I’ve been listening to South African radio a lot in the last week and it’s full of the count-down to kick-off. So, in honour of the 100 days to kick-off which is just around the corner, I decided on Sunday to visit another World Cup Stadium.

I woke with the sun peaking through my windows and making me smile. It’s been raining for a few days and the weather forecast predicted this would be the only day of sunshine this week, so I climbed out of my nice warm bed to take on the day. Of course, the sun faded behind misty clouds within half an hour but I held out hope that it would return.

Before I left, I did some laundry and tidied my flat a little, but by 11am I was leaving my little home with camera and bus-card and an umbrella just in case. I got on the 403 bus and headed off. This is a part of town I’ve never been to before, so I was watching the road with interest. The bus headed off onto a highway and through a toll-booth. We had driven away from the skyscrapers and were passing wooded hills on either side. I was a little concerned that we had in fact left Daegu. I got more nervous when we turned off the highway and onto – I kid you not –  a semi-dirt track. After a couple of twists and turns, we were back on a road that looked like a road and the bus announcements said we were approaching ‘World Cup junction’.

I got off at the next stop and looked up at the huge form of the Daegu World Cup Stadium. The  stadium was built for the 2002 Soccer World Cup which was jointly hosted by Japan and Korea. Korea isn’t really a sports-mad country, barring perhaps a national obsession with figure skater Kim Yu-Na who recently won gold with a record score at the Vancouver Olympics. For the most part, however, they’re about as far from the sports-craziness of  South Africa as it’s possible to be. Some people play sport, but mostly for exercise, except for the kids who try desperately to fit in a little baseball or basketball between the homework and the long hours of school and academies. Many of these kids have dreams of being sports stars but in their world it’s a futile dream. They’ll go off to university and be doctors and lawyers, just as like their parents. Not for them the dream of playing rugby or soccer for a living, even if it’s for a second-string club team in a European country. Their national team can play soccer and has made it to the Soccer World Cup this year. I’m sure they’ll have support – the country is very loyal to the people who make them look good. 2002 was like that. Their team came from nowhere to make it to the semi-finals, where they lost to Germany, eventually placing fourth after losing to Turkey in the third-place play-off.

The hosting of the tournament also saw the country pouring millions of won into infrastructure development, not unlike South Africa, including building stadia in host cities, although I imagine after we’re done South Africans will simply use the stadia for sports events rather than advertising them as tourist attractions. The Daegu Stadium seats 68000 and claims, amongst other things, to be able to get people out in just 7 minutes. It was the largest of the World Cup 2002 stadia in Korea. It towered over me as I walked around. The design uses simple shapes like circles and triangles and hexagons. There is a row of very tall cylindrical towers at the front, which are the ticket-booths. On one side, there is an open area where kids were roller-blading and playing tag. A tarred path curves around the stadium where old men were walking and doing stretching exercises. I couldn’t get into the actual stadium, which was a pity but not hugely surprising. At one point, up a hill, there is a set of steps leading to a (non-functioning) fountain, so I was able to see the multi-coloured stands and the logo for the next big event that will use this stadium – the 2011 IAAF World Athletics Championships.

Continuing around the stadium I reached another metal-and-glass modern designer building. This had two large signs, one saying it was the Daegu Sports Museum – of which I had never heard in all my searches for tourist attractions in the city (the Stadium, by the way, is listed as a tourist attraction). The other sign designated the place as what I assume, from the number of suited men standing around outside, it is generally used for: World Cup Convention Wedding. Weddings in Korea seem all to take place at dedicated wedding venues and this appears to be one of them. The wedding guests, in their suit-and-tie finery, mingled outside with more kids on skateboards, rushing between the few trees and occasional, odd (and often soccer themed) statues.

There is also a park area, with walkways and grass and pillars, as well as more odd statues. It’s a fairly pleasant place to walk, although the wedding rush on a Sunday morning makes it a less peaceful. Also the music. I don’t think I will ever be able to get my head around the fact that all Korean outdoor living areas have speakers set along ever path playing panpipes or canned elevator music. It’s as if no-one is sufficiently able to handle silence to enjoy it while walking in a quiet park. It’s particularly annoying in a place like this which, set as it is against mountains and in between little fields of grapevines and vegetable patches (which are themselves, as is typical of Korea, right in the middle of the urban area), doesn’t even need the music to block out traffic noise. Apart from the ‘music’, it was a pleasant walk and the mist that had been hiding the sun burnt off, so I was able to get some much needed sunshine-time. As I was leaving, I even saw some people in hanbok, rushing to a wedding, I assumed.

The time now was just after noon and I was enjoying being out and about, so I decided to trek across town to Homeplus. This is probably one of my favourite shops in Daegu for the simple reason that it feels like a supermarket instead of a department store, so it’s a little more familiar. Also, it’s a Tesco store so they occasionally stock things that look like home. Getting there was a-whole-nother story. Many foreigners in Korea take taxi-cabs everywhere. This is expensive but, provided you know how to say your destination in Korea or have it written down, you are guaranteed to get there fairly quickly and with little risk of being lost. I don’t. I was exposed to the bus system right from the start because I had to take a bus to work. The guide books warm foreigners that the bus systems in Korean cities can be very confusing. There are some attempts to make them foreigner-friendly, so the names of the bus stops are written in English as well as Korean. But only on the actual stops, meaning that you don’t know where you are until you drive past it.

Standing at an unfamiliar bus stop, reading the route maps in Korean, I realised I’ve pretty much cracked the system. This is not to say that I find it simple – it is definitely not – but am able to read enough, and know the names of enough places, that I could figure out which bus to take so that I would be able to change buses a few times and get clear across town to where I was going. I suppose it shouldn’t be weird that 8 months in I’ve figured out a public transport system, but it is reassuring to know that I can do it and it feels a little bit good to know that I have cracked a transport system that baffles many people and is almost entirely in a foreign language that uses a different alphabet.

The route of the 849 bus, between the Daegu Stadium and the Nambu Bus Terminal, is really pretty and peaceful, it turns out. I spent a pleasant while watching the world go by from the window of my bus. At that time of day on a Sunday, it’s also a reasonably quiet world, which is always welcome. Three buses later (intentionally – it’s the quickest way), I reached my destination and did a little bit of shopping. I managed to pick up some microwavable lasagne, about which I am rather excited, as well as some beef and seaweed soup (Miyeok Guk). Another two buses and I was home by 3pm with the sun still shining. A good day with some sunshine and some shopping and a good way to get a little excited about the major happening of the year back home, kicking off in just over 100 days.