People, People Everywhere

Before coming over here, I knew I would have to get used to people. Seoul is tightly packed, that's no secret, but I had really yet to experience a good "intimate" moment with numerous other Koreans. I have often been in a large mass, but could easily seperate myself if I wanted to, or I could somehow distance myself from the crowds that Koreans tend to obliviously find themselves in when they turn their focus to their cell phones and MP3 players.

This time Dan and I choose to grin and bear it, as we made our way to the annual fireworks festival at Youido Park, along the banks of the Han River, last weekend. The location is comparable to Vancouver's English Bay or Regina's Wascana Park, nice park along the water, in the center of one of the downtown area's (......to scale in respect to city size...........in case you weren't sure, Seoul is the bigger of the three.........).

The fireworks themselves were comparable to the Symphony of Fire/Celebration of Light in Vancouver every summer. To music and all out. Nice to see.

But this wasn't necessarily what we were going for. What seemed like so much fun to Dan and I, was to be shoulder to shoulder with Koreans for a night. We weren't disappointed! I credit this to the fact that most people rode the subway to the fireworks, ourselves included. It was hilarious. We have had a few moments where the trains we have been on have been tight, but never extremely close like we were on this night. This was because we were shoulder to shoulder from the moment we lined up to get on the train, to the 20 minute ride on the train to the 5 minute walk out of the 5 story station. It was so full, the engineer/driver/operator just flat out skipped a stop cause we were to full. I think this is unheard of, as Koreans will generally find a way to get themselves on a train. Like sucking in heavily when the doors are closing and breathing out when they shut. Of course being the foreigners that we are we found this hilarious, the Korean we were with wanted to get out.

The only reprieve we would get was when we got out of the station, as the streets were closed so there was plenty of room to walk when we were off the trains and surprisingly the park had enough space to walk around to enjoy the fireworks. But we would go through all the same motions when we leave, except the crowd started to form about 200m before we got to the station up until we got through the turnstiles. We didn't do much moving, the crowd did it for us, we just went where we were pushed.

It was a great night. More experiences like this to come, or so I hope!

Kev