Long time no real content! But this is going to change now.
The last weeks, everyday unfolded itself just as described earlier. This means, university stuff during the week and fun stuff at the evenings and weekends. Let me give you an insight on what kind of stuff filled my days:
Everland!
A giant theme park and actually my first ever theme park to visit! For around 28000 Won (~21€), you could pretty much ride all the rollercoasters, water attractions etc., however we weren’t the only ones to do this. Although we cleverly avoided the longest queue times, we still waited for 45 mins on average per attraction (it was Hangeul day, after all). Was still worth the 40 min bus ride from Gangnam though, I finally did my first rollercoaster with loopings!
Jimjilbang! (aka Korean spa/sauna)
So this place is special in itself. We have been to Dragon Hill Spa in Seoul, which is the best-known resort of its kind. While this actually meant that there were quite a lot of non-Seoulites, it also meant seven stores of wellness (fully available only to those willing to pay a good amount for massages, body scrubs etc.). But even for the basic customers, there was quite something for us to discover and experience! To get a full experience, we decided to stay during the night, from 9PM to 9AM.
On the 1st floor, there was this giant hall which acted as a hallway to the different saunas and as a mixed-gender sleeping room. It also hosted some televisions, massage chairs and even a convenience store for those who can not give up on candy/beer/cooked eggs during their wellness stay. The saunas actually were to be entered with clothes and ranged from 35°C (with a special earthy scent) up to 55°C, with a special cold room at -5°C being a complementary service.
On the 5th floor, there was the men’s zone, including locker rooms, a shower area, hot and cold bath zones and a non-dry sauna. There, people were running around naked, as this floor was to men’s only (women were to be found on the 3rd floor).
On the 6th floor, the men’s sleeping room was overcrowded already when I looked for a place to sleep at 3AM. After trying it in the 35°C sauna for an hour, I decided to take a shower followed by some baths (because sweaty af). In a less fequented area of the shower/bath zone (also leading to the 6th floor), I discovered some heated rock beds and tried them out, letting my body dry up on the pleasantly warm and smooth surface. Result: Although I only slept for three hours, I was fit enough to fully participate in the following four hours of ultimate frisbee training!
Going out!
yep, I finally visited some pubs and clubs in the three most known night life areas of Seoul (Hongdae, Gangnam and Itaewon), but I’ll cover that topic as soon as I’ve done both clubbing as well as pub-hopping in all of those areas. Until then two pics!
Gaming!
Some of the Korean buddies managed to set up League of Legends matches between the different buddy groups, as a result we trained twice last week for our match vs. group 5 yesterday. Was very fun to play competitively in a team, even more so as our matches were very exciting due to our teams being equally strong in our best-of-three series, both game 1 and 2 were longer than 40 minutes!
Fish market!
For some reason, Noryangjin fish market is pretty known around Korea and the world. We decided to take a look (and some smells) at it. We ordered some fish there, which resulted in the fish being prepared directly in front of us! While it was no trivial task to watch the lady precisely hammer behind the eye to paralyze the fish (leading the fish to bleed heavily before being cut open), we all at least tried some pieces of the fish afterwards. Didn’t taste like much, but certainly was the freshest fish I ever ate! And BTW, also had my first experience with sushi these days, was certainly awesome!
…and more!
Okay, this has to be enough content for now. Next time I’ll hopefully be able to talk about my midterms and Jeju island. Bye!