It has been a while since I last wrote, but I have a good excuse. I promise.

I’ve moved across the world, almost back to where I started. The start to Japan, Korean, America, Australia or a variety of other destinations.
I am not back in the Netherlands, though I was for 2 days. I’ve moved to Hamburg. I started working for Airbus 4 days ago and they required me to physically be here. So I’ve been busy moving here.

When I heard I was moving here I was excited of course, looked Hamburg up on the internet and started to educate myself. One thing that stood out was the it was 13 degrees here. Quite the difference from the -10 conditions of Seoul, South Korea. Everyone that feels jealous of this, let me put your mind at ease: It was below zero when I arrived and it hasn’t gotten any warmer since then. Snow too. At least I have a river I frequent which is quite pretty this way.

I’ve moved to the section of Hamburg that Airbus is also located at, which means I’m south of the River. Apparently, all the cool kids live north of the river. I can deal with that as I’ve only booked a month at my gasthaus. What I’m having a harder time with are the things the gasthaus doesn’t offer. This includes a washing machine, a freezer and THE INTERNET. This would be manageable if these things were offered in close proximity. This morning I took a 30 minute bus-ride to get access to the  first two. In a country where “having over 20 ms latency is a National disaster” –Some German; I can’t find free wifi in my entire city section. What backward hell is this? I do think I’ve found a laundrette closer to home though, but the combination I used this morning of laundry and café with wifi this morning was kind of nice.

Now, as mentioned I started my work with Airbus this week and I’d tell you about it, but . . .
I signed some kind of non-disclosure agreement, and it was in German. So I haven’t been able to figure out what I can tell you.
What should be OK is the rough location of my office building. Mine is next to the airstrip on site. This means I hear planes take off every hour or so. This includes first flights and stuff. If you’re not an airplane enthusiast this probably sounds like a nuisance, but for those of you that are . . . . well, lets just say that the majority of my colleagues still scoot to the window every hour or so, regardless of how long they’ve worked there.
Also: Stress Engineer on Vertical Tail Planes/Vertical Stabilizer. Something something project management something something composite engineer something something Long range. I’ve yet to get a precise title of what role I fill but there is lots of room for variety in the department apparently.

Anyway, I am currently benefiting from the free wifi at Starbucks for international communication and to help look for a permanent place to stay. I will take recommendations on city districts and affordable rooms if you have them. But for now, my cup is empty and I will stop being such a leech and get on with my first weekend in my new town.

Also, we became those people.

Putting our pet in the Christmas card . . . how low we’ve sunk.

I worked during the concert.  Manning the door during, but a host of other logistic things beforehand. As such I got to see and hear the concert over the video/sound system of the church. As such I only got to take 1 picture. I hope I can add some to the album when I manage to get a hold of other peoples’ photographs.

There was a professional recording at the church and the first CDs have been released. I’m sending some to a couple of people, but if you’re interested in a copy, let me know.

Then there was Christmas dinner. It involved a pumpkin (Oh wait, was that supposed to be for Thanksgiving?)

A pumpkin filled with cheese (who would do such a thing) baked to a fondue style.

Luckily there was also a persimmon pudding.

Which, topped with crème Anglaise, is fabulous.

After that there was coughing, drugs, beds and hot drinks.

And I’d like to end this blog post (because we are those people) with this.

Orion’s dog crate. In which we will transport him somewhere one day.

There was, over this weekend, a “European Christmas Market”. Now, I’ve been to these before and they’re quite fun. You may imagine this:

or

Important to realize though, that this is Korea. There is a christmas market here, it’s just not quite that scale.

What we had instead was this.

Raclette

Dutch stand

8 little stalls, passing off Chili con carne as European (or Christmassy for that matter) and the Dutch saying “Fuck you, we’re doing Sinterklaas instead”.

So, here’s from me. Fijn Sinterklaas gewenst.

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Completely unrelated by everything other than it happening on the same date was the Camarata Music Company’s Chamber Singers’ Christmas concert, or CMCCSCC (That’s a lot of capitalization).

Notable songs include the English version of Shchedryk, one of my favourite Choral numbers. I enjoyed my first exposure to the English version though I think someone should have pushed the lyricist for something more varied.

The start of the concert was good. Toward the end though . . . look at those noobs, you can’t get good volume looking down at your sheets like that, blocking off your windpipe. Almost better off having the audiance participate.

More pictures can be found here.

It’s kind of neat.

Shouldn’t have gone on a Saturday though.

Kind of busy.
The festival was along Cheonggyecheon. For those of us that live here and are familiar with the place, there was a 1 hour queue to get down next to the water and get close up views of what I merely took pictures off from up above.

More Pictures here.

So I want to provide you with some of the things that happened off camera and that can’t really be said with a picture.

Like: “Oh dear LORD, not more fish head stew”
Although . . . .


That was the first fish head stew and those were pictures.
You see, after a year-and-a-half in Korea I still don’t understand most of what is written on the walls of Korean diners. Most of it just doesn’t show up in my little dictionary.

So there was this dish which, on the next table, looked exactly like tofu and noodle stew.
The tofu was tofu, the noodles were fish brain. Hoorah.
Underneath the tofu and fish brain was an assortment of different organ meat aaaaaaaaaaaand fish heads.

What you see on the side there are different Kimchi side-dishes. You may have heard me bitch about kimchi. Kimchi comes in many different varieties wrt season and the like. I like some of them, but the poster child of kimchi is the napa cabbage Kimchi. After 3 days of getting this with every meal my parents were able to accede that it does indeed suck balls.

The problem with this conclusion was that it came too soon. You see, they reached this conclusion while still in Seoul. In Seoul, non-Korean eateries are quite numerous and one can get away from kimchi if one so desires.

We subsequently left Seoul!

Can you guess where this is going?

I was asked to lead my parents to small villages to get away from the Korean Big city™, meanign generic Korean cities which all kind of look the same anyway. Consequently, we ended up here.

I’ll give you a guess what our options were regarding breakfast.
It involved fish guts. Well, it would likely have been fish guts. It’s not like we checked the 8 seafood restaurants if they offered croissants.

Due to that and the only source of coffee being a vending machine we left for the Gyeongju, referred to as museum without walls here, before 8 in the morning and didn’t stop till we found a place that offered coffee and some things Koreans consider rolls.

Been a while, hasn’t it.
Things have been slow, nothing noteworthy to report. Life is good, things are happening, just nothing to write on the internet about. In this age of Twitter this is a strange sentiment, I know.

My job search continues. If you know something, please let me know. And if you think just because it is in Venezuela I won’t be interested well . . . let me know anyway. As my good friend Marco reminded me Libya has some interesting positions open, high-end management even, but I’m afraid there’s some unfortunate history between me and certain Libyans that would make applying for those positions awkward.

In the midst of my frantic job search I was forced to take two weeks off to play shepherd to some clueless tourists.

After seeing Japan to visit me in 2008 and some visits to the States to visit the other child, South Korea was next on the destination list.
Here’s a tip to would-be parents. Make sure your kids leave to all sort of exotic locations so you have a good excuse to go there. To be honest it’s a bit of a shame marrying a French person binds you to your place of residence for the wedding ceremony, otherwise I’d have a nice excuse to invite people to say . . . Tahiti, Machu Pichu or maybe Kilimanjaro.

I’ll see about adding a “Where have I been in Korea” map under a link on the top right but I’ll just mention where we went for now and you’ll just have to google it if you want to know where on this peninsula that is.

If you don’t want to listen to where things are and just watch pictures you can find all uploaded ones here.

We visited some of the sights in Seoul and this is what they look like.

Cheonggyecheon

Jongmyo


Gyeongbokgung


Bukchon Hanok Village



Olympic Park

Before I post pictures of places outside of Seoul, try this for reference.

Outside of Seoul we went to Jeonju.
Jeonju is known for it’s Hanok Village. This is the second Hanok Village so far (and there’ll be a third), it stand for: “Traditional Village” or something.




Next were the Boseong Tea fields



Jinju Fortress where we were just a little bit too early for a nice festival


Busan








Next was Gyeongju, called museum without walls. It currently hosts the world culture expo.



Onwards to Haeinsa temple. Home of the Triptake Koreana, currently celebrating its Millenial.






Worthy of mention is that we spend 1 more day than planned due to running out of cash and country-side banks (even in high tourist areas) sucking balls. It took us 3 hours, 4 towns and 9 banks before we managed to extract cash at a 7/11 (and no, countryside don’t seem to have those either)
A long walk through the hills in Woraksan National Park

Which leaves most of the east coast with Seoraksan, Seokcho and others for next visit. A visit to the DMZ as well is something on every tourists must-do list of course.

My parents made it on to their plane and rest has returned to my house. Much to my dogs chagrin btw, his grandma was really spoiling him.