I was having dinner with my friend Peter out in Ilsan last night. We went to the Hoa Binh (Vietnamese Pho seen through a Korean lens, roughly) at La Festa. Talking about various things, I was feeling very patient with my current limbo.
After eating I showed Peter the convenient 하이마트 (Hi-Mart) supermarket that's almost literaly across from his building, that he didn't know was there. I used to shop there when walking back home from work, because it was right on the way and not out of the way like the other supermarkets I knew about.
Peter and I parted ways, and I was walking to Juyeop station to take the subway back into Mapo-gu when I spontaneously decided to ride a bus instead. I stood on the bus-stop island and waited for a bus to go by that had in its destination list a location not too far from where my guesthouse is (near Hapjeong). I ended up hopping on a Number 72 bound for Sinchon. Not super close, but I knew how to get from Sinchon to Hapjeong easily — it's only 2 stops away on the circle line and I've walked it before, too.
I felt very pleased and competent to be able to just get on a bus, at 9 pm on bitterly cold winter night (-13 C), in this vast, alien metropolis. Meaning… it's not so alien to me. I know my way around.
It was a local route, and zigzagged through Ilsan, then Hwajeong, then Susaek. It was about 50 minutes. I listened to my mp3 player and gazed out the window. Life is good.
Sinchon is Seoul's Greenwich Village, basically. Trendy, tons of shopping and nightclubs, a bohemian and university neighborhood. I like walking through there, although it's so "youth oriented" that I sometimes get melancholy.
I took the circle line (green line #2) back to Hapjeong. I'm craving tteokbokki really bad – it's great comfort food when it's cold — but I didn't see any places selling it on the walk back to the guesthouse. Hmm, maybe tomorrow.