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.
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!
Donald duck version cucumber – reference photo on the Mont blanc
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…
Les 3 lacs from the sky. (Lac Neuchatel, Morat and Bienne)
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
Square and X shape village near Frankfurt.
Such a green city! Isn’t it an old city? How come it’s so well arranged like that.
The airport surrounded by forest.
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.
The beautiful sunset somewhere on the Russian sky.
Lufthansa’s the generous quantity of whiskey. (I’ve already drunken 2 big sip before taking photo.)
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.
Cloudy Inchon airport.
But I still like this airport. Clean, modern and fast service.
Broken social skill
Such a long and tired day.
I hope my cucumber buy me a teleport machine for my next birthday present.
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.
Jumping squirrel. That’s right. They have squirrels everywhere. This one was so black :)
Funny benches. You can sit kind of face to face with next person.
A church next to road. Most of churches in Quebec state had mat silver roof. It’s very shinny from far away.
Inside of the church. It was renovating like Montreal one, so we could enter. I liked the color but decoration was something…
…kiddy. :P
The retro style is fashion now but they didn’t mean to follow the fashion. It’s just a real old ad.
The power of ad. Even the very old one worked well. We crossed the road to buy a coke. By the way, the crossing line was almost removed. But it seemed they don’t fix it often. What is done is done.
We’ve got a coke. It had weird quantity, 591ml. Who chose this number?
Our cute bumble bee. Our expensive rent car actually had a quite cool appearance so many people waved hand or stretched their neck to watch it.
Canadian McDonald mark has a maple leaf on it.
St.Laurent river side. Peaceful. But the color wasn’t that blue, more like dark brown.
A church, we couldn’t enter.
Another church, we couldn’t enter.
Opening time for church. They open it for public everyday except Friday. So today.
Well, it doesn’t matter. Its outside was cool anyway (-_-; )
My big hand honey.
Oh, my first mirage! The road wasn’t wet and didn’t have grass around the car. It’s just reflection.
Yellow school bus. It’s like a movie >.<
Once again, what is done is done. We quite often see broken buildings. It seemed that once they build it, they don’t do anything more :P
Fake KFC? No, it’s KFC in French, Poulet Frit Kentucky.
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.
Residential area next to the center. The road was very narrow so most of them were one way. It seemed traffic laws were very strict as every single car took at least 30sec pause at the intersection to be careful.
It’s the apartment where we slept. I liked here because something reminded me when I was young.
Clothesline with pulley. Many house share the garden and the clothesline. Nostalgic…
That’s so typical structure at this area. All buildings had wooden extension structure such as balcony, terrace and stairs behind the building.
Our apartment also had this wooden extension. It was large balcony and they were growing some tomatoes and berries.
Just don’t. :P
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 :)
It’s sort of messy every utility pole with advertisements. It seemed they had never removed the old ads because the paper layer was almost 5-10cm thick.
It’s a advertisement for an art atelier on utility pole. What an unique idea! :)
It’s the atelier. The upper part is aluminum cut. It looked so sharp…We might be able to use it to prevent the thieves not only to decorate.
KiKi, the point :D
Eglise(church) Saint-Jean Baptiste. As you can guess this time, we couldn’t enter. But actually, it looked like people use this more on social purpose. Since there were a lot of cigarette butts, beer cans and liquid trail in front of the main gate.
Hardware shop show window
Old Québec
Cozy restaurant area
Gate to the old Quebec
Rue Saint-Jean. It’s inside the gate. A lot of pretty but touristic restaurants and pubs here.
A very sad thing happened. We were too early for the holiday season so we missed free show, ‘Circus du soleil’. But we could be consoled by a native American guy who was doing one man circus in the street. Honestly, he was quite good :)
Jump and hit the box! You will get a mushroom :D
Tada~ It’s the famous ‘Chateau Frontenac’. Frankly, it’s so cool~
Down hill near the port. It’s so lovely old street. It didn’t look like people really live there anymore, they were souvenir shops, restaurants and cafés. It’s tourist attraction but we didn’t mind to be attracted because it was so pretty.
It could be the old market place.
A romantic café. I wouldn’t mind to pay even 7 bucks only for cup of tea. I’d love to sit here but it was closed :(
KiKi’s appreciation mode again. But he doesn’t know he was under the toilet :D
A ferry at the port.
The very well drawn mural.
I have no idea what it was. It’s built between two building on narrow space.
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
