Oops, as the lectures have started, I actually have to invest some time to keep this blog alive!
So, besides the fun activities I’ve done with the other international students and our Korean buddies, and besides the lectures that have started on Monday, I’ve managed to spend a few days doing sightseeing in Seoul. We start off with some main attractions (which are also the ones most crowded by tourists):
Gyeongbokgung Palace is one of the five palaces contructed under the Joseon Dynasty. A really big area with several beautifully restored buildings for the royal family, ceremonies and staff members, and some green space aswell. Besides the historical information you get when booking a guide, you mainly stare at the buildings, find them beautiful (or not, that’s up to your preference), and walk to the other buildings through some gardens. Entry is free if wearing a Hanbok (traditional Korean dress)!
Cheonggyecheon is a popular recreation space in the heart of the city center. A small stream that was left to dry out in order to build new highways in the last century, The Government of Seoul started a controversial project to reinstall the stream and to convert its surroundings into a public recreation space. Removing streets to pave the way for the refurbished stream, it helped the surrounding areas to reduce the amount of traffic, to reduce the temperature and to convert into popular urban areas. It’s fun to walk there, and with its 11km it is quite long, too!
N Seoul Tower: another very touristy attraction, the television tower of Seoul is located at the summit of Namsam Mountain, right the city center. I only show a picture of the tower itself (and the underlying temples of consume), as you’ll find much more stunning pictures of the view from the Tower on the web, when compared to the photos my mobile phone can produce. For me, walking through Namsan park all the way up to the tower was the actual highlight, as I walked along the former city walls of Seoul and its trails.
Walking along the city wall is a highlight in itself, too. A big part of the 18km that once enclosed the city of Hanyang is still existent and can be discovered walking along in several green spaces and nature parks. And even most of the parts that are not present anymore are labeled as visible on the left side and decorated with a recreational area around
While the Hangang river flowing through Seoul is nothing more than a big, brown-colored stream, its shores are almost entirely covered by recreational spaces for the Seoulites and are definitely to be considered a highlight of Seoul on their own. Depending on the Park you’re currently relaxing in, different attractions are offered – bike paths and rental sites, family gardens, camping sites, fountains, fitness devices, sports fields, fishing shores or even water ski courses and motorboat rentals!
Apart from the sights and my endless walks through the Hangang parks, not everything I experienced and experience when spending time in the city fits my expectations. While my image of Seoul as a never-sleeping, advertisement-filled and overly blinking megapolis has proven itself to be true, the streets in the city center are far less crowded than I would expect, especially on weekends (Subway line 2 does tend to get so full that you have to press yourself in, but that’s the expcetion). Furthermore, the city is VERY clean compared to every bigger city I’ve been to so far (with the exception of Hamburg’s HafenCity, because nobody lives there). The picture below shows a typical Metro station in the city center, and even though there are like two trash cans in every station, those underground areas are much cleaner than every other subway station I’ve seen in any other country. Finally, public transport is unbelievably cheap here. A single-direction base ticket is less than 1€, and the price did not rise above 2€ when changing lines twice as well as passing some 30 stations! Bus prices are similar, and even Taxis are available at a reasonable price if you’re heading home with friends in the night (around 9€ for 10km through Seoul at 2:30 AM – the subways stop running at midnight!).
So, all in all I like the city very much! Quite some stuff to see, quite some stuff to do, very clean, cheap transport and many green spaces. However, car traffic is still omnipresent, even at night – I did not sleep through a night without earplugs yet. Also, when walking next to such a car-polluted street, you can actually feel the poison in the air, I’m curious how the air’s gonna be in winter. But that I’ll present another time…