Annyong, Hello, or Hola

So, on August 19, I turned the big 2-2. To celebrate, BBro let (aka MADE) me make all the choices about what we would do for the day. Our first stop was going to be the Museum of Modern Art at Olympic Park that we had seen the last time they were there. They were having a Pop Art exhibit, which made me super excited, and I was looking forward to some culture. So I made the hour-plus trek past Jamsil to Olympic Park, only to find out when we arrived… that the museum was closed. Typical. Things in Korea, apparently, only close one day a month. It can be any day they want, they don’t have to close on Sundays, they can just pick a day at random, and that’s the one day a month that they’re closed. So it would be fairly typical that this would be the day. Luckily there was a Coffee Bean, one of my favorite places in the world, so all was not lost.

Determined to find something cultural to do, we trundled on to Gwangnam, to the CineCube, the arthouse theatre where we saw INLAND EMPIRE. First we went down to the basement, which is the theatre level
(Oh yeah, this building is a theatre in the basement, some galleries and stuff, one floor of restaurants, and then floors 2 through 30 or so are the British and Japanese Embassies in Korea, and outside there is a giant metal hammering man. It’s quite a place). Alas, in keeping with how the day was going, the only movie playing was Sommersturm, in German with Korean subtitles. That’s ok, there’s a lot more to do in this building. Next we tried to find ArtCube, which we assumed would be some sort of gallery, or something. We finally deciphered some signs that pointed out the direction of ArtCube, and followed said directions… Directly into a wall. I don’t know, maybe they renovated or something. Whatever, up another floor, we’ll try something else. There’s an art archive. Give me something, anything. But guess what? Closed. Dammit Korea, you’re closed one frigging day a month, why does it have to be my birthday!? We satisfied ourselves of the archive by peering into the windows. So, OK, we clearly wouldn’t be getting into anything in the building so we just looked at the sculptures around the main floor. Like these ones. Sheep or something. And the main plaza has a pretty cool floor too, so… There was that.

Anyway, food always cheers us up, so we found a restaurant in the same building, called Taco Factory. Now, Taco Factory wasn’t bad, by any means, but it certainly was... Interesting. As only Korean food can be. This was probably the first meal I’ve had here that didn’t come with kimchi, but they did serve their tacos with pickles. Anyway, it’s different than Mexican tacos, is what I’m saying. Also, we got this gem from BBro: “I don’t know whether to say annyong, hello, or hola!” (The waitress was clearly Korean, and in no way remotely Mexican, by the way).

Perhaps the best part of our evening came next, and it was a completely accidental find. We were wandering around Jongno, looking for something, ANYTHING to do, and we found an amazing (underground) bookstore called Kyobo. We browsed around there for a long time, it has an amazing DVD section, and lots of foreign English books too. The DVDs are really cheap, but we can’t play them on DVD players at home. Books meanwhile are ridiculously expensive. The best part of the store though was when we left – they took the creepiness of HomePlus and multiplied it by four. When we were walking toward the door, no less than FOUR women bowed to us and wished us well. We were just shopping for books! We’re not freaking royalty. But ok, you can bow to us.

At this point, it was getting late, so we trundled ourselves home.
We saw this on the way, though. It’s some sort of memorial for a King, or someone. It’s really interesting, I think, to see things like this in the middle of the city. It’s so old-looking, and traditional, and colorful, and all around it, like you can see in the picture, everything is so modern and gray and dirty. That dichotomy really sums up Seoul for me.

Olympic Park

Seoul hosted the Olympic Games in 1988, and the Olympic Park near Jamsil is where some of the events took place, although it is more a memorial of having the games than it is the exact spot where they took place. Along the road on the way to Olympic Park, known as Olympic Row, there are a lot of huge bronze sculptures depicting various events of the Olympics: wrestling, gymnastics, and the like. It’s really close to BBro’s house, about a 10-minute walk, so we figured we should check it out. To get there, by the way, don’t go to the Subway stop called Olympic Park (no, that would be too easy), go to Mongchontoseong, on the pink line. The main “park” is a huge, open, concrete space, where people roller blade and bike. The Olympic flame is in the middle of this area, under a covering. I wonder if this is the same flame that’s been burning since 1988? On the sides of the park are trees, under which old people sleep (Hopefully they were asleep, I didn’t get to close…)

Penetrating the park further, there are the most AMAZING sculpture gardens, crazy beautiful sculptures like I’ve never seen before. There is a Museum of Modern Art in the park as well, which is hosting a Pop Art exhibit, so a lot of these sculptures were probably commissioned by the museum, or they are by artists who were shown in the museum.
Right across from the museum, we saw a train ride, which looked like the most fun thing is Seoul. We were about to get on, because we thought it was free, but we saw people with tickets, so we set off to find those – always such an ordeal, everything we do. We found a kiosk, and got tickets, and went back to the train, and got on board. Clearly the train was built for Koreans. More precisely: Korean children. Very short ones. When I went to sit down, my legs were longer than the hole between the two seats! Someone was supposed to sit across from me, and my legs didn’t even fit! Holy uncomfortable! Luckily, the people who got on with us had a baby, so I got to sit across from nothing, and BBro got to sit across from baby carriage.
It was the bumpiest train ride ever (and it’s not even actually a train, just a bunch of boxes on wheels made up to look like a train), as the inner part of Olympic Park is paved in cobblestones, but it gave us an opportunity to see the park, and more of the sculptures that are in it. More importantly, there’s a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf! For if you’re feeling drained from the train ride, which we were, of course.