Seasons change

Daegu, Food, ,
Tonight, for the first time since I got here, it wasn’t hot. It’s been hot non-stop since I got here. Day and night. In South Africa, the temperature fluctuates from cool at night to warm or mild during the day. Here it’s just always hot. Hot and humid. Until tonight. I even felt a little chilly at one point, sitting outside a coffee shop called Sleepless in Seattle, drinking pink lemonade.
The seasons are changing. I love watching the seasons change. Autumn to Winter, Winter to Spring. This Autumn is a strange change. It’s not really Autumn yet. The leaves are still green on the trees. A few are starting to change but for the most part the city looks like Summer. But there is something in the air, something restless, something different. Or perhaps it’s all in my head.
Except for the crickets. It’s strange how you don’t notice what is missing until it’s there. All the time I’ve been listening to the incessant cicadas, I didn’t notice that there were no crickets. The cicadas here don’t sound the same as at home. Instead of the high-pitched wail that goes on for ages and ages, these whir at different tones and volumes, getting louder and softer, higher and lower. They’re a little annoying but you don’t notice them that much after a while. They also seem larger and more obvious than I’m used – little green monsters hiding in the bark and the leaves of every tree.
In the last few days, the cicadas have been quieter. They’re still around, but they don’t sing all the time. And into the lull has come the sweet song of crickets. When I got home tonight, I stopped for a moment on the stairs outside my door. The air was rich with the quiet murmurs of the crickets’ songs. The air was cool and the night clear and dark. It felt familiar. Felt a little like home.
Perhaps that’s why I decided to cook when I got home. Food is a strange experience in a foreign country when you not only don’t speak the language but can’t even read the alphabet. For example, I have been struggling to find flour. Just ordinary flour to make a basic white sauce, or as a base, or to cook so many things. Sometimes that’s a good thing because it pushes you to be more adventurous and try new things. Before I left for work today I put a deboned chicken breast in the fridge to defrost. I hadn’t thought about what I’d do with it. I just knew that I’d probably need something to eat when I got home. And then I got home and in a flurry of sudden activity, threw together a delicious meal. For the record, this doesn’t happen that often and will probably shock those who shared homes with me in years gone by. Tonight’s triumph was pan-fried lemon, garlic and rosemary chicken on a bed of salad greens with shaved ham, Camembert and sweet, baby tomatoes. There is such a sense of achievement in creating a particularly good meal, especially when you weren’t really sure how things would turn out. I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to achieve the same effect again. In another time, in another place, the ingredients would be different, the cooker would be different. Perhaps that’s one of the precious things about travel – Lulas pasta in Vilaculos, 3-day roast lamb on Somerset Street, lemon, garlic and rosemary chicken in Boemmul-dong, Daegu. Sometimes things work out, without any recipe, without any plans, as you sit quietly by and watch the seasons change.

Tonight, for the first time since I got here, it wasn’t hot. It’s been hot non-stop since I got here. Day and night. In South Africa, the temperature fluctuates from cool at night to warm or mild during the day. Here it’s just always hot. Hot and humid. Until tonight. I even felt a little chilly at one point, sitting outside a coffee shop called Sleepless in Seattle, drinking pink lemonade.

The seasons are changing. I love watching the seasons change. Autumn to Winter, Winter to Spring. This Autumn is a strange change. It’s not really Autumn yet. The leaves are still green on the trees. A few are starting to change but for the most part the city looks like Summer. But there is something in the air, something restless, something different. Or perhaps it’s all in my head.

Except for the crickets. It’s strange how you don’t notice what is missing until it’s there. All the time I’ve been listening to the incessant cicadas, I didn’t notice that there were no crickets. The cicadas here don’t sound the same as at home. Instead of the high-pitched wail that goes on for ages and ages, these whir at different tones and volumes, getting louder and softer, higher and lower. They’re a little annoying but you don’t notice them that much after a while. They also seem larger and more obvious than I’m used – little green monsters hiding in the bark and the leaves of every tree.

In the last few days, the cicadas have been quieter. They’re still around, but they don’t sing all the time. And into the lull has come the sweet song of crickets. When I got home tonight, I stopped for a moment on the stairs outside my door. The air was rich with the quiet murmurs of the crickets’ songs. The air was cool and the night clear and dark. It felt familiar. Felt a little like home.

Perhaps that’s why I decided to cook when I got home. Food is a strange experience in a foreign country when you not only don’t speak the language but can’t even read the alphabet. For example, I have been struggling to find flour. Just ordinary flour to make a basic white sauce, or as a base, or to cook so many things. Sometimes that’s a good thing because it pushes you to be more adventurous and try new things. Before I left for work today I put a piece of chicken in the fridge to defrost. I hadn’t thought about what I’d do with it. I just knew that I’d probably need something to eat when I got home. And then I got home and in a flurry of sudden activity, threw together a delicious meal. For the record, this doesn’t happen that often and will probably shock those who shared homes with me in years gone by. Tonight’s triumph was pan-fried lemon, garlic and rosemary chicken on a bed of salad greens with shaved ham, Camembert and sweet, baby tomatoes. There is such a sense of achievement in creating a particularly good meal, especially when you weren’t really sure how things would turn out. I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to achieve the same effect again. In another time, in another place, the ingredients would be different, the cooker would be different. Perhaps that’s one of the precious things about travel – Lulas pasta in Vilaculos, 3-day roast lamb on Somerset Street and lemon, garlic and rosemary chicken in Boemmul-dong, Daegu. Sometimes things work out, without any recipe, without any plans, as you sit quietly by and watch the seasons change.

Mandoo, bibimbap and a good steak

Daegu, Food,

All seems beautiful to me,
can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me
I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

A friend sent me this link just at a moment when I was ripe to read these beautiful words and share in the joy of travel. It’s been a long week with many complications and a surfeit of politics and issues but there have definitely been some high points, notably a delightful evening that just ended.
One of the fascinating, and often frustrating, bits of being in another country is the food. Particularly if that country has culinary habits and traditions which are completely alien to your own. To be honest, in Korea, I have eaten mostly Western food, cooked by me in my flat, with the occasional trip to a restaurant with friends, and once Vietnamese noodles. In the past couple of days, I’ve been exposed (thanks to a colleague with excellent taste) to some local food.

The first experience was Wednesday evening when we popped up the road from the school to grab a bite to eat. We work rather odd hours – 3pm to 11pm(ish), so dinner tends to be a rather haphazard affair grabbed in breaks between classes and in free periods, or delayed until the end of work. On this occasion, we had limited time, so we went somewhere close. I wasn’t really hungry, but this colleague is on a mission to expose me to some local food (and feels that I don’t eat enough), so he ordered way too much on the grounds that I would have to try some if it was there. We went to a place that makes Mandoo. The shop/restaurant opens onto the pavement and I walk past it every time I go to the bus stop and have been secretly fascinated by the place billowing steam onto the pavement. Of course, I had no idea what it was and didn’t bother to ask in between the many new things I wanted explanations for. It turns out it sells a Korean food that is described in some of the literature as ‘Korean dumplings’. This may be a little misleading to those who are used to dumplings being bits of dough added to stews. In fact, Mandoo are parcels of meat, vegetables, rice and/or fish wrapped in a thin layer of dough. Sometimes they are served in a beef broth (mandoo-guk), but often they’re fried or steamed (hence the billows of steam). The bit I tasted was a pork, rice and vegetable parcel in dough, steamed. Minced pork is not always particularly attractive as a food but it worked really well in this case. The vegetables were spring onions, I think, and mixed up with the rice and pork, and worked really well. It wasn’t all plain sailing – the dumplings were rather large and complicated to cut up with chopsticks, or to eat whole with chopsticks (which probably indicates a deficiency in my ability with chopsticks rather than a problem with the food). A good snack, though, although I’m told this wasn’t a very good example of Mandoo. In my inexperience, I wasn’t complaining at all.

Wednesday had originally been intended to start with an adventure in local food but work complications got in the way, so the adventure was shifted to Friday, when we had to be at the office early (2pm), so three of us headed off today to a lunch of Korean food. I was running late, partly because I felt the need to shop after I eventually woke up and partly because of misunderstanding of instructions on my part, but I eventually got to the school, where we all hopped into a colleague’s car and headed off to one of the large department stores in Daegu. I was a little unsure of exactly what to expect, but new places, especially with the security of people who you know, are always a good option. The restaurant was on the 11th floor of the building. Part of me is still a small-town Eastern Cape girl not used to very tall buildings. Also, I don’t like elevators, so, having parked in the basement 3 (-3F) level, the elevator ride was not exactly super-fun. When we eventually arrived on the floor we were looking for and found the restaurant, we had to wait about two minutes and then headed for the table. My colleagues ordered, of course – I am nowhere near knowing enough to order – and the food arrived with remarkable speed. Korean food tends to be of the many-side-dishes-around-one-central-bowl type, which I’m still getting used to after English-type meat-and-three-veg meals most of my life. The serving of this meal began with the waitress bringing each of us two bowls of soup, followed by many side dishes and then the central part of the meal, Bibimbap (I think) – literally ‘mixed rice’, a bowl with rice topped with a variety of vegetables and, in this case, tiny strips of seasoned raw beef, which is all mixed together like (my colleague’s analogy not mine) tossed salad. And eaten with a spoon. I, of course, made the faux pas of trying to eat it with chopsticks before someone gently (and only laughing at me a little) corrected me. The dish has a variety of vegetables including (but by no means limited to) spinach (yay!), bean sprouts and beans of some sort. It was quite delicious and definitely not a taste I’m familiar with. Side dishes ranged from fried tiny fish (which tasted extremely fishy), kimchi (vinigery and hot) and fermented soy-bean soup, to pumpkin fritter (or something Koreanly similar – definitely pumpkin). My Korean-American colleague also tried to teach me to use chopsticks, unsuccessfully – the lack of success being a reflection of my ineptitude rather than his instruction.

On the way back to the car, we stopped for a moment on the grocery level. I’m still getting used to department stores but there seem to be levels for every type of bought good imaginable, each section with it’s own check-out point. In the food section, I was momentarily sidetracked by the cheeses. Since getting here I have been singularly disappointed by the cheese, so I was thrilled to see something other than plastic-tasting, processed, gouda-like pale-yellow stuff. They actually had Brie and Camembert. At which point I was further sidetracked by the fact that the Brie and Camembert claimed to be Danish. It appears Koreans are under the impression that all good dairy products come from Denmark. I have no idea where this impression comes from but it was confirmed by a colleague (who also couldn’t explain it). I wonder if the French know that the Koreans think Denmark invented their cheeses? There was also a wine section but, alas, no South African wines.

At this point we headed back to the school and began a long day of work. My day was less tiresome than my colleagues because Fridays are my good day – when I finish at 21:30 instead of after 10pm. This evening, I popped in to say goodbye to a colleagues and was persuaded to stick around with the promise of dinner and a few drinks after work. I sat in on the colleague’s last class. It was informative and somewhat reassuring to see that he runs his classes the same way I do (we teach various classes at the same level), although it’s easy to see how much more experienced he is in this field. After class we waited around while others were working on something else and eventually decided to give up on them and head off.

By this stage I was tired. A night-time life is fine but my body still notices when it’s after 11pm and I was feeling a little like it was time to head home. My colleague (my lift home) was hungry, however, so we headed to one of his favourite restaurants. It turned out to be a delightful corner of Western civilization in the middle of Asia. The restaurant is near to the lake I explored last weekend (was it only last weekend?) and just a few doors down from the almost equally marvellous Africa Café, where we had the most delicious African coffee and honey bread (while talking about work, of course) just the other day. Honey-bread, by the way, is a half-loaf of fresh white bread drizzled with honey, sprinkled with nuts and baked for just long enough to warm it in the oven. Daniel’s Story One is a whole different level of civilised.

I’ve been glad, since I arrived, to discover that there are several places in the city to find steak. I still never expected to find really good steak in Korea. I was wrong. I had steak in a red wine sauce and my colleague had rib-eye steak with mushroom risotto (real risotto so the Italians tell me). In typical Korean fashion, the starters and coffees/desserts (though they’re not great at desserts) come free with the main course. The starter was a cream of broccoli soup (we think), which was good. The steak was fantastic. Perfectly medium-rare, soft as butter and tasty and rich, just the way it should be. With the meal, we ordered a reasonably-priced French Pinot Noir. I was a little dubious about ordering something called ‘Hobnob Pinot Noir (2007)’ but it turned out to be very pleasing and a great accompaniment to the steak. The setting suited the civilised nature of the meal – white table-cloths, with gentle pinky-purple place-mats, and proper silverware and glassware, in a place with many water-features and a few plants and (possibly fake) branches of peach blossoms tastefully arranged. The music was also lovely – the type of gentle, classical, background music that makes such a lovely change from the incessant Korean pop which blares forth in most surroundings. When you sit down at a Korean restaurant – another thing I’m still getting used to – they immediately bring you glasses of water and there are always unexpected and free side-dishes, such as, in this case, a variety of pickles and bread, which form a lovely accompaniment to the meal. To end of the feast of luxury, my friend had a chocolate mousse and iced coffee/milkshake and I had a perfectly civilised coffee. The mousse (yes, I tasted it of course) was oddly watery, while simultaneously being bitter, but the coffee was good. We spent ages over the meal and the desserts, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere and good conversation, before eventually heading home. It wasn’t until we got to the car that I realised it was 2am. I suppose one advantage of becoming nocturnal (a reality of a foreign teacher’s life here) is that late nights no longer seem a bother, but this was definitely also also just one of those evenings when you don’t even notice that time has passed.

As wonderful as it is to try new things and experience new flavours, there is little to compare to the pleasantly familiar luxury of a place like Daniel’s, particularly when there is good steak and red wine and good conversation. I’ll definitely be returning, probably with the same friend. I never thought I’d find a place quite as civilised and Western in my random Asian country but it feels a little good to know that I may just have found my favourite Western restaurant in all of Daegu.

Downtown 2: Nightwalking

Daegu, , ,

After a lovely afternoon at the Lake, I decided to continue the exploring with another attempt at Downtown. The main reason for this is that Downtown is the night-life hub of the city, so it really should be experienced at night. Also, I have been wanting to spend some time trying to figure out how to take pictures at night. Oh, and there was rugby – the first Tri-Nations match not in the middle of the night (even if it was just New Zealand vs Australia).

So, armed with camera and some cash, I headed down to the bus stop for the second time in a day. One of the things I find odd about Daegu is that the city seems to get busier as the day goes on, so that by Saturday evening the streets are bursting with people. This is the reverse of SA, where people go home as dusk approaches, especially on a Saturday when they need to fire up the braai and chill the beers before the Rugby. One advantage of the Korean approach is that there are regular buses late into the evening. I contemplated taking a bus directly to downtown, but the last time I did that it was rather a long trip. Also, the website I’ve been using to find my way around suggested that the best way to find the area I wanted was to aim for one subway station short of Banwoldang (where the buses go). It turns out that Downtown is divided into two parts and last time I visited it, I stayed on the East side. This time I needed to be on the West, so I took my usual work-bus (number 1-1) and hopped off opposite the Fashion-Exchange, which was disco-ing away happily into the night. This is my personal transportation hub. I’m more familiar with the buses here than anywhere else and my nearest subway station is here. Nearest to the office, anyway, but I think possibly also to where I live, because the subway line doesn’t come that far – I live on the South-Eastern edge of the city, so it’s a little out of the way for subways.

So Manchon Subway Station is a station with which I am now familiar. I’ve been here often and know my way around. Unfortunately, knowing my way around the station hasn’t helped me find my way around the travel-card-reloading machine. I keep asking people about it but so far everyone I ask has a car and knows nothing about the bus. Luckily the universal language of holding out a travel card and a W10 000 note is intelligible to the nice people working at subway information offices. The nice man loaded my card and I headed down to the tracks and caught the next train in the direction of Munyang (subway directions are indicated based on the name of the last station on the line in that direction). I got off at Kyungpook University Hospital Station, as per website directions, and started to head up into the night.

There is something a little eerie about subway stations, particularly at night. Something about going down and down into the depths of the earth where everything is run by machine seems rather like the plotline of a weak horror movie. Apart from the information offices, the subway systems here don’t seem to need all that many people. The turnstiles are electronic, people needing to buy single tickets can do so from automatic machines, all the directions are given by brightly lit signs and an electronic voice announces when a train is about to arrive and the next station on the train. Perhaps this is part of the reason that the Kyungpook University Hospital Station was strangely silent when I got off the train and followed the ‘Way Out’ signs up a flight of stairs on Saturday night. As I reached the top of the stairs a man passed me rushing in the opposite direction. And then I was alone. Utterly alone in a world of tiles and artificial lights and yellow and green and white signs pointing in various directions. My South African woman-alone-at-night-in-isolated-place hackles were raised but it didn’t really feel dangerous in the criminal sense. It felt more like a bad horror movie. Thankfully the next set of stairs brought me to a level with other people. There even appeared to be a table-tennis place on this level, where people could go to play table-tennis.

At the top of the final flight of stairs (Exit 1), I stopped and took in the warm summer night. I was next to a busy road with huge buildings all around me except for the ivy-covered older building across the road. The contrast of the older building against the huge, brightly lit skyscrapers behind it was a perfect picture of how Daegu has grown upwards in between the older bits of the city that remain.

I headed off down the road and after a block turned right into a busy street (busy with pedestrians as well as cars). The first part of the street was lined on both sides with various businesses including what struck me a lot of wedding dress shops. Shops here seem to cluster together by type an awful lot. About a block or two up, I glimpsed the sign for the bar where they were likely to be showing the rugby, down a road to the left. This is the place I wandered around looking for for ages last time I went downtown. Clearly it is actually very easy to find if you come from the correct direction. Before heading there, I thought I’d wander up the road a bit. The pavements were filled with people and I wanted to get a sense of what else was around the area. There were bakeries and fast food places and restaurants and I saw the Samdeok police station. And then I crossed a road and got distracted by a park.

My last trip downtown was partly inspired by a desire to find two parks, one of which I stumbled upon after wandering for a bit, but I still hadn’t seen National Debt Repayment Movement Park (Gukchae-bosang Memorial Park). On the off-chance that this was the park I’d been looking for, I wandered in. Before I go any further, I have to say: imagine living in a country where it is perfectly safe to wander through a park at night all alone. It blows my mind a little. This park was well-lit and full of people. From where I walked into the park, I could see a group of teenagers and young adults playing basketball. Watching them, under arbours covered with creepers and vines, were couples chatting and sitting together and holding hands. I wandered along a path between trees, looking out over the playground and found myself in another section of the park. The first thing I notices was a large rock with a lily pond in a depression in the top of it. I walked slowly on. Parks are often peaceful places but this one, despite various ponds and walks and beautifully designed places, was more busy than peaceful. An impression possibly partly created by the huge screen splashing its garish music videos and advertisements across the paths and gardens.

In the corner of the park is a huge bell that is apparently an important part of New Year’s celebrations for many Koreans. It rests in a Korean style display building (floor, walls, roof, ornate dragon designs). Beyond that were teenage boys on skateboards and BMXs. Along the paths, a pair of children were playing an informal game of badminton. People walked along in pairs or couples, sometimes trailing children on tricycles. On the benches, people sat in couples, friends shared take-away dinners and one little boy sat with his grandmother. As I walked along, I was thinking a lot about how necessary parks like this are in cramped urban surroundings where gardens are a relatively unknown luxury. I can’t imagine growing up without a garden, but in some ways I suppose parks are the normal alternative for thousands, maybe millions of people. Strange how far apart childhood experiences can be.

As I was leaving the park, I saw something strange. Occasionally I will spot something in Korea that makes me stop and take another look because I’m not sure I trust my eyes. The whole park is laid out with beautiful gardens, exquisitely manicured and populated with local trees and flowers, some (like hibiscus and pines) familiar, others unknown to me. On the way out of the park, I passed some mielies (maize). I’m not sure I’ll ever quite get used to the idea of mixing flowers with vegetables in this way, partly for the simple reason that I can’t imagine a world where the mielies wouldn’t get stolen. These plants were not just in a square patch, however, they were planted in a circle around a tree, like sentries around the tree, so that the tree actually seemed to be growing out of the mielies. Very odd.

By this stage, of course, I’d missed most of the rugby but I headed to the bar anyway, via a gentle strolled through the incredibly crowded night-life streets – packed with bars and restaurants, but also baby-clothes shops, shoe shops and many others that I’d never have associated with night-life but which were all open on a Saturday night. Commune’s (the bar) was open and full of people watching the last few minutes of the match. Commune’s is the kind of slightly dingy place that reminds me of the club we used to go to at varsity and a place with many happy memories, CJ’s. It is situated in a basement and the walls, under various murals and pictures, are a dark colour, possibly black. It is also regularly full of foreigners (some of whom are not American/Canadian), so it’s a good place to go to immerse yourself in cultures-not-Korean for a little. Also, it’s sometimes nice to hear a whole room full of people speaking English. As soon as the rugby was over, some of the customers insisted that the Ashes cricket be put on. I felt almost at home.

After a drink at the bar (their G&Ts are not up to Moz standards), I headed home. It was now too late to take the subway/bus route home, so I took a deep breathe and went to find a taxi. This is the first time I’ve taken a taxi entirely on my own and I still don’t know exactly how to tell the taxi driver where to take me. This is one of the reasons that I find public transport easier to manage – because the stops are fixed, I don’t have the challenge of explaining where I want to be. Thankfully, my taxi driver knew some English. I had written down on a piece of paper what I needed to say, but it turns out the different ways of pronouncing the ‘g’ sound were causing me problems. In spite of this, I got home, happy with a good night’s exploring, even if I did miss the rugby, and glad that I’ve finally found the park.