Seoul is a fascinating city. Each part, each suburb, is devoted to a particular need. Myeongdong has designer clothes, Chungmuro is the place for analogue cameras, Itaewon is the centre for foreigners where you can find Western groceries and the Hard Rock Cafe. Each place has its own flavour, unique in the Seoul sprawl. There are few chain stores - Starbucks and the local Kimbap Heaven make appearances in most suburbs, but mostly it is as far from the dull English high street as you can get. I'd never realised how bland British towns have become until I saw Seoul.
At first it takes some getting used to. It's impossible to go to a mall and pick up everything you need from camera film to clothes to sewing needles. Your day must be carefully planned with a comprehensive shopping list and a subway map to hand. However it's started to become second nature for me - I know where I can find everything, and in each place there's an unimaginable range of whatever it is you desire - if one shop asks too high a price, you turn around and there's another for you to try.
On Saturday, I needed wool. Yes, I have indeed started to knit! My room is filled with half-finished hats and scarves and notes for future patterns to try out. Unfortunately, the huge shopping area close to Paju doesn't contain a single haberdashery or fabric store, so when I run out of wool, it means a day in Seoul. Wool is sold in the Dongdaemun area, in a squat grey building devoted to all things crafty.
The entrance area is filled with tailors' shops, the shiny grey suit material adored by Korean businessmen filling shelves from floor to ceiling. Keep going and you come to the buttons and lace. I've been here once before with a friend, but it's impossible to really know this place, and even though the last time I memorised the route to the wool section, I still inexplicably find myself suddenly staring down corridors of fur and rabbit tails. Turning a corner only takes me to the sewing section where men hunch over sewing machines in their tiny stalls, the walls made of threads and fabric. The clack clack of the machines follows me as I search for some stairs - the only thing I'm sure of is that the yarn section is in the basement, so I need to go down. I finally find some, but they lead me not to the piles of wool I'm hoping for, but some kind of upholstery section. I keep thinking I'm getting close, seeing wool down at the end of the tunnel, but it turns out to be threads or crochet supplies, and I can't find the familiar stalls I shopped at last time. Suddenly, I turn around, and there it is: the stall that sells expensive but irresistable yarns, handmade in Southern Asia. My mind mentally rearranges itself and I understand exactly where I am. Shopping can commence.
It's quite difficult to shop because, despite being fairly first-world-ish in general, Koreans like to haggle. I struggle to haggle. So shopkeepers either love me for accepting the first offer, or hate me for just walking off without even asking for a discount. At least I now know the numbers so I can ask "Olmayo?" ("how much?") and understand the response. And occasionally I drum up the courage to complain in a whiney voice "Bisayo!" - it's too much! Usually the shopkeepers are so amused at my Korean that they drop the price by a couple of thousand Won, which makes me ever so proud. Sometimes they call to their friends busily knitting in the back, presumably saying "Will you listen to this rich foreigner, thinks she can haggle! With me! The cheek!", after which they turn to me, and laugh until I apologise and skulk off down the narrow alley...
My second-favourite stall is owned by a gentleman who is eating his lunch when I arrive. He jumps up to help me match a piece of wool from an unfinished project. The last time I was here with Andrea, we were trying to use Korean numbers, but he, being Korean and therefore naturally over-helpful, decided to use Western numbers. Unfortunately, his mind was ahead of him and he started spouting Spanish at us... Interesting to meet someone here who's learned Spanish - high school language classes usually consist of English, Japanese and Chinese. This time he smiles at me and goes straight into English.
Cheerfully laden with shopping bags, I leave the building, stopping at my favourite fruit stall in the whole of Korea, where you pick your bowl of naartjies and interrupt the seller, who's always playing a checkers-like game with a friend round the side. Judging by the exhortations not to push and to "line nicely", it's also pretty popular with everybody else who passes by.
Meanwhile, Korea has been getting pretty damn cold lately, and nowhere more so than little old Paju, lying in the middle of a wind channel that apparently directs Siberian winds south. The ponds are iced over and it snows every few days, although nothing's settling yet. Unfortunately, English Village is designed for maximum discomfort, so all those drainage-free areas that in summer became dams to be crossed only in wellies, are now scary ice patches in winter. We wake up most mornings to thick fog.
Yes, that is the sun in the photo on the right... Apparently this is still the run-up to Real Winter - I'm grateful for my Australian Christmas, but dreading, absolutely dreading, coming back to bone-chilling weather...
The entrance area is filled with tailors' shops, the shiny grey suit material adored by Korean businessmen filling shelves from floor to ceiling. Keep going and you come to the buttons and lace. I've been here once before with a friend, but it's impossible to really know this place, and even though the last time I memorised the route to the wool section, I still inexplicably find myself suddenly staring down corridors of fur and rabbit tails. Turning a corner only takes me to the sewing section where men hunch over sewing machines in their tiny stalls, the walls made of threads and fabric. The clack clack of the machines follows me as I search for some stairs - the only thing I'm sure of is that the yarn section is in the basement, so I need to go down. I finally find some, but they lead me not to the piles of wool I'm hoping for, but some kind of upholstery section. I keep thinking I'm getting close, seeing wool down at the end of the tunnel, but it turns out to be threads or crochet supplies, and I can't find the familiar stalls I shopped at last time. Suddenly, I turn around, and there it is: the stall that sells expensive but irresistable yarns, handmade in Southern Asia. My mind mentally rearranges itself and I understand exactly where I am. Shopping can commence.
It's quite difficult to shop because, despite being fairly first-world-ish in general, Koreans like to haggle. I struggle to haggle. So shopkeepers either love me for accepting the first offer, or hate me for just walking off without even asking for a discount. At least I now know the numbers so I can ask "Olmayo?" ("how much?") and understand the response. And occasionally I drum up the courage to complain in a whiney voice "Bisayo!" - it's too much! Usually the shopkeepers are so amused at my Korean that they drop the price by a couple of thousand Won, which makes me ever so proud. Sometimes they call to their friends busily knitting in the back, presumably saying "Will you listen to this rich foreigner, thinks she can haggle! With me! The cheek!", after which they turn to me, and laugh until I apologise and skulk off down the narrow alley...
My second-favourite stall is owned by a gentleman who is eating his lunch when I arrive. He jumps up to help me match a piece of wool from an unfinished project. The last time I was here with Andrea, we were trying to use Korean numbers, but he, being Korean and therefore naturally over-helpful, decided to use Western numbers. Unfortunately, his mind was ahead of him and he started spouting Spanish at us... Interesting to meet someone here who's learned Spanish - high school language classes usually consist of English, Japanese and Chinese. This time he smiles at me and goes straight into English.
Cheerfully laden with shopping bags, I leave the building, stopping at my favourite fruit stall in the whole of Korea, where you pick your bowl of naartjies and interrupt the seller, who's always playing a checkers-like game with a friend round the side. Judging by the exhortations not to push and to "line nicely", it's also pretty popular with everybody else who passes by.
Meanwhile, Korea has been getting pretty damn cold lately, and nowhere more so than little old Paju, lying in the middle of a wind channel that apparently directs Siberian winds south. The ponds are iced over and it snows every few days, although nothing's settling yet. Unfortunately, English Village is designed for maximum discomfort, so all those drainage-free areas that in summer became dams to be crossed only in wellies, are now scary ice patches in winter. We wake up most mornings to thick fog.
Yes, that is the sun in the photo on the right... Apparently this is still the run-up to Real Winter - I'm grateful for my Australian Christmas, but dreading, absolutely dreading, coming back to bone-chilling weather...
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