff started popping up, so here is a flood of pics, including Kaiser Wilhelm's uniform and revolver

here is some body armor (AND you wonder why the Germans manage to do well in 2 world wars within 30 years of each other?)

after that museum we walked around the Pergamon museum, saw the Ishtar gates again, and all the other things pilfered by the germans over the years. again ive been here, and while they have impressive stuff, their collection isnt all that extensive. after this we headed out for Dresden, we walked around the old area, i mean the city was bombed to shit during the war, but they managed to fix up a number of the buildings. we saw the opera house, and the Dresden Castle, which is more of a palace. both were designed by a guy by the name of Gottfried Semper, who went on to be kinda a revolutionary guy. as in he agitated against the goverment, not his architecture. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Semper ) we walked through a big Protestant church that was also rebuilt after the bombing, that left me unimpressed, i dont know if it is my mild affection for the Catholic Church, or the fact that this church was only finished 5 years ago or what. but it didnt inspire awe like catholic cathedrals of similar size tend to do. this place just seemed to lack the character of alot of the other churches ive been to. we then drove back to Prague, only noticing we were back in the Czech Republic because all the signs and adds changed languages. mk, so the part that is pertinent to my grade. i can see that Berlin, and Dresden are very much newer than Prague. i recognize they were bombed almost out of existence during the war, but due to their relative newness, they lack the character of Prague. that is in regards to the physical city itself. the intangible, the "feel" of the cities are very different. again religion comes into it the catholicness of Prague vs the Protestantness of Berlin and Dresden makes the architecture different (even the old-newly-rebult stuff). i hate to describe Germans and being very German, but they are, compared to Prague. i can see the differences of the Austro-Hungarian Prague and the German Berlin/Dresden, again it ties in religion and architecture, but i dont fully know how to articulate the differences without those very obvious divergences. maybe i should sleep on it.

Saturday 7911

today we got to visit novi sad, it was crammed with european 20somethings at the Exit festival (http://www.exitfest.org/), it was a pretty city,

before getting there we stopped at Karlovci (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sremski_Karlovci), which the old seat of the Serbian Patriarch, during the the austrohungarian times, but since the seat was moved to Belgrade the town has clearly lost... its appeal, now it is just a palace for the Bishop of the Srem region of Vojvodina. we also had the wonderful experience of wandering into a baptism.

considering i just learned i have followers beyond my parents, and the internet doesnt yet have a sarcasm font, you should know that i find it very uncomfortable for me, and uncouth in general to roll into a place of worship as a tourist and start taking pictures of shit going on. so it took some flexing of my morals to get you all that wondrous photo.

but yeah Novi Sad was cool the city is home to the largest catholic church in the province.

we also found our way to the beach, on the Danube river, the beach was full of people my age enjoying the stupidly hot weather (some 37+ degrees C)and music and whatnots, as well as families with chitlens running around getting yelled at by the lifeguards, i guess thats the way it goes everywhere. though on the lifeguard note, not a big fan of the blowing your whistle everytime you need to tell the little kid not to go too deep, i was ready to set up for compressions and send someone to the gate.

Novi Sad itself, and Karlovci have a very different feel than Belgrade, i mean besides the obvious lack of cosmopolitan-ness in the smaller cities, there was an architectural and physical difference as well. i guess that could be attributed to the fact that those cities werent bombed to shit on multiple occasions, and that they were inside the Austro-Hungarian empire, while Belgrade wasnt, so they had some Baroque, western europe-y buildings, while Belgrade is full of modern, and Soviet era ugliness.

dont get my wrong Belgrade is cool, and the few government buildings that have their late 18th/early19th century architecture are cool and characterful, but there is alot of the large oppressive buildings the commie leadership loved to make.

im sure as we travel more, and especially out of this part of Serbia i will have more contrast to talk about.

i will now go back to my room where there is no internet to distract me from my paper writing