Laura won't let me title this the way I want so: We had a nice day at the waterfront!

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Laura woke up feeling much better so we elected to head to Haeundae area, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haeundae_Beach) we snagged a coffee from one of the myriad coffee shops around here. After my regular latte yesterday, I resovled to always get whatever crazy drink the shop is pushing, so today laura got a Dolce Latte, and I got an iced latte with Heath crumbled on top, just the wafer part of the heath bar, it was really good. The subway got us down to Haeundae area which is the beach/coast area, the Busan Port is so that was neat seeing where some of the containers of salmon we see at work end up going to. We sat down on a banch by the water and was immediately approached by a guy that was very excited to practice his English. Ashton told us about his living in New York and Las Vegas for a while, and his family that lives in New York and Texas, asked us what we have seen and what we have eaten here in Korea. He told us he loved eating at Jack in the Box and Whataburger when he was in the US. Which...makes sense...the US is the origin for that kind of fast food genre, the varying cuisines across the United States, and the prevalence of immigrant cuisines, means the uniquely american food experience is had at Wendys. As someone that loves food, it is a little disheartening though. We did eat the other batch of pastries throughout this conversation though. One was a red bean paste bun, that was very tasty, another was red bean and whipped cream which was even better, there was quite alot of whipped cream, and we of course had no napkins, the final one was a matcha green tea mochi pastry with red bean paste, which was probably the best, very dense and filling but very good. South Korea at large, and Busan in particular is working to make Haeundae Beach an international tourist destination, and they have retrofitted a rail line to be a tourist train line, with an above grade tram. The tram takes you at tree level about 2km down the coast.

There are beautiful views of the city and the water. There is a rather isolated part of town at the end of the tram with restaurants and cafes. We walked a little further and cought the tourist train line back to the origin point.

From there we went for some cold noodles, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naengmyeon). Right outside the subway station we needed to go to to get back to our hotel area was this place that had good reviews, and was excellent. No frils, they had 4 things on the menu; Regular Cold Soup, Cold Spicy Noodles, Cold Seafood Soup, and Steamed Dumplings.

The cold soup was initially unsettling, I am not used to slurping up noodles that come out of a (literally) icy soup, but it was very refreshing, and also allowed for the appreciation of all the flavors immediately. As opposed to my usual soup interaction; immediately burning my tongue to the point I cannot taste anything, and then waiting 8 minutes and eating lukewarm soup.

We also starting noticing gaggles of Americans, and realized they were probably servicemembers being released on Thanksgiving leave. Wow were they obviously servicemembers, roving in groups of 4-7, going to pizza places, while the well represented the United States, I dont think they were good representatives of the United States. We took the train home and went to craft Brewery, that mostly had imports, we drank a Golden Ale and a Pilsner from two seperate Korean craft breweries whose names escape me at the moment. We followed that with another local brewern Han's Brews, we got a Pale and the Pilsner.
All of these beers have been pretty good, its clear the craft brew scene is still developing, and I am happy to pay more to support the industry. At most restaurants we can get a domestic 1L beer for 3,000-4,000KRW (2.30-3.10 USD), but these craft beers are anywhere from 5,900-8,0000KRW (4.60-6.20USD) for a 400mL pour.

By now we had brewpub hopped our way closer to our hotel, and the cool hipster neighborhood surrounding it and there were more tufts of American soldier floating about. I did see at least a glimmer of hope in US servicemembers abroad as we passed a group on the stairs from the underground. The snatch of their conversation was "...its almost like they are annoyed we are here..." and as we turned the corner Laura and I were like "yeah bud, thats because they are" (I have just now googled this, and it looks like an aircraft carrier just got here as a show of force probably in response to the North Koreans launching the satellite in the coming days, which means these are seamen and not soldiers, so I feel slightly less responsible for them being obnoxious Americans, they wouldnt be my responsibility of I hadnt hung up the uniform). We got bibimbap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap) that was solidly OK, but quick and inexpensive.

We wanted to get off the streets, and not catch any broad stroke labels alongside the other Americans out n about in the bar district.

Given that this is a rather light day to write about, I will take this time to once again talk about the extreme differences of life here vs major cities in the US. Things are SO dense, the mass transit is quick, clean, inexpensive and ubiquitous. The subway stations are often malls unto themselves with small shops and food vendors, and because the competition amongst them is so great, every food stall is good, because the sub par ones dont survive.

This is a photo down one of the hallways of the underground shopping mall here in the Seomyoen neighborhood of Busan, and there are at least 3 others in Busan, and I dont know how many in Seoul, nonetheless in Daegu or Incheon of the other cities in the country. And ehre is a picture of the above ground of that same area.

There is just so much to see, smell, and eat here.

Flowers!

Day 6

12052019

We again got to sleep in, and ate some pastries Laura and I nabbed from the grocery store (who incidently didn't take credit cards). Our activity for the day was a tour of the koekenhof, which are the famous tulip fields.

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

The park is set up to flower at different times so when visitors come they still see something. But the fields themselves hat support the Dutch tulip industry had bloomed in previous weeks and we're thusly empty fields. Which is kinda disappointing. But Washington has their own tulip fields so we can more easily catch those next year.

On the drive out of Amsterdam the guide briefly discussedthe tulipmania of the 17th century. In the 1660-1670s everyone wanted tulips, and a speculative market developed around the harvests. People were buying futures on tulip bulbs, and the futures contracts for the right kind of bulb were trading at the value of a nice house on the main canals of Amsterdam (those houses are now selling for upwards of $1000USD/sqft).

We walked all around the canals viewing the flowers.

We left a little bit or Sicily here too, again in proximity to ducks. I think she would have enjoyed trying to walk into the flower beds to have a pee, mashing the flowers in the process.

We grabbed some fries and curry ketchup as a snack and continued the meandering.

We finally got back on the bus, and napped on the ride back into the city. The return ride took a little longer due to traffic. But I think the propensity for bicycling and mass transit means it wasn't that bad for a city of 800,000.

We headed back to the airbnb, drank some beers that we had picked up at the grocery store (if I didn't mention it before, beer is super cheap, paid like <€7 for 2 6 packs of beer. We headed to another food hall, this one in the mall. https://thefooddepartment.nl/ I know a mall food court doesn't sound very good, but it was great, and the food stalls themselves were more than just Auntie-Anns Pretzels and Sbarro's. Laura and I ate from a Szechuan stall, I got a Jian Bing sandwich, it's like a Chinese shwarma sandwich. It had roast duck, and spices and cabbage and happiness. Laura had a spicy-cumin noodle soup. I watched he guy handpull the noodles that went into her soup. My dad had a lamb burger that he said was solid, and given that he didn't share any, I dont doubt it. My mom had a poke bowl on quinoa, and a plate of zucchini fries. The fries were breaded, and tender, but not too greasy. From here we went back to the Central station to hop on a canal tour. This was free with our ticket for the tulip fields. We sat on the outside back of the canal boat so we got 0 tour-guiding and just looked and took badly lit pictures.

It was nice to see Amsterdam and not also be keeping an eye out for a zooming scooter or whizzing cyclists or silently prowling electric cars.

The homes were beautiful, both architecturally and interior-decoration wise. We spotted buildings currently lived in that were built in the 1660s, meaning older than my home country.

It was relatively late night, we headed back to the Airbnb to drop my parents off and shortly thereafter Laura and I went to wander through the Red Light District.

We walked there as it is close, and it has always been around the older part of town, as it serviced the sailors that were coming in from the main canal. It was a little after midnight when we got there. And it was admittedly a Monday night, but the place was pretty dead. There were drunk people wandering about, but the place wasn't packed. More than half of the girls in the windows were not occupied, so there weren't many people *in* getting serviced. We went into one bar that Laura had researched that was supposed to be pretty hopping, but when we got there we doubled the patronage, so we left without paying €7 for a Heineken. We went to the next bar that was allegedly 24hrs, but when we went to order the beer they said they were closing in <30 mins. So we left there too.
We did find a coffeeshop that was open later, so we sat in there till they closed at 1am. And then took a long circuitous route home

Too many Harley Quinns

29102016

We tried today to mail the Gundams and since unnecessary clothes over to the US, unfortunately the Post offices around here don't have very large boxes on hand, so we went home empty handed, or rather still-full-handed.

The morning wasnt a complete loss, we did discover 7-11 had tasty smoothie drinks for waaay less monies than the smoothie place in the train station, not as good, but well worth a buck fifty.

We decided to go over to Aomi, which is one of the islands made up of reclaimed land in the bay. It has one of the main ports of Tokyo, meaning there is alot of area that we couldn't go to, but interesting for a "logistician" like myself to view through the metro train window.

It is also a sort of entertainment hub, given that it is all less than 75 years old, it was very curated, they had the space and forethought to build it purposefully. There are a few enormous mslls, like 7+ story buildings with hundreds of shops in them. Many of them shops you would find in our malls, a few unique brands, but really the same stuff you would see in a mall in the States. There was also a huge ferris wheel and presumably other rides/attractions around.

The primary reason for heading to Aomi was so I could check the block and be done with my fan-girling for Gundam here.

We went to Gundam Front Tokyo. Which is basically the factory store and museum for all things Gundam. They have a full size one outside, inside they had on display at least one of nearly every model kit they have produced. They have a big shop with a big selection. And they have a paid session where you can go and see how they are produced, and watch some only-available-there films, and some more displays. I elected not to pay. $10 a head to see a plastic injection molding machine (which laura and I literally stole a peek at at a Chicago museum), exclusive videos from parts of the franchise I don't care about, and the minor display didn't seem worth it.

Mostly i wanted to see the historical log of kits, and see if any of their exclusive kits tickled my fancy; they didn't.

Given that this weekend is holloween, and Aomi is an entertainment center there was a huge concert going to go down later in the day, there were many many people in the area, and many in costume. In the various malls was really the first moment that we really realized how many goddamn people there are here. And this theme will come back later in the day.

Wandering around the reclaimed island we stumbled upon a very large tennis complex. Many many courts, and with it being the weekend most were filled. I'm not sure whether these were pick games or clubs or lessons or what but it was fun to walk around. We even found an actual scored and spectated match. We sat and watched them play. My favorite part was the 5 ball boys/girls that ran around chasing errant tennis balls and tossing the players fresh balls. Those kids were determined to keep the court orderly and free of wandering tennis balls.

We take the train home and start researching what to do for halloween. Everything said to check out Shibuya. Shibuya is where that iconic super busy intersection is, we figured would get crazy.

It was.

That doesnt really do it justice. There were people everywhere, shoulder to shoulder, most bars were standing room only it was bananas. And again about 2 in 5 people were in costume.

This is one of the prime tourist spots in the city, there were alot of Westerners here, which actually was nice. I am guessing the competition among the bars has sorry of been a race to the bottom on price, no where else have we consistently found inexpensive beers, and beers that didn't come with obligatorily buying food.

So laura and I got drunk. We did have a few snacks, but mostly drank. By the time we were about done we stopped at a ramen place in the thick of it. I was in no state to be sitting, so I told laura to stay put and I was going to walk the block.

Terrible idea, I got completely lost. After about 10 minutes of not recognizing the front of the ramen shop I just started going into places and looking for laura.

Unfortunately after a few minutes laura freaked out about MY being gone so long, and left the ramen place.

Even worse idea.

Luckily, and I have no idea the chances we stumbled into each other within a few minutes. And decided it was certainly time to go home.

We stopped at 7-11 for snacks and breakfast, laura puked outside. And we went home to our final night at the Shinbashi hotel.

the beginning of a surprisingly good gastronomic adventure

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(im writing this a good few days late, cause the internet sucked at our various hotels)

woke up and had a slightly better breakfast, this time it was a continental buffet, but cause no one ever goes to Tullamore, especially when the distillery is closed, they made the food round 8 when breakfast opened, and then we ate it at 915. so the fried eggs, with the yoke somewhere between sillyputty and and dried two part epoxy. there was also white and black pudding, but dont be confused by it being called pudding, cause its not pudding at all, by the time we ate it, it was much more like a hashbrown than any kind of pudding ive ever seen.

we had to leave early so as not to get a parking ticket, and we went to Kilbeggan, which is another town round there, nothing is really that far away in Ireland, for our first distillery tour.

thats outside, inside was kinda kewl, apparently they have been brewing for quite a while now, its been producing Kilbeggan whiskey since like the 1750s ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilbeggan_Distillery ). the parts we wandered through were, like the Guinness factory, not an actively operating distillery, though the modern Kilbeggan distillery was visible, we were wandering through the old distillery, with the big gears and pumps still turning by the 250 year old water wheel. the place was pretty cool, we wandered around by ourselves reading the pamphlet they handed out. it was all pretty standard distillery stuff. but it seems like the owner/operator was a really nice guy, the workers were allowed like a 2 shot a day allowance, on top of their salary, their sheeps/cows could graze on the distillery lands for some 5 pounds a year (which wasnt much at the time) he would sell them coal on credit for the winter months to warm their home, and everyone generally liked him. then again he was producing the whiskey, why wouldnt you like em?

we ent up infiltrating a group of other Americans over for the football game, and at the end got a taste of the whiskey with them, and then on the way out, seeing as we still had the tickets, i got an additional taste upstairs. the Kilbeggan that i got was their standard stuff, and its alot more peaty than Jameson or Powers, or the Tullamore, i liked it, it was prolly a step closer to scotch than most Irish Whiskeys, but still had the depth of flavor that irish whiskeys have.

i drove out of Kilbeggan, practicing my skills at a manual transmission car, despite a rocky start, i could handle the car pretty well, but once we got into a city, i couldnt handle the stop and go traffic, so we switched back. and made our way to Galway, via Athlone.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlone )

unfortunately when we got to the town there wasnt much to see, the castle in the center of town that i had intended to see, was closed for renovations. there was also a bar around the corner, which was established in 900 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean%27s_Bar ). this bar wasnt all that cool honestly, inside it was full of crap, not interesting historical crap, but kitsch crap that a bar might accumulate over the years, no real theme, just stuff. i dunno that fact that its 1100 years old is worth something, we had a Smithwicks before setting off again for more castles.

now as one might imagine, country roads (which was the kind we were on to find piles of rock) in Ireland are rather small and unkempt, a two lane roads, are designed for 2 cars to drive on, and thats it, no shoulder, no creeping ferns and hedges, 2 cars.

so coming around one turn, another car came about, and we dipped off the road to avoid a collision, and promptly popped the rear passengerside (leftside) tyre (tire).

luckily we were all of 250m away from a petrol station (gas station) when this happened, the tyre (tire) was barely flat when we pulled into the place. we popped the boot (trunk) and pulled out the jack and wrench, however we were unable to operate the nuts, so we called our rental agency who sent out a service vehicle. he showed up in about 45 min, and pointed out there were caps on the lugnuts, and there should be a tool for removing them, there wasnt. we attempted, but since the tool was absent (we didnt even know there was a tool) we couldnt do shit, he pulled em off with a needle nose pliers, and changed the wheel in about 7 minutes. he told us to get a real wheel in Galway (our destination for the night) and set off.

we still had more castles to see, we wandered into athenry castle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenry ). it was a classic irish townhouse, there will be more of them, read the wiki, im too lazy to talk about it, here are pics

we got into galway dumped the car, dumped our stuff, and looked for food. i found a tapas restaurant, that sources all its food from ireland.

we opened with

goat cheese on bread, with pickled sweet peppers. then i ordered arroz con pollo y chorizo, but they didnt have any chicken, cause they ran out, but i guess when you are getting freerange, chickens from across the river, and not from Tryson, you can run out. anyways, my meal came with the house red wine, but i ordered an Estrella Galicia anyways. the food was fan-fucking-tastic. it wasnt all that expensive either, when we were eating in Dublin we were paying about the same price for food that was just, OK.

after this we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

day drinking; not an argentine custom

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woke up early for class again, walk to the train station went more smoothly, today after the first break, i bumped up to the next level class. i liked this class more, but, it was a little heavy on the grammar and vocab building, it sounds like the next level up is almost entirely conversational, which is what i want. ill give it another day and see whats up. Claudia says that i should do what i need to do to learn, as this is my last class and grades are less important, and im not going on to more Spanish at NU n whatnot. again, give it a day, see whatsup. after class Claudia took us all to a cafeteria (read with Spanish accent) and purchased us a half-shitton of empanadas of various kinds, chicken, carne (beef), ham and cheese, spinach, all were delicious. also this happened

we then made our way back to class for a brief history lesson on Argentina, in Spanish. it was awesome, reminded me very much of my middle school days, lecture in Spanish, PowerPoint (though that was before PowerPoint, it was whiteboard in my day) in Spanish, it was fantastic. after that a good number of us, (all being of age that is) found our way to a bar and restaurant in the immediate vicinity of the instituto. had a few of the local beers (which were awful by the way, and im not just talking from spoiled experiences in the Czech Republic), and fancy mixed drinks. the place was empty when we got there, and remained empty till we left. i made my way home, screwed around on the internet, ate exquisite home made ravioli (ricotta, Parmesan and ham) now i write this, and will likely get to sleep, as early class times suck, and lone commutes suck more.

cold war action

12512 ok so pictures wont be happening while we are in berlin, cause the internet is garbage at our hostel, so ill update these posts with pics later. Still in Berlin, woke up had the hostel breakfast, yogurts, bread which i spread hazelnut spread and honey onto, but the most exciting point was the liverwurst which i spread on the rye bread. after that we hopped onto the bus, the bus took us to a berlin wall memorial, it had sections of the wall, and faux sections of the wall made of metal arty stuff. this bit wasnt all that interesting, but the exhibit did have a 20 min video documentary bit which we sat through, the documentary was entirely shot from a helicopter, in 1990, so shortly after the wall "fell". obviously they didnt tear down all 100 miles of the wall all at once. the "tearing down" was symbolic, but it was cool seeing all the aerial shots of the entire perimeter of the wall. after that me and a group of girls (how fitting to my character) wandered into the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which i managed to miss last time around on my Berlin visit. first off, i must say the museum was impressive, from the outside it didnt seem like all that much, but inside it had ALL kinds of cool stuff. Panels with pictures and history stuff, and stuff beyond the immediate Berlin Wall stuff, it had info on NATO, and the proxy wars, and Korea, and the Suez Crises. it had newspaper clippings from both sides of the wall describing escapes (and failed attempts) and they had both original and copies of the devices used to escape east germany. the private mini-sub, the underwater scooter type thing that you hold on to, was designed by an engineer trying to escape from the communists. there was a home made hot air balloon, and air plane, and some cars with modifications to hide people in, all kinds of cool things. this is outside the musuem, with the tourist trap guys in "uniforms" and a stranger paying 2EUR to take a picture with them.

after that we went to the Topography of Terror musuem, which prolly didnt even exist the last time i was here. it was very cool (and free). an exhastive museum on the Nazi party, and its security apparatus. chronologically it walked you through the rise of Hitler, and his consolidating power, and the development of the SS, SA and later the SD, and who was running it, and what they were doing, and who they were doing it to. it was clearly focused more on what thye were doing to run germany at the time, cause it was only at the end, the last 5% or so that went into describing the SS and whatnot in France, and Belgium and Italy, and Serbia and everything. the exhibit also went into what the US and British did to the SS after liberation, like putting them to work digging up and properly burying concentration/death/labor camp victims. and the final bit was on the Nuremberg trials. after this musuem we made our way to and through the Brandenburg Gates, took pictures, and off to the Reich-stag to meet the rest of the group, we were the only kids NOT to go bac to the hostel to get on the bus, we were out and about, and seriously wanted to see museums and such, it would have been a waste of time to go "home" and stuff. anyways, the reichstag was pretty cocl. we went up to the roof, and walked around this big dome thing that they had. of course it was super green friendly, it reflected the light into the building for heating and lighting purposes, and the water was used for grey water or whatever. it was mostly for the view, which you will get to see when i finally load the pics. (edit: now)

we went to a german place for dinner, i had Schwienerschnitzel and a litre of "bohemian dark beer" with those same girls and a few addons, the food was good, but not particularly spectacular, dunno if ive been spoiled by Milwaukee, but i have had schnitzel that was as good or better (and obviously for alot less than 12EUR). i hope to get to sleep soon, tomorrow on to dresden, and back to prague.

Friday 8711

So we went out last night after the dinner provided by the chaperons, the dinner was very good by the way, multicourse, meats, fish, salads. But after wandering down the riverfront we found our way onto a boat with loud music and bright lights, we got on, many people were very well dressed, luckily we were a lil updressed so it was aright, we quickly noticed an open bar, with very good wine and liquor, and shortly there after I started getting myself trashed, I found Jameson at the downstairs bar, and cool bartenders, so those of us that are of legal age to drink did so (and those of us that weren’t, enjoyed juice and softdrinks), for free with who we found out to be the fucking Miss Serbia pageant contestants, including the winner.

We got all kindsa drunk and danced and took pictures, as we were winding down and ready to leave I went to tip the bartender downstairs I was chatting with, I asked him if he took tips he said “of coarse I taeek all currency” I gave him a 100 dinar note, and he laughed and said “eeeyy man, this is like no thing!” I said “okokok” and slipped him a $5 bill, he said “Yes American dollar, I love amereeka!’ and I was dragged off the boat by the others and a handful of us wandered home while other hopped cabs.

So yeah, that was a great time. Woke up at like 1 today, and wandered around with another handful of kids, we saw Tasmajdan park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%C5%A1majdan_Park), ate some of the scavenger hunt foods, the Kukkuruzna poghachitsa and lehnya pita od yabukeh, after wandering around the park asking where the law school buildings were, as the bakery was across the way, we also found all the monuments we were supposed to find, luckily my Russian could help us to identify which of the two statues was the poet and which was the “caucasian dictator”. Though I am not in any pictures, cause I am notoriously bad, other people have pictures of stuff, and I am in them, maybe once they post theirs ill steal em.

And now im sitting in a café prolly not up to anything tonight