Busan: A Series of Fortunate Events

As of Wednesday I will have been offically living in Korea for two months. Apart from my day trip to the DMZ (which is really only marginally outside of Seoul), I've not left the city at all. So I needed to get out, if only for my mental well-being.

My first break came a couple of weeks ago when I met an American girl, Clara, who lives in my building and fell in love with my dog at first sight. She immediately offered to watch her and/or walk her if I ever needed, and so I decided to hit her up on that offer as soon as possible.

I had been talking about going to Busan, the second largest city in Korea, even before leaving the U.S., to visit my friend and fellow UT alum, Mickayla. A fireworks festival coincided with this weekend, so the timing seemed perfect. My first experience with South Korea was in Busan, when I took the ferry over from Fukuoka, Japan three and a half years ago. I loved it then and had no doubt I would love it again.

I left Seoul in the early afternoon on the KTX, Korea's express bullet train. On my previous trips between Busan and Seoul, I had taken the slow train, and I must say this was a marked improvement over both the slow train and the shinkansen, or Japanese bullet train. When I arrived at Seoul Station, a beautiful, long, tall, glass-enclosed structure, I saw 3 KTX trains leaving for Busan in the next hour. I walked up to the ticket counter to buy a ticket and was given the following options, "1 o'clock train, standing or 1:30 train seat?" Um, a seat please. Well worth the extra 30 minutes and however much extra won they charged.

The train itself was smaller than the shinkansen, 4 seats across as opposed to 6, and had a dark, cozy feel to it. The interior was nice, with the seats consisting of a dark green upholstery. It wasn't long after the train started smoothly rolling down the tracks that I found myself in a deep, comfortable, nap. The ride couldn't have been smoother, and you never really got a sense of the speed of the train. The countryside of Korea is beautiful in a homely way. It doesn't overpower your senses with impossibly tall mountains, it doesn't take your breath away with incredible old-growth forests or raging rivers. However, its rolling hills and intermittent towns and farms provide a lovely, relaxing backdrop, which had it's own mesmerizing affect on me.

My arrival in Busan was like stepping into some sort of surreal sitcom situation where it's perfectly ordinary to run into everyone you've ever met while on vacation. Due to the fireworks festival, the city was alive and the subway was packed; despite this, I ran into one of the handful of Koreans that I knew socially, Ho Im. It was like finding a needle in a stack of needles, and yet there she was, waving at me on the Busan Station subway platform. We shared an incredibly packed train to Haeundae Beach.

In fact, "Incredibly packed" doesn't even begin to do our situation an justice. Every time the doors opened and we thought "There's no way anyone else can fit on here" miraculously, more people managed to pile in, squeezing out every single available molecule of air between us. It was one of the few moments when I both noticed how tall I am in this country, and was extremely thankful for that fact. The rarefied air, heads, and often shoulders above the masses was quite lovely in comparison to what I would have faced.

Once we arrived at Haeundae, Ho Im and I went our separate ways. She had her group of friends, and I was planning on meeting mine. I met up with Valerie and her friend for dinner and a quick wade in the ocean. After a few hours and half a dozen confusing phone calls, I finally met up with Mickayla shortly after the fireworks had subsided. It was great to see her, and her friends seemed really cool. Mickayla remarked how we have probably spent more time hanging out together in Asia, than in our home state of Tennessee. This fact is probably true.

Along the way I ran into Mark not once, but twice. Here's a guy I wanted to hang out with, but through all the texting and calling it seemed like it just wasn't in the cards. And then, miraculously, there he was in the street, drinking a beer and wearing a tee-shirt that read, "Hobosexual."

It was a bit of a downer not being able to drink that night. I was still getting over being sick last week, and I didn't want to risk a slide back into the realm of high fevers and phlegm. It's a strange experience not drinking at a bar or club. When ordering a coke, the bartender inevitably gives you a look like, "A coke and what?" Also, my senses were not dulled by the sweet embrace of a warm buzz, and everything seemed at once more vibrant, and more repugnant. I hope to not be sober inside a bar again for a long time.

We woke up the next morning, had brunch, went to the aquarium, to the market, and finally back on the train. Sure, I could write a whole lot more about my Sunday adventures, but quite frankly, this is a long post and I'm sick of writing.