Subway Adventures

A Modern Asian Dragon

Probably the thing the scared me the most about coming to Korea was having to use public transport. How was I going to get around when I couldn't understand or read anything? Or talk to anybody??? Plus I'd heard all those stories about people being so tightly packed into the trains that other people are hired to push more people in ... and then on the night we arrived we were taken home partly via subway. Which was fine, because there was someone else to read the maps and signs and show us all where to go. However once we were 'pushed out of the proverbial nest' and sent to our schools we were on our own. Yes I have a lovely flatmate who has shown and explained many many things to me (and I always have more questions) but I can't expect her to shepherd me around the subway for the rest of my time in Korea.

So last Thursday I decided it was time to slay my dragon and conquor the subway on my own. Therefore just like St George I set out with money for the fare, representing treasure with which to distract the dragon and a map in place of a sword to do the slaying. Here of course the analogy breaks down, because normally St George would be a man setting out to rescue a fair madain, while in my case I was doing my own rescuing. So maybe I should say St Georgina set out to tame the dragon, because I don't actually want to destroy the subway, just learn to ride it safely.

The Seoul Subway System Map aka St Georgina's Sword

I can happily report that the dragon has been tamed and the door to a fabulous wealth of exploration and adventure has been opened to me. (Don't you just love mythological analogies?) Sunday actually turned out to be amazingly uneventful. I caught the bus to the subway station, transferred to the subway, travelled a big loop through a couple of dozen stations and arrived back at my point of origin with much imagined fanfare and back patting and a complete lack of misadventure.

On the journey I  brought a lovely broach as a souvenir of my taming the Asian Dragon, chatted with a man from Bangladesh for a few stations (he has been here for six months and is studying Korean), and purchased a watermelon from a roadside stall - which has since been turned into sorbet - and very delicious it was too!!

Since then I have been out in public a few more times, and have discovered a couple of things:

1. I have yet to see a bus or train that comes close to the stuffing stories described to me before I came to Korea. In fact to be quite truthful the buses and trains I caught when going to high school in Auckland were much more crowded. However if I ever experience otherwise I will let you all know.

2. I am discovering a tendency to feel quite isolated when out on the subway on my own due to the fact that I can't talk to anybody. I have noticed that this has been resulting in me trying to talk to anybody who doesn't look Korean - foreigners are after all rather obvious here. I've had some interesting conversations. But Sunday reminded me about those old instructions about not talking to strangers when a man asked for my phone number as our conversation was ending - I smiled sweetly and declined to give it to him. Korea is turning out to be full of new experiences ... lol. Thinking that I am just going to have to learn Korean!!!!!