I finally reached the train station only to find another vast expanse of wide roads, elevated access ramps and thousands of vehicles blocking my path. There was no way to get across except for once more to go underground. By now I had discovered a technique. Before going down the first set of steps, I visualized a straight line from me to the train station in my mind and marked it with an imaginary arm sticking out straight from my body. Then each time I rounded a corner or changed direction, I kept that arm pointed in the original direction. It was in effect a mental compass, and it worked. My first attempt brought me aboveground directly in front of the large Seoul Station building. Hundreds of people milled around this station day and night, eating and drinking at the many noodle stands, sleeping soundly on newspaper spread on the cement or listening to the evangelical Christians, who were often there singing and energetically playing guitars and banging on tambourines. At night, this beehive of activity was awash in garish changing colours from the giant pixel board signs. Their tens of thousands of tiny lights controlled by computer to produce a wide array of changing images were together of blinding strength overpowering any outside lighting the city planners had provided.

Inside, the train station was a zoo. It was a holiday weekend and lineups curved a hundred yards in all directions from dozens of ticket windows. For the larger holidays such as Chusok when all Koreans returned to their ancestral villages, train tickets were sold out months in advance. There were some signs in English, leftovers from the ’88 Olympics, but most were of course in Korean, and I had to do some serious guess work with my nose stuck in my “Korean at a Glance” book to figure out which of the many ticket windows sold tickets to Taegu.

There was little room for manoeuvering and with my backpack, book and map I could find no place to stand where I wasn’t buffeted on all sides by the passing throng. There were no gaps left in any of the lineups for people to pass through, and in amazement I watched as everyone from grown men to tiny grandmothers and little children simply put their heads down and bulldozed their way through. No one got upset. No one got angry. The strongest reaction I witnessed was from a group of young teenage girls who laughed as they were tossed into each other’s arms by a passing group of men in army uniforms. They laughed much as I might laugh if thrown off balance by a strong gust of wind or caught unawares by a strong wave on a beach.

I found the ticket window that read Taegu, though things were complicated by the four classes of travel available. I chose the lowest class figuring it would be the most interesting and stop at the most out of the way spots. I claimed a spot at the end of the lineup and began the long tortuous wait.

Very quickly I got into more trouble. My instincts were still Canadian and after the first person pushed their way through the lineup directly ahead of me, I stepped back a little bit to leave a gap for the next person to get through. Soon a tidal wave of humanity was pouring through and the Koreans behind me began to push forward on my back to help me close this growing hole which I had inadvertently opened up. I was reminded of a book I read in my childhood called “When the Dikes Broke.” In it, many small breaks in the dikes of Holland continually threatened to get bigger and bigger and required constant vigilance to close up. Here was the same process at work. Every bit of ground that I gave up in deference to my western sense of right and wrong was taken, held and then increased. The Koreans behind me felt I was being quite rude in so disrupting the lineup. The proper technique was to follow the person ahead of me so closely as to physically touch him. Koreans when exiting crowded buses or subway cars will often place their hand on the small of the back of the person ahead of them. They don’t necessarily push but maintain a constant pressure. This drove me crazy and at first I was constantly turning and glaring at them but to little effect. They were simply confirmed in their belief that all foreigners had no idea of proper behavior and behaved most oddly. I would desperately try not to touch the person ahead of me while arching my back away from the person behind in a strange dance of avoidance.

After fifteen minutes in my first lineup, I began to make friends and soon after began to wish I hadn’t. Everyone I spoke to wished to help me on my journey, and I had to maintain a delicate balance between accepting their offered advice, which usually led me astray, and trusting to my own knowledge and hurting their feelings. The first was a man who happened to be passing by. He asked after my destination and then informed me I was in the wrong line. He didn’t specify exactly what was wrong with my line but was quite insistent that #22 was where I wanted to be. He was the first, and I had no reason to distrust him so I left and assumed a position at the back of lineup #22, which was much longer. I spent close to half an hour in that lineup before another well-wisher informed me that all the tickets for that day were sold out and if I wanted tickets I would have to go to lineup #8. His friend argued that only lineup #35 could possibly help me out. All of this was done in bad English, and to my questions they usually replied yes whether they knew the answer or not or even understood the question.

I found the train to be very comfortable once, several hours later I was finally on board and on my way. A Mr. Lee had eventually taken my money and kindly gone off to get my ticket for me. It seems there was a ticket window specifically marked “Foreigner”, another holdover from the Olympics, and this is where I should have gone from the beginning.

I felt the usual hot ball of excitement in my stomach as the train began to move out of the station. I don’t care where a train goes, just to be moving is enough to get me squirming in my seat. But that mood was soon displaced by a more somber one. The countryside affected me much as Seoul had. The mountains were rugged but very austere in their winter state. The towns and cities I passed were ugly, industrial and depressing. A lot of corrugated tin roofing, boxy Hyundai cars, Daewoo buses and smoke stacks.

I reached Taegu in the dark, and decided to pamper myself with a night in a regular hotel. The Royal is a tourist hotel in Taegu forgotten by the world. Their automatic sliding doors were frozen inoperative, and I had to pry them open with my fingers. Their snug lobby and cafe was ice cold and frosty. I was met, not with smiles, but with frowns. There was some problem with my request for a room, but I don’t know what it was. Finally, they took my money and the manager yelled at me, threw a room key in my direction and turned away. I was frozen to the core after the walk from the train station and didn’t care about this treatment as long as I got a room.

After warming, up I went out for a walk and was pleasantly surprised. Taegu is a happening kind of town. Large parts of downtown were reserved for pedestrians: street after street of bright night life, thousands of young people pouring in all directions, and tiny alleys packed with old women cooking over open fires.

The cold eventually drove me back to the Royal. The hotel was eleven stories high, and at the very top I saw flashing neon, and I rode the elevator up. It was a nightclub called Rumours and my first experience of Karaoke. It was a large room with a U-shaped counter. In the middle of the U was a young man in charge of the music. I sat down at this bar and immediately a plate of fruit and 3 beers were put down in front of me. I didn’t ask for it, and I assumed it was complimentary. They also gave me a huge book with numbered pages, some paper and a pen. I was expected to select a song from the book and when the D.J. played the background music to supply the vocals.

There was never a shortage of people willing and able to sing with range and power. I made many friends and was pressured to sing, but the songs were all in Korean script. About this time a very drunk man sat beside me and started to make trouble. He spoke only in Korean and pushed me around roughly. His friends were very embarrassed and translated for him. They said he didn’t like Americans. I explained that I was Canadian. They translated that and suddenly everything changed. His face brightened and he hung all over me. I still couldn’t understand him, of course, but we clinked glasses and toasted each other all night long.

When I finally left, I was presented with a rather large bill. It turns out the fruit was not a gift but what they call ‘anju’ – an assortment of snacks that you must pay for. It operates as a cover or table charge.

 

 

 

Tags: Dikes Broke, Korea - First Days Teaching English, music, Seoul Station, train