*Saturday, September 11, 2010*
Excited at yet another Korean adventure, yet realizing one must come prepared for such things, I calmed myself down enough that weekend to do some quick research on the logistics of meeting my friend. Google Maps told me to get to Wonju, which is located fifty kilometers southeast of Seoul, by first boarding a series of city buses, then the subway, then finally an Express Bus from the Central City Terminal--a journey which would have taken no less than 3 hours and 15 minutes, Google assured me. Perhaps my research was a bit deficient. I didn't want so many extra steps and was sure I could make it under an hour if I caught a bus at the Suwon Terminal instead. Hailing a quick cab at just after 10 that Saturday morning, I set off.
On the platform of the Suwon Bus Terminal, a much older Asian woman stood in line ahead of me awaiting our bus' arrival. I thought she was a Korean by her dress and mannerisms; it wasn't until her husband approached me, a white-haired American-looking man about her age named Harold, that I quickly realized I was mistaken. Loretta was Tiawanese, he explained, and had lived in the States for over forty years. He said she'd been expected to speak the language by the native Koreans that they had encountered during their stay. I watched her slanted almond eyes as she poured perfect English from her lips, silently marveling to myself. I, too, expected the same. Perhaps Korean ideals of statesmanship, nationalism, and racial priority have begun to rub off on me, after all.
They were here on holiday, Harold informed me, and wanted to know what was good to do in Wonju. They had been in Suwon for the last three or four days, but the continual rain here encouraged them to move on earlier than they had planned. Their eventual destination was somewhere east, as they hadn't explored that part of Korea yet. Wonju would be for them, then, a jumping off platform to points further toward the coastline. I told them about the Hanji Festival that I hoped to attend and Harold seemed like that might be a possibility for them to see as well while they were in town.
I took a window seat towards the back of the bus while the couple sat in front. Moments after I settled in, a young Korean male, ear-buds plugging his ears, took the aisle seat next to mine. As the bus maneuvered out of the parking lot, Harold found me in the back. "Can I talk to you?" he asked humbly, assuming the seat across the aisle. The Korean glanced quickly at me and then back at his lap. I wondered if talking over someone like that was as rude in Korea as it would have been stateside. At the first pause in the conversation, I asked if he wouldn't mind switching seats.
Harold asked about good hotels in the area as we arrived. As I had no real data to share, we soon parted ways. "I think I'm going to find a hotel on my own," he informed me. "Maybe we'll go to that Hanji Festival and see you there."
I headed to the PC bang to arm myself with some information about Krista's and my destination. While searching, I decided to find some hotels for Harold and his wife to check out if they were interested. Because I was unable to print, I meticulously wrote out the names of the hotels in Korean, translating into English as I went. I felt proud of myself and slightly impressed as I watched my hand form the foreign script. Sadly, however, I couldn't find my traveling companions when I went back to deliver the note, stuffing my efforts uselessly in my pocket.
When Krista arrived, I showed her the memo I had created on my phone at the PC bang: "Hanji Festival," it read. "Take bus 2-1 from terminal to sports complex. Musil-dong." I felt proud that I had prepared so well.
"Do you want to just take a taxi?" she asked.
At that moment, we both looked out the doors of the terminal to witness a literal torrent of rain lash out of the sky in translucent sheets. It appeared neither Harold nor his wife drove far enough to escape Suwon's monsoon. We stood just inside the door with a small knot of Koreans, anxious not to get wet while contemplating our next move. The taxi booth was several yards away from the door, the bus stop even further.
"You want to just brave the rain?" Krista asked as we cautiously opened our umbrellas. As a child, one my favorite activities was to play in the rain.
"Let's go!" I shouted gleefully to the sky. My body raced with exhilaration as we dashed wildly into the onslaught, my pants and boots growing wetter by the nano-second.
As we had stood in the comfort of the dry bus terminal just moments before, I had confided to Krista that my students thought my umbrella strange. I had brought it to Korea all the way from home, secretly proud of my present from the blood bank I had frequented as a donor. As there are no monsoons in Texas, I thought one black, oddly-shaped rain-shield was as good as the next. Since I had one already, why go to the trouble of collecting another? Krista didn't understand the reason for my students' comment until I propped it open. Noticing its four corners as we sprinted toward the taxi hut, she called, "Man, your umbrella is weird."
"It's hip to be square!" I called back as we entered the booth. I closed the protective covering in preparation for stepping "in" something--only to be continually rained on even under the shelter. We were both almost soaked through before we made it safely to a taxi and hopped inside the first one in line. "Mushil-dong ka chuseyo." Take us to the Mushil district, I told the driver, basking in the glow of my Korean skills. I was fully confident I'd be able to lead us to our destination with ease. Next stop, adventure!
Our driver headed straight toward the pleasant green hill in front of us and then turned left before we hit it, following the adjacent road. I thought it odd that he seemed to be going in the direction my bus had just come from--for all I knew, away from town. "Musil-dog odi?" he asked, then strung unfamiliar Korean sounds together like a collection of clinking beads. Apparently, he was asking where best to drop us off.
"Su-pah-tsu com-puh-lex," I offered feebly. "Su-pah-tsu sen-tuh?" I had just reached the limit of my new-found knowledge. As the wipers on the taxi's windshield continued to slosh off droplets, the driver went left, wenchok, towards the sports complex and what I assumed to be the direction of the festival. It would be a short ten-minute walk from there, my Internet directions had told me.
It was still raining as he dropped us off in front of a tall building's facade which faced a small empty field on the opposite side of the street, a place that looked oddly vacant. "Yogi?" he asked skeptically. Here? Well, it certainly didn't look like a sports center--but how were we to know? We weren't interested in sports anyhow. "Ne, ne," we affirmed. Yes. Opening our umbrellas we stepped into puddles of rainwater and whatever lay ahead.
The Family Mart clerk we accosted just after exiting the taxi tried to be helpful as he explained in limited English where to find the festival. "One, two," he said, indicating city blocks with his hands. "Left. Walk five minutes." We thanked him and set out in the rain.
At that moment, we both wished for monsoon-friendly footwear, but all I had were hiking boots. The tips of our shoes darkened as we walked, though we tried avoiding the puddles. A small, quick-moving stream flowed along the sidewalk as we entered the designated intersection, which followed the cross street and continued to the right. It lapped at the edge of the curb as vehicles drove closer to it, threatening to spill over, and we had to climb further up the embankment as we waited for the cross-walk signal to turn green just to avoid being further drenched.
We turned left just as the clerk had instructed, missing more puddles as we walked. It was still sprinkling some, but not raining near as hard as it had been earlier that day. We were beginning to really enjoy the invigorating stroll until I started to notice unaccountably-familiar buildings and landmarks. A Harley Davidson banner strung from what looked like a residential building glared at us from across the busy thoroughfare. Tall construction fences popped up along the wall to divert traffic to smaller side roads. A major intersection surfaced where the fences divided, propelling its vehicles deeper into the city. As I looked to the right of the intersection, the reason for the landscape's familiarity surfaced. There, a block away and clearly visible with its gargantuan concrete pillars, was our starting place: the Wonju Express Bus Terminal. We had just walked/ridden in one giant circle.
Had we made some sort of miscalculation in following the clerk's directions? He said turn left and walk five or six blocks, but this just couldn't be it. We decided to cross the street and try a couple more blocks just to see. If nothing surfaced, we'd go back to the terminal and start again. On the other side of the crosswalk, we passed an inviting, authentic-looking Italian restaurant. Turning around after another fruitless block, we stepped inside it for a late lunch of creamy pasta, warm soup, and crusty garlic bread.
"Now do you want to see if we can find the festival?" Krista asked, refreshed after black coffee and a filling meal. The rain had stopped outside and the atmosphere was starting to lighten. Setting out again sounded like an excellent idea, but this time we tried the bus. Hailing the first 2-1 we saw, we decided to ask. "Hanji fes-ti-bal kaseyo?" Does this bus take us to the Hanji Festival? When the man at the helm shook his head, the two of us consulted each other for a second or two before we climbed on and deposited our 900 won. We had thus been duly warned.
Krista and I saw much of Wonju-si on the 2-1 that day, from its picturesque blue mountains in the closely surrounding landscape, to its run-of-the-mill one-story houses lining its grey streets. We sat in the back, the only two foreigners present, and chatted away the minutes as we excitedly awaited our destination. I strained my ears to listen for some scrap of Korean announcing the sports complex. By the time my rear end started to feel numb, I was sure we had been on long enough to have missed our stop.
Moments later, the driver motioned to the two white girls to come to the front. "Hanji?" he asked as he kept driving. "Sam ship sah." Number thirty-four. The bus rolled to a stop at a small booth on the side of a business-less, forgotten road populated with sagging traditional houses and white brick courtyards, what looked like the boon-docks of Wonju. None of the surrounding scene looked like a festival was going on at all. The driver motioned for us to get off and pointed across the street to another bus stop in the opposite direction. Clearly, this was our exit.
We didn't have to wait long at the second stop; minutes after crossing the traffic-less street, with just enough time to snap three quick shots of the ignored cityscape, bus number two approached and stopped at our feet. The door swung open methodically and the driver leaned down toward us. "Hanji?" he smiled, motioning us to come aboard. Krista and I looked at each other suspiciously. Weren't we supposed to wait for the 34? And how did this driver even know that's where we were headed? But the driver was adamant--and the street wasn't getting any friendlier. The two of us took seats in the front and settled in for yet another ride.
Two or three stops into the ride, an older gentleman about my dad's age boarded the bus and claimed the seat in front of me. "Hel-lo," he said in an uneven, ill-expressed intonation. He sounded as if he had practiced the phrase from a textbook several thousand times, but had no real idea how it flowed fluidly in a conversation. I chatted amicably with him for a few minutes as we checked off the list of questions he was expected to ask. "Where are you from? How long you stay in Korea? What about Korea? Where you going?"
"My friend and I are going to the Hanji Festival," I replied politely.
"Hanji. I ask driver about it."
I wasn't sure if he was trying to say he would ask of if he had already done so. I hadn't the heart to tell him we were fairly sure we were in the right direction now and that he need not go to such trouble. Upon returning to his seat, he informed me that we would need to get off the bus in two more stops and take another bus downtown, towards the festival. When he offered to lead us there himself, I turned toward Krista.
"We have to get on another bus?" she asked in exasperation. "Let's just get off at the next stop and go back to the terminal. We can grab coffee or something and wait for the bus back to Chungju." Though a little disappointed, I agreed with her: three modes of aimless transportation was enough for one soggy day. It looked like I wouldn't be seeing my bus-mates, Harold and Loretta, after all.
As we sat in the terminal's Krispy Kreme, reading enlarged paragraphs of the donut chain's misspelled story on the wall, we reflected on the day. "It was a long way just to come for lunch," Krista half-smiled. "So much for Wonju."
I half-smiled with her. It seemed like a nice place, this sprawling city of 300,000, if a little hard to get around in. I bit into my blueberry Kruffin and thought: Maybe next time, we'll just have to skip the festival and go straight up those blue mountains. That would definitely be a trip to come back for.
How do you remember so many details? Very nice! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete