I have had such terrible experiences with being a “commuter,” in the past, that I had some apprehension about how I’d organized my life, temporarily, around the long commute into Gangnam each day from Suwon, where I’m staying.
But it’s turning out that I actually really like it. I’m sure part of it is that there’s a giant difference between a commute that involves getting in a car and driving for an hour, generally in terrible traffic, and getting into a bus or train and riding for an hour – even if it’s riding standing up. Driving requires concentration and singe-mindedness, whereas riding, one can daydream, doze, read, study….
Some of the worst periods of my life were when I had a driving commute: the hour and fifteen minutes from northwest Philly to Cherry Hill, when I was teaching H.S. in the late 90’s, was truly horrendous, and the hour from Long Beach to Newport Beach in 2005-2006 was almost as bad. Yet I recall actually liking the hour-long commute into West Philly in 1996 when I was in grad school – because I had the option of taking the train in that case, I suspect, and I often did.
Anyway, the commute now, on the bus, is cool. I always assume it will take over an hour, but some mornings, if the timing is right at the bus stop and the traffic on the expressway isn’t terrible, it can be over in 50 minutes. It’s always nice to get a seat – standing on a bus for an hour is pretty uncomfortable, but not unbearable. I can lean on the side of a seat or against a rail or something, listen to my mp3 player, and doze. It’s very cool as the bus plunges through the 3 tunnels through the mountains separating Suwon from Seoul – the last tunnel must be about 2 km long, and as we pop out of that tunnel right into the heart of Seocho-gu with its high-rises and right-angled streets, it feels like arriving in Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel or something.
I love the feeling when I get off the bus at Gangnam-yeok and walk toward the subway entrance. I go into the subway station and through it but I don’t get on the subway – it’s just a convenient way to get across the main Gangnam intersection at Teheran-no (yes, the main east-west street in Gangnam is named after the Iranian capital – it’s kind of as if Park Avenue in NYC was called Teheran Street). Everyone is busily going to work or school or wherever they’re going, and Gangnam has a very different feel than later in the day when people are strolling around shopping or on dates or beginning a long evening of nightclubbing.
The picture shows the pre-dawn light as I arrive at my bus stop at about 7 AM, with that weird Suwon First Church in the distance down an alleyway. Keep in mind that it was about -10 C (15 F) and windy. It’s not an idyllic, gentle dawn.
