Food Court Love

Earlier this year, when Shane and I speculated life in Korea, we never imagined what a food haven it would be. Cheap street food on every corner, Korean traditional restaurants, foreign food eateries, and cafes by the dozen leave us with more food choices than we can possibly attempt to try. Yet another of the options is a food court, found in most larger grocery or department stores. After a long day of hiking left us no desire to wash our own dishes, we stopped into this food court at Home Plus:

Korean food courts aren't like the average mall food court in America; you won't find Auntie Anne's, Taco Bell Express, or Orange Julius. What you will find is an inexpensive, quick, adequately tasty meal, with tons of choices ranging from Korean favorites to pizza and hamburgers. 

Hiking Geumgang Park to the South Gate

Two steps off the cable car that brought us halfway up the mountain in Geumgang park in Busan, we realize this sprawling city is even more sprawling than previously suspected. Looking down, we see tiny buildings and bridges and metro tracks. Looking around ourselves, it's hard to remember we're in the middle of the city at all. 


Multitudinous paths meander off in opposite directions from the upper loading dock. Ahead, high schoolers sit on boulders, killing their digestive systems with ramyeon and Mountain Dew. Old men sit at plastic tables, their drink of choice makgeolli-- a traditional rice wine. A steeply descending trail lined with battered and faded lanterns guides hikers to one of the many temples tucked in the park. 


We choose yet another path off to the right. Fifteen minutes of walking delivers us to a modern looking temple.  We see buddhas carved into the rocks behind the building, staring serenely at nothing and everything. Huge kimchi pots flank side patio. A man removes his shoes and goes inside. Shane can see a prayer session and an altar. Amidst these traditional elements, an air conditioner, a satellite dish, and a Range Rover remind us that few things remained untouched by modernity. 


We return to the main platform area, and start up the trail toward the South Gate. Sometimes, we feel like we've lost the right way to get there, but then we see families on the trail and are reassured. We pass tiny kitchens serving hot food at plastic tent covered tables. I stop at the worst smelling outhouse I have ever experienced and try to balance over the squatter style toilet. This is easily the worst moment of the day. 


We hike further past a rambunctious group of men playing volley-sock, a game that combines volleyball and soccer on what looks like a small tennis court. More restaurants, even this high up. We're baffled as to how they bring in their inventory each day. A few more feet up our question is partially answered as we pass a couple of cabbage gardens, still thriving this late into November this high up the mountain. 

Finally, we arrive at the South Gate of Geumjeong Sanseong Fortress, built to help protect the city in 1703. All that effort went into such a beautiful structure for not a lot of payoff-- a sign tells us that the fortress fell into disuse because it was too large to maintain. Besides that, by the time the Fortress was finished, the Japanese and Mongol invasions had ended (until the 20th century anyway). The roof of the gate is painted beautifully in vibrant greens, reds, and pale yellows. The walls run seventeen kilometers around, so the East, West, and North gates will wait for another day. We begin our descent, this time taking the paved path. When the path starts to incline, we sit and rest for a few minutes, enjoying the fall solitude before returning to the squeeze of the city.                        

Drinkin' German, Rockin' Bulgarian, Livin' Korean

Onstage a Bulgarian band rocks out a mix of American, Korean, and Eastern European jams. Friends tell me they play here 364 nights a year. I can't read the group’s name, but I’m already a big fan.

A chilly November Saturday night, and Shane and I are at the HurShimChung Brauhaus, underneath the elegant Hotel Nong Shim. We join friends at a table at the far end of the ginormous beer hall. Most of the group are cast members from the Busan Night Live show a few weeks back. They've already ordered a growler and German-esque sausage plate. A couple hundred rowdy Koreans populate the rest of the room. It’s nice to see this side of the Korean personality, so far removed from the stoic faces on the subway. 

We sit and we drink. The beer is strong and refreshing. Servers dressed in dirndls and lederhosen hurry by. We order Pilsner and Hefewiezen and another sausage and sauerkraut plate. We talk politics, we talk comedy, we talk books, and we laugh loudly and often. 

As the night wears on, the beer starts working, and we start singing. We sing "It's a Beautiful Life," many renditions of the Korean birthday song, and, begrudgingly, "YMCA". I even recognize a poppy version of "Arirang," an old Korean folk song my kindergarten kiddos love to sing. Fathers dance with daughters, women dance with sisters. After we've spent enough money, we stumble our separate ways just in time to catch the last train home. Bauhaus HurShimChung is an out of country experience in our own little city. 

Convenience Store Raid Series: Let's Get Crunky

When foodies talk Korean cuisine, traditional dishes like kimchi, bibimbap, tteokbokki, and gimbap are mentioned. Deservedly so, as these Korean dishes are highly underrated and all too unknown in the western diet. 

We’re pushing all that aside and taking the low brow approach in a series we’re calling Convenience Store Raid. We’re after the cheap plastic bottled drinks and foil wrapped foods from the mini-marts plunked every hundred yards down the street. 

First installment: the Crunky Bar, made by (you guessed it) corporate behemoth Lotte. After the Crunky kept catching our eyes on every shelf, Shane and I decided it would be fun to buy every Crunky variety in the store.

The Crunky is like a much better version of the Nestle Crunch Bar. Crunky features the same puffed rice scattered in milk chocolate that the Crunch Bar has, but Crunky’s puffed rice has a toasted taste that makes Crunky a divine choice for milk chocolate lovers. Our resounding favorite variety was Premium Crunky, a tiramisu flavored, less crispy style. Actually, all the other types of the candy bar-- Standard Crunky, Individually Wrapped Crunky, Cube Crunky, and Fancy Wrapped Crunky-- tasted exactly the same. Brilliant marketing to sell the same product in a bunch of different shapes. 

Oh Crunky. We’ll be back for you.

Taking the Cable Car

Sometimes it's hard to work up enough zeal to spend a precious weekend afternoon physically working your body. From time to time, you just want to take the easy way out, lean back, and savor the view. Still, at other times, a good, long workout is in order.

On this particular Saturday Shane and I did both. Between walking to Geumgang Park and hiking even further up from the cable car's unloading dock located 1300 meters up Mount Geumjeong, we got in four hours of hiking. But we skipped the most grueling length of the mountain by riding the cable car.

After entering Geumgang, we paid our ₩ 6,000 each, waited in line with a lovely Korean family who informed us their toddler was terrified of Shane, and hopped in the car.

While my white knuckles strangled the car's handlebars, Shane snapped away with the camera. The view was phenomenal. 

We meandered around the top of the mountain for a few blissful hours before heading down the cable car at sunset.

 

Busan glowed.