Monthly Archives: January 2010

A sense of place

Daegu

William Kittredge quoted in Dana Snyman: “A sense of place is bound up to some degree with the way people are in that place and with the history of the people, and it’s bound up even more with physical and natural details, with trees and grass and soil; weather, water, sky, the way some weeds smell when you walk on them. These are the details of place, and an awareness of them is what I call a sense of place” Dana Snyman, On the Back Roads

On the way back from the Ski Trip, we were chatting in the bus about the things we are looking forward to when we go home. Simple things, most of them. Like carpets. And cheese. And tumble dryers. But there are things from here that I will miss, too. Again, not necessarily huge, monumental things. But every place has a sense, a feeling, an identity. And when you’ve lived in a place for a while, it starts to get under your skin.

I have a strong sense of every place I’ve ever lived in. Some of them I didn’t even like that much. But there are moments and things about each place that stay with me. Climbing Bowkers Kop in Queenstown. Sunsets in Grahamstown and sitting on the couch outside 46D. The forest in Stutt. Walking to work on a crisp, frosty morning along Katherine Street in Sandton. Emmerentia Dam and ice-creams on random Sunday afternoons. Fat Cactus in Little Mowbray. Baby Egyptian geese falling out of the huge monkey puzzle tree outside my window in Rondebosch.

Even a short visit to a place can be enough to form a sense of the place in your mind. The sense is never objective and out there. It is always your own, unique experience, a subjective impression of where you’ve been. Flamingos from a hotel room in Kimberly. Cuppacino under winter grapevines while looking out at the mountains in Colesburg. Often, for me at least, the sense of a place is stronger if you leave and return to it often. Stepping out of Cape Town airport and breathing the Cape Town air and seeing the table-cloth on the mountain always feels like coming home. But once you start to be aware of ‘sense of place’ you start to form those opinions and impressions even without the regular contrast of other places.

My sense of Daegu is of a place that is temporary for me. It doesn’t feel like home the way Grahamstown always will. But there are definitely things that will always remind me of this place. Of course, this impression of place will continue to develop and become richer and deeper over the next few months, but sometimes it’s good to try capture it as it is now.

The strangest and most foreign part of this place for me is the smells. The food is different and the plants are different and the way of living is different. I can’t describe all the scents that make up the way that Daegu smells. I just know that it is a unique and completely alien smell that will always remind me of here.

Daegu is also the neon signs. A jungle of huge signs and billboards on every building, mostly in Korean and completely unintelligible, until you learn to read Hangeul just a little and discover that at least some of them are dotted with Korean-izations of English words like ‘school’. The sounds of Korea are different. The blaring of the loudspeakers on a roaming vegetable trucks, driving up and down suburban streets selling fresh fruit and vegetables at all hours of the day and night. The squeaky birds. The strange, whining, complaining noise that Korean girls make. The incessant thump, thump, thump of basketballs on the court across the road from my flat. The military planes flying over. The noise of the traffic. The Korean radio on the bus and in the taxis. K-pop blaring in every shop and restaurant. Horrible Korean versions of already annoying English songs, like the Titanic Theme, spilling from speakers in every park.

Daegu has an opera house. It is the place I first got to start watching operas regularly. And foreign-style restaurants with beautiful food and atmosphere. Korean food, each dish a side-dish to something else. And the sticky, white rice which is eaten all by itself or soaked in one or other of the many, many spicy soups. The scent of sweet-bean-and-dough treats that follows you down the winter streets. Galbi sizzling on a little grill, strangely nothing like the smell of meat on the braai but pleasant nonetheless. Fish on ice looking dead and a little gruesome right there on the pavement outside shops and at street stalls. Fruit and vegetable sellers crouching behind their wares on every busy streetcorner. Steam billowing from the outside cookers at the mandoo shop down the road from work.

Downtown on a Saturday night, standing in the street with cocktails over ice in plastic bags. Or Communes full of foreigners, rock music blaring and sport playing on the big screen. Bubbles floating down as you walk along the street and sometimes people handing out sparklers. The taste of Hite and Cass and Soju and strange bar-snacks.

Groups of ajummas sitting on a blanket in a park or at the lake. Groups of old men gathered under whisteria-roofed platforms playing boardgames on a Saturday afternoon. Little children calling to their parents – ‘ouma’, ‘oupa’ – and me turning around, taken a little by surprise every time. Shop workers who follow you around everywhere. Pre-cooked rice and instant (just add milk) pancake mix. Making sure you buy bottled water because the tap-water isn’t good for drinking. Fruit juices entirely unrelated to the flavour of the fruit. Syrupy-sweet tomato juice.

Children still walking the streets or playing or on the buses at 10 o’clock at night. On a school-night. Every school-night. The city moves and rushes and crowds all day, from about 8 in the morning until 11pm. Except downtown, which seems to be crowded and busy 24 hours a day. There is no peace and quiet. There is no space. No-one seems to notice. People walking down the road past my flat from the hills above in full mountain climbing gear (all correct and branded and expensive) at all hours of the day.

And so many other things. The three clearest, most typical moments of Daegu life? Watching the day-light fade, over the heads of small children bent to their books, from the window of my classroom; walking in parks in summer, autumn, winter, filled with other people walking and children playing and couples or groups of friends sitting together and nights at the hut with dongdongju, fellow foreigners and salty, fried eggs.

Ski trip For The Win: Sunday of stiffness

Adventures, Food, travelling in Korea, , ,

There is something particularly peaceful about waking up late on a Sunday morning with the sounds of skiing outside the window and the sun filtering through the not-quite-meeting curtains over the sleeping forms of friends huddled under excessive amounts of yellow bedding on the heated floor. Everything was quiet and warm in the room. I sat for a while jotting down thoughts and memories of the evening before, from Zanzibar the ladybird to cotton-producing sheep. At about noon, the first of the other room to emerge, Erin, came and joined me in my peaceful little spot and eventually, as we chatted quietly, other people emerged from their yellow cocoons. The process of 12 people waking up and getting organised tends to be a slow, noisy and sometimes humorous one. This one was notably highlighted by the series of groans as people moved sore arms, legs and asses in their attempts to stand up. It took a little longer to get moving than usual. I wasn’t horribly stiff from the waist down but my arms were ridiculous. It hurt to lift them at all. Even writing caused twinges of stiffness. Reaching for food from the cupboards at home that night was not fun. In fact, by the end of Sunday sitting still hurt.

This did not deter us from heading out, however. Largely because we were in need of food. We had all also reached the outer limits of our capacity to eat KFC or the same five Korean meals even once more. So we took the plunge and headed off the resort in search of lunch. Down the hill and past the cheaper ski rental place we went, all the while enjoying the incredible and for me (although less for those who have seen it before) somewhat breathtaking views of a snowy-wonderland world under the bright lunchtime sun.

A little way along the road, we spotted a galbi place. Just the thing for lunch. We headed inside, took off our shoes and sat at our table. A disadvantage of eating Korean food when incredibly stiff is that it may require sitting on the floor. Actually, sitting on the floor isn’t the worst part. The worst part is standing up afterwards. The galbi was good, with the usual array of side-dishes and some particularly good onion-y-type-salad. The galbi cooked over hot coals in a little braai set into the table. The coals were a little hot so some of the meat caught a little, which was actually particularly yummy.

After lunch, we rose with moans and groans and headed back up the hill through the snow to our warm and cosy youth hostel room. Everyone flopped down on a sleeping mat and/or burrowed under blankets in front of the TV. Some people napped. We flipped through channels, searching for more of the figure-skating which had dominated the occasional TV viewing of the weekend. There was a documentary on rodeo clowns and barrel men, in which inexplicably became enthralled. Then we happened upon the movie Stardust and settled there for a while. Desultory conversation and  laughter drifted back and forth.

At  4:30 we packed up for the last time, gathered our luggage and set off on the trek up the hill to where the bus-driver had dropped us off and would pick us up. After rearranging the seating and luggage set-up, much to the driver’s not-entirely-happy surprise, we squeezed everyone in without anyone sitting on the floor and set off for home. The drive back was long and chilly – except for the feet next to the heater-outlet. Almost 4 hours later, we arrived back in Daegu in the middle of a conversation about super-powers. We were all tired and sore as we tumbled out and gathered our belongings. I was so exhausted I could barely organise myself enough for the last little bit of the trip. Luckily, I shared a cab with someone could give the driver directions – I’m not sure I would have made it home alone.

Finally home in my freezing cold apartment, I had some dinner, checked mail and spent some time just sitting around – blobbing as one of my friends put it. Monday would be back to work in the cold, windy, snow-less wilds of Daegu but for a while it was nice to potter around, downloading photos and generally decompressing in the last glow of what had turned out to an exhausting and stiffness-inducing but truly enjoyable weekend filled with snow, fun people, trying new things and plenty of crazy memories.

Postscript: As is turned out the wilds of Daegu were not, in fact, snow-less on Monday but that is a whole different story.

Ski trip For The Win: Night-skiing

Adventures, travelling in Korea, ,

After an afternoon of snowboarding fail, I was quite keen to go sledding and soothe my bruised ego with something I was reasonably competent at. After a pseudo-Japanese dinner of chicken, cabbage with ramen noodles at the pseudo-Japanese restaurant, we were all sitting in the room resting. Everyone was talking about snowboarding and planning their runs and Julie caught the excitement and announced that she was going skiing. I was not going to miss out on that chance, even if it meant feeling even more useless. So, as the rest went off to brave the intermediate slopes on their snowboards, we went down to the cheaper rental place and acquired skiing gear.

As an absolute beginner, it was interesting to note the differences between skiing gear and snowboarding gear. The first difference is obviously that instead of one board you have two skis and two ski poles, which are a mission to carry up hills – as you invariably end up doing a lot of the time. The boots are also different. I found the snowboarding boots uncomfortable because I felt like I was constantly leaning forward. The ski boots, on the other hand, were actually pretty easy to wear. We didn’t try and wear them walking up from the off-resort rental shop to the slopes, however. Instead we carried everything and then changed at the bottom of the slopes and put our own shoes into a locker.

As usual, I had no idea what I was doing, but Julie showed me how to clip the ski boots into the skis and how to take them off again. That seemed reasonably easy. We headed up the little “bunny-hill” under the bright flood-lights and I tried it out. It did not seem impossible. We then to the beginners slope, having by this stage discovered that we could join the slope half way down just near the Youth Hostel. Skiing was much easier than snowboarding. Much, much easier. The technique was instinctive and there were ski-poles for balance and crossing the skis meant being able to stop. I was much happier. We started off down the hill, going a few metres at a time. I was completely absorbed in concentrating on keeping my skis close together so that I could stop when I needed to, but I was much more relaxed and happy than I’d been in the afternoon. I was also having fun. Julie was struggling a little but we eventually got down the slope.

At this point, we had two options: we could walk up the hill a little and practice again or take the lift to the top – where we’d failed at snowboarding that afternoon. I’m clearly a slow learner. We took the lift without knowing how to get off at the top. Luckily, we managed to get onto the same lift-seat as a ski-school instructor who was able, in broken English, to tell us what we were supposed to do. Of course, we both still fell down, but no injuries, so no harm done. The slope again looked a lot steeper and longer and more scary from the top than it had from the bottom. The snow also seemed more slippery, although that may just have been in my head. We went down a way, both falling over a few times. I had one fairly spectacular wipe-out when I discovered that it is possible to cross the skis to far and went over them head-first, landing rather heavily on my hands. I was a little shaken by this, so I didn’t mind walking for a bit. We turned off the beginner’s slope through a short-cut to the central practice area, hoping we’d run into the others. I got back onto skis as soon as we hit slightly less steep ground with something a little like glee. We still hadn’t found the others by the time we reached the bunny-hill but I had great fun going up and down a few more times. Although I need lots more practice before I try a big hill again, I am really quite taken with skiing.

Around 11pm, they started clearing people off the bunny slope, so we headed down – me still on skis because I was determined to get the most I possibly could out of the experience. When we saw Tim at the bottom, he told us that most people had gone back to the room after a long and difficult run down the hill on their snowboards. We got our things together and returned the rented gear, catching up with the others on the way. Some people wanted food – hotdogs here we come – so they got that while two of us headed to the little shop and picked up some supplies – mostly in the form of maekju, soju and chips – before heading back to the room.

Everyone gathered slowly in room 301, in between hot showers and related attempts to avoid the incredible stiffness which was inevitably going to set in in just a few hours. Outside it was freezing cold and midnight skiing was just beginning. Inside the room, however, it was warm and congenial and cosy. People sat around in little groups. Some played games, some did magic tricks, some just chatted. The guitar came out and provided the background music we’d all been missing as a result of everyone forgetting to bring speakers. As the evening progressed, randomness ruled. Eben’s game kept everyone entertained for ages but not for nearly as long as Zanzibar, the ladybird. The beer half-froze on the balcony. There was a long discussion about cotton from sheep.

Much later, we all crawled into bed, most of us already feeling the soreness from the skiing and snowboarding attempts, and slept warm and comfortable (at least I did) in our cocoons of yellow on the heated floor.