So here is a rough cut of our trip. There’s also a normal speed version for those of you who enjoy sightseeing.

Rock, Paper, Toilet

Sometimes it takes time to realize the obvious. I was warned on my very first visit that there was something special about the bin next to toilet. But it was quite unclear in my mind. And I quickly forgot about it, thinking I wasn’t actually concerned, since I’m male.

It was not until my second visit there, that I experienced first-hand, in the worst condition, why everybody is supposed to use the bin. While visiting a friend of us, I had an urge to use toilet. When I flushed, the water kept coming, until it actually flood the whole bathroom. In panick, I called for help. I’ll spare the details but our friend was a real gentlemen while I tried so hard to disappear out of embarrassment (but failed).

Toilet paper never ever goes into toilet.

That was a hard-learned lesson. And somehow after that incident I started noticing bins everywhere, full of used toilet paper. Usually that’s a sight you tend to avoid, but it’s still better than flooding a friend’s bathroom.

It seems that sewage system wasn’t really built as well as it should have, considering the incredibly fast growth of the country in the last decades. Or that they simply didn’t care enough for a while. Nowadays, some of the newest buildings don’t need bins anymore, but I always double-check.

Shower toilet

On a special occasion, we went to a nice restaurant (that will be kept unidentified for obvious reasons). The kind of restaurant where you actually get a toilet from the future with tons of buttons. Seriously, how come do we need that much features on a toilet seat ?

Anyway my curiosity got the better of me, and after finishing my business, I got up (for security), and started pushing random buttons. I didn’t wait long until the seat started spraying high pressure water. It was aiming straight at the door and splashed pretty much everywhere in the cabinet. After pushing some more buttons, in vain, to make it stop, I resorted to pulling the plug while kind of protecting my face with a brand new paper roll. Needless to say I was quite in a hurry to leave the restaurant.

Don’t push buttons if you can’t even read what’s written on them.

Ultimate horror

And then there’s that ultimate horror story that happened to a friend of mine. Korean toilet design is slightly different than european one. They are usually much lower and longer, more oval than round, so there is much more water in there. And you basically sit much, much, closer to water. Anybody who saw Casino Royale famous torture scene might see where it’s going and would wisely want to skip the next paragraph.

There’s a much higher risk for one to suddenly have a kind of a weird, wet sensation, strangely not so cold but not quite warm either. It’s quite hard to figure out what’s going on for a while. But then full horror of the situation finally strikes you, and it’s too late. There is no going back. No memory erasing possible. The only thing left to do is to keep living with that haunting memory forever. Or so I was told by that friend of mine…

Not so bad

After those incidents, you really get used to it. You don’t notice the 50+ years old woman cleaning the urinal next to yours, she doesn’t notice you either anyway. And you don’t mind the cabinet doors which are smaller than you, with obvious privacy issue when standing. You won’t even hesitate to use the squat toilet, which are actually pretty convenient. In most cases, you don’t even forget to take your bunch of toilet paper from outside the cabinet (but always keep some sort of paper on you, just in case). And that time when I lost my camera right into the toilet ? Just make any excuse to explain why the flash suddenly stopped working…

I am actually quite surprised that there are not so many posts about that topic among expats. But then again, it’s not that an interesting topic. Nobody actually want to talk about poo all day. It’s not like they would actually make a movie whose hero is a poo, right ?!

PS: I assumed pictures were not necessary for that particular topic, but google is your friend, I’ll let you deactivate the SafeSarch…

The school actually is an university, Ewha Womans University, to be precise. Yes, you read that right, I am going to a Korean-girls-only-school. I never had a better reason to look forward to go to school ! Unfortunately the Korean teaching section is an exception, for obvious reasons. My classmates are American, English, Taiwanese, Chinese and Japanese.

I will keep this post short for I need to do my homework before going to bed.

Throwing out my youth

The moving out was more of a psychological challenge. Over the years I learned to get rid of material things. But so far I never had to throwaway a single videogame related item. Not once (except for those games “borrowed” by “friends”). I guess nothing is forever though. When I got married, long time ago (!), I knew this dreadful day would somehow eventually come. So I had time to prepare myself, but still…

Luckily not everything is lost, never to be seen again, actually quite a few items went to nice people. Knowing that they are in good hands for many years yet to come made it easier to split with them. I may even see them again (people included) ! :-)

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And then we had to get rid of other stuff. Furniture, clothes, kitchen appliance, food, etc. It’s amazing to see how hard it is to give things, even for free, to people. But we eventually did pretty good.

Settling

Finding a house in Seoul was slightly harder than expected, but we did it in three weeks. That could have been much worse. Except there is one thing I ignored until I stepped in the flat for the first time. Here, people leaving don’t need to clean up. That’s up to the guys entering the house. At first I wouldn’t have said the house was dirty.

I spent a whole week cleaning up the kitchen before it would be even remotely usable. Starting with tearing off two layers of horrible wallpapers to reveal tiles (and tearing off tiles as well :P). Sponging pool of oil around the cooker. And ending up taking out the entire cooker to clean up behind it.

Then  I  we spent a few more days cleaning up the fridge and the whole kitchen. Every evening, when going to bed, thinking “good job, that’s it, done !” and next morning realizing that there is one more layer of dirt to clean up.

Then we had to clean up our bedroom (sleeping in living room so far), change wallpaper, paint a few stuff. And when the washing machine came, it was so dirty, we she cleaned it up for two entire days. Except it didn’t work when she finally connected it. So we changed it for a new one, and checked it was clean before accepting the deal.

Every time we go out, we check if people throw away something interesting. We picked up a few thing. Most important, a table to eat. She, all by herself, renovated it. Now it looks exactly, or even better, as the 250$ table we saw in shop. Except it costed us less than 40$ and we have four chairs with it.

Basically we she spent three weeks cleaning up and it’s still not quite finished (I need to clean windows one two more times), but at least it’s sanitary. We she cleaned up so well the kitchen that our entire family would be proud of us her. But the point is, now we are settled. We have everything we need and we will soon have everything we want. The flat is nice (and clean) and I like the surrounding. I’m ready for Korean life !

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PS: yeah, somehow I seem to have lower standard than my entire family when it comes to cleanliness. I guess my parents already spent the quota of clean awareness of my generation before I was born …

One week ago, I took a plane and flew all the way back to kindergarten. As a kindergarten boy, I am in permanent need of assistance for every single stuff. I need to ask my guardian to pick what I’m gonna eat, to show me where toilet are, to translate the very few things I want to say and to answers millions of stupid question I have to ask (What is the meaning of these fence shape ? Are all the manhole design the same ? What percentage of Korea country used to be the sea and was filled with a mix of bamboo and earth over the past decade ? Why can’t we drink tap water and why don’t they fix it ? Are all Korean flat the same shape ?). I also get occasionally scolded when I seriously misbehave (ignoring/forgetting some politeness rules).

I can’t even stay at home by myself. I’m attacked by delivery guys (three of them the past two days) who seem even more embarrassed than me when they try to communicate and I barely repeat “I don’t know”. It takes several careful attempt to call a number from our home phone, and I have no idea how to cook whatever I find in the fridge.

I’ve been quite independent rather early in my life, for various reasons beyond my control. Or I could at least make my own choices based on information I gathered by myself. Being back to kindergarten is tough. But I knew what to expect and getting my independence back will be the most difficult thing to do here. Starting with learning the language.

Until then, good luck to my guardian.

After 7 years long long explorer, potato returned home. So many things happened during 7 years. I believe the potato’s got richer inside and rounder outside ;)
How do I feel coming back home? Well, frankly, nothing special at the moment. I’ll see when I get over the jet lag. ;)

Bye bye Neuchatel!

13 Sep morning, I’ve left behind sunny hot Neuchatel and Donald duck mouth cucumber. He was so unhappy to carry my ultra super heavy luggage to the train station on this sunny day so I couldn’t see the smile cucumber before 3 weeks long separation. Even the curry which we had for lunch at the station wasn’t good neither.
That’s good starting for a day :-(

After long vomiting ICN train traveling, I’ve arrived at the airport. I’ve got some kind farewell messages and phone call from my lovely Neuchatel friends in the train. That succeed to make me very happy but fail to prevent getting train sick. Bweeee…I hate ICN :’(
I had to fight against my 3 heavy luggage to get off the train but the olive oil smell curry and the carving train totally messed up my stomach. When I arrived in the station, my hand was shaking so I almost rolled down outside the train with my baggage like a real potato. At the moment, a miracle happened. An english guy jumped to my luggage. He carried them outside the train and ran to the trollies. He brought a trolley with super speed and put all my luggage on it. He even kindly refused getting his 2 francs back for the trolley. And the best part was that he disappeared like a chinese master. @.@ oh…was that the famous english gentleman?

I was little stressed when I pass the scanner because of my heavy backpack (we’re allowed 8kg in the lufthansa plane but I had 17kg in my bag.) and the plane delayed about 20 minutes but everything has passed well. So I jumped up again from the Geneva airport.

Eh…?
A little while later, I saw a lake with familiar shape. Oh, that’s Neuchatel lake :D Shouldn’t I just catch the plane here so I don’t have to take the carving train…
Anyway, I said to hi to all you guys who live near lake Neuchatel, Morat and Bienne. Did you hear me? :) I tried to recognize courtetelle but that wasn’t easy. :P And I definitely saw my husband crying and watching my plane in his office. Oh, me too, darling. I miss you, too. But I didn’t cry for you guys. It might rain then…

Frankfurt

After 1 and half hour flight with small plane (also vomiting) I’ve tossed to Frankfurt. But my stomach didn’t get better…S.O.S
Hum…This airport didn’t have free wifi and my bag was too heavy to go for eye shopping. So I stayed watching ‘Koreans’. Bunch of Korean, they looked like so Korean :P

I had to pretend once more that my 17kg backpack was light as a feather to pass the scanner without being asked for scaling it. But this time, it’s a real plane I mean a plane with free movies, yoohoo ;-)

Mongolian and Chinese sky

What happened to my body. I still got plane sick in this big plane. It never happened before.. :’( So I decided to sleep. But for me, it’s not that easy to fall asleep in the airplane. Well, I had no choice. I had to order some alcohol drinks. ( As you know, in the intercontinental airplane, the alcohol drinks are for free.) Red wine would be effective but there was some risk to get the headache as a bonus. So I ordered Baileys.

Yuaaammm :D Bottom up!

Oh, no. It made me awake. The taste was so good. Ok Ok…red wine. Let’s fall asleep before get the headache. I can do it. So I’ve got a full glass of red wine. The kind cabin crew explained me it’s from France today. The taste was good but nothing happened to me. No sleeping no headache. Was it wine taste water?
Ok Ok, let’s try stronger one then… So I ordered whiskey.
Hum…at this moment, maybe I looked like a alcoholic to the stewardess. She brought me a glass of whiskey like apple juice.

Home sweet home

Anyhow, I slept a little bit while watching the film super 8. In the morning, I was totally exhausted. So even tough I saw awesome Mongolian desert and the Korean west side yellow see from the sky, I totally forgot to take photos. And the stomach situation didn’t improve at all. I left most of breakfast, can you imagine? I left food! That’s serious sickness…

Landing. Cloudy my country. But I don’t have any strength to be happy.

My father was waiting for me at the gate. I haven’t seen him for a year but I feel like I saw him everyday. That’s family, right? :)
By the way, he was watching me with his smart phone.
‘I’m not the Medusa, dad, You can watch my eye, I don’t turn you to stone!’
Technology breaks people’s social skill.

Such a long and tired day.
I hope my cucumber buy me a teleport machine for my next birthday present.

Today’s route

Driving route_Road 138

View Way to Québec 1 in a larger map

Walking route_Vieux Québec

View Way to Québec 1 in a larger map

Road 138

We took 138 national road instead of highway to see the villages. It’s like country side of United states which we saw in the Hollywood films. Single floor buildings, huge trucks (like optimus prime), yellow school buses, big retro style advertisement boards on the road side, a lot of huge fast food drive thru and big houses with wide garden right next to the road.

Québec, Québec !

After 5 hours slow sight seeing driving, we arrived at the Québec city without any problem. Well, KiKi turned off the engine with his knee during driving on the highway but we didn’t die anyway. The GPS was about 30 bucks per day but we used it only to find the house at the end of trip. It’s kind expensive. :(
We’ve rented a apartment from a friend of friend of friend while she was traveling in Europe. Her apt situated just next to the center so it was very convenient for short term tourist like us :) The interesting thing was the living area looked quite old and reminded me 70-80s of Korean suburb. But if you walk about 10mins, it completely change to modern city. It’s also has a lot of mixed style city view with middle age, early 20c and modern buildings, like Montreal. But it was much more pleasant to walk in the Quebec city because it was cleaner than Montreal and there were no homeless.

Around the house

We’ve got the key from the house owner’s neighbor. This kind couple gave us some instruction of the house and the town. It is always so good to contact to native people during traveling even though I couldn’t understand half of conversation. :P They had much stronger accent than Montrealais. And also it seemed they don’t understand well the swiss korean accent neither. So every time, we said something ( it supposed to be French though) each other and smiled. KiKi translated me the Québec French to Swiss French later but not all of them :P

After light dinner, it was almost 5-6pm but we are the curious veggies. So we went out :)

Old Québec

We liked a lot this small and pretty city. It reminded me something about Basel handcraft area but KiKi didn’t agree with me at all. :P
By the way, I don’t know why people recommended us to go more Montreal instead of here. Is it the age? I think we prefer this tidy peaceful place than drunken party area…:P

As KiKi was so curious about the Québec city, we decided to go there for a long weekend. He took a holiday on Friday and we rented a car. It takes about 3 hours driving from Montreal to Québec so we expected to see beautiful view of Canadian country side on the way.

No business in the morning

We rented a car from 9 o’clock so had to get up around 7:30 in the morning. But our body started to adapt the Canadian time and people kept partying in front of our house every night. That meant we were still suffering from lack of sleep. On the way to the rent car shop, we saw people had already started the weekend events such as sports car outdoor exhibition and free chocolate distribution. How come? It’s still Friday, it’s even quite early in the morning…People were so wake up… impossible… (-_-;)

We happily arrived at the rent car office with free chocolate. The office assistant looked so kind with strong Québec accent. (Well, all of them actually sounds very kind with Québec accent.) It seemed a good start of the day. She said even like this.
- Your car is here but we have another car for you. You can take this one if you want. It’s much more economic for fuel than what you chose.
‘Hum? Why not if it’s economic. Wow, they are so kind.’ I was kind of impressed at that moment.
- And you know what? It’s Fiat
‘Fiat? so……what?’ I didn’t get the reason why she put an accent on the FIAT because it’s sort of common car in Switzerland.
- You wanna have a look? It’s so nice car, you will love it.
‘Wait wait. It’s a little too much kindness, something weird.’ At that moment, half sleeping face cucumber asked,
- Is it same price?
She replied
- It’s 30 CAD more expensive per day than what you chose. But you will save a lot moeny for fuel.

Sure. There is no free kindness in a shop. But I started to calculate in the head, ’30CAD more per day…but how much does it cost per day to go Québec…and…plus and…what else…hum…’ It’s too hard in the morning.
- Common guys, you can have a look at the car. It’s Fiat and beautiful. Try to sit inside to decide. The decision is totally up to you.
She disturbed my calculation with kind and cheerful voice. When I finished calculating, we were sitting inside the Fiat outside shop holding a signed contract. And the result of calculation was like this.

We will rent a car for 3 days.

With original choice,
Day 1 : 30 CAD fuel to go.(according to internet fuel calculator)
Day 2 : No driving
Day 3 : 30 CAD fuel to come back + 10-20CAD fuel to visit national park
Total : about 70-80 bucks + original rent.

With Fiat,
Day 1: less than 30 CAD + 30CAD for extra rent fee
Day 2 : 30CAD extra rent fee
Day 3 : less than 30 + 10-20CAD for fuel + 30CAD extra rent fee
Total : Less than 70-80 bucks + original rent + 90CAD extra rent

That means even if the fuel was totally free with Fiat, we would pay minimum 10 bucks more. And of course the fuel was not for free.

I spent a bit more than 3 hours to find the cheapest rent car company and that morning, we had been messed up in 10 minutes. (-_-;) Scary well trained kind people…Frankly, it wasn’t that difficult calculation but I completely failed to remember the fuel price. Morning side effect…I’m gonna ask for 10 bucks to the party people in front of my apartment. It’s all their fault :’(

In the car, I explained my calculation to KiKi but he was like this.

“Oh, is it? That’s shame. But I was too sleepy and she spoke too much…”

What can I say, anyway I failed to remember the fuel estimation in time. Therefore we started our beautiful weekend trip with super cute yellow car.

Save the green planet!

It was a very fine sunny day. I said ‘sunny’, that meant everybody had enough light to watch the road. But they left the street lights on. I thought it happened accidentally but we saw quite often that the street lights turned on that day. That was ironical because the electric poles was made of wood. We thought they used wood for ecological reason so we were impressed. But why don’t they pay attention to turn off the street light on this super sunny day…

To be continue…

I know that you think, we are traveling strangely. Being in the crappy apartment, sightseeing in the supermarket…
But that’s not true, we do some normal traveler’s stuff, too. So here are the evidences. ;)

Nocturnal Veggies

As KiKi works during the day, we go for sightseeing mostly in the evening. Actually, we don’t feel like going out during the day so it fits us. We didn’t expect that hot in June but it’s very heavy and humid in Montreal. It also rains often. We came for the Sun but we are betrayed by him. It is even cold here without the Sun. What a crazy weather! I might say it can beat the temperamental Swiss weather :P

So we decided to go for walking on the 4th day evening in Montreal. It was hot and super humid but we forced ourselves to be a good tourist. Isn’t it too shame to stay in this fantastic(-_-;) apartment all the time?
Sure it is. Go child to the world!

Today’s exploration

View Old port in a larger map

We were even very cool tourists. We could take a subway but decided to walk to see more stuff on the street on this HOT day. And we were rewarded.

‘A squirrel !!!’

That was my shout.
I shouted loudly to make sure everybody on the street notices that I saw a squirrel. KiKi also shout to me ‘Camera, camera!’

I was so in a hurry as the squirrel was awesome fast so couldn’t get any clear shot. But we were very full in the heart with the feeling ‘Ah~ we have a squirrel in the camera memory… :D‘

But apparently, it’s very common here as nobody care at all. They completely ignored it even though it was totally middle of the city with a lot of car around.

And they have very interesting city view. What I want to say is a lot of old buildings and very modern skyscrapers are completely mixed everywhere. We were walking in the old European city 30 second ago and it suddenly changes to futuristic city.

But I couldn’t have much time to get some photos of those interesting view. Because it suddenly got dark and windy almost like tornado.
Oh…This country is also like the other countries. When it’s too much humid, it rains. (-_-;) But we couldn’t catch that simple truth at home so didn’t prepare an umbrella.

Le Vieux-Port (Old Port)

So we gave up to be cool (walking) and got on a subway. After short traveling by old, gloomy, dirty and small subway, we arrived at ‘place d’arme’ station. But when we came out to the up-world, it was raining cats and dogs. I missed so much my huge umbrella which was sleeping in our heavy suitcase :-(

After little waiting inside huge subway station which connects to underground metropolitan, the rain’s got quieter.

The first thing we saw at the old Montreal was the Notre-Dame Basilica. Once upon a time, I believed there was only one Notre-Dame church in the world which is in Paris. But actually, it’s a quite common name for the church. We wanted to look inside, but the church closed at 6pm. And the worst part was to enter this church, we had to pay about 10 bucks. What…the…It was written that we should come on Sunday if we wanna see it for free. Well, we were not that interested in long Catholic mess, so we skipped it. But people say it is one of the most beautiful inside. Maybe we had to attend the mess…But it’s too late! We’re already in Vancouver now :P

It was a very beautiful place but was strangely empty. We don’t know it’s because of the rain or the early season. We will check it out 2 week later (they start school break at 24 June) on sunny day.