Seoul Fringe Festival in Hongdae

Last week we went to Hongdae, a the suburb around the Hongik University, the university of Fine Arts. It is a special place in Seoul, and here live a big portion of the young artists of Seoul. Although you can find sensibly more tourists and westerners compared to the rest of the city, it keeps that charm given by a mix of old and new, and you can still find a very special crowd.

During our lunchtime, last year, a group of students, maybe not korean (?!) absolutely wanted to shot a photo with us. They were quite funny and many of them had strange very stylised handmade portraits with them. 

We discovered later that the drawings were the famous "10 seconds" portrait made by an industrious (student?) artist there in Hongdae. I have made a movie of two of his performances. Slightly longer then 10 sec, but still remarkable

although not everybody is happy of the result !

The artistic touch is present a bit everywhere.
Many bars and restaurants are have painted front walls

The language barrier is really not a problem when it is time to go to a restaurant...

...as all the details are shown in nearly perfect plastic productions

We found the korean omelettes have an artistic profile here

There are kebabs, and ice-creams.
In the photo one can see a turkish guy creating the largest ice-cream ball that I have ever seen! 

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These weeks in Hongdae there is the Fringe Festival. Street shows, exhibitions, and more. Many artists are invited to exhibit their productions on the street. So we went there...

Doro and Marlen liked a lot the place

Marlen in particular was impressed by this giant cat

And also for pottery...

There are many live concerts. On can see them on thin cushions on the street.

Cool cafes are a breath of fresh air from the Paris Baguette and Paris Croissant, ubiquitous in Seoul

and try something special in Korea, like a place in a garage.

the finished bottels are finally elegantly ordered on the street

However by far the best was the music in the street. Here some great stuff

and an exceptional Bossanova in korean!

Also Latin American influence is strong here

The closing performance was a poetic one

The good night was given by the elegant packing 100 gloves left to try... used to manipulate wooden fire  in Korean Barbecue restaurants

The Ganghwa islands

Three weeks after our arrival in Korea, they assigned us an apartment in the Campus of the University. The campus of the university is a big park without giant blocks at the base of the Gwanak-San mountain. Ah, finally a suitable place to settle in Seoul.

The traffic, the noise, the polluted spring air, full of Asian dust, the big prefabricated tower blocks in Seoul can be unbearable for newcomers.  This is a photo from above. The typical "korean architecture" is on the right-back ...

We had to wait few more days, so we decided to escape from Seoul for a couple of days, just one night, to the islands in the west of the city: the Ganghwa Islands!

We expected something like the Eolian Islands, a lot of nature, wonderful landscapes. Instead, arrived at the bus terminal on the island we found always the same simil-plattenbau... Marlen found a guy with a little rabbit, but we had to run away to catch the bus, Marlen started screaming...

Ok, not an easy start... but we stayed positive and followed the Lonely Planet, which suggested "by far the best place where to stay": a little village called Oepo-Ri. Emm.. this was the best...

That was the best pop-art on the village... a Seagull (a duck?) made of wood

Anyway for the first time we found a nice Love Hotel where to stay (yes! in Korea often there is no alternative to a Love Hotel, but that's the topic of another post).  It had a very original walls and even a nice view! In the end not a bad place. 

Apparently Oepo-Ri is a great destination for groups having great meals based on fish. We arrived immediately after one of such groups...

The day after we did not expect anything. We feared that there was nothing interesting on the islands. Still we decided to follow a loose indication on the guide, about a remote Buddhist temple on the nearby island. Just arrived with a ferry on the other side Marlen found a great surprise. The men with the Rabbit was there again! Marlen was super super happy, and we realised that this was going to be a great day!

      

    

We had to climb the temple. A fantastic place. There were some people there, but all koreans, no foreigners except us. On one side there were hundred of statues of Buddhas. 

 All different! Amazing... 

   

      

And each one with a different personality...

We discovered later that this is a famous temple in Korea. It is called Bomunsa (Boo Moon Saa). You can stay here overnight, and even book your stay through internet (if you read korean!)

In fact Bomunsa is a complex of temples. Marlen got some biscuits from the monks, which diverted her from her spiritual path 

 a giant Buddha was lying inside one of the buildings

in another one there is a permently ongoing buddhist chant

At a certain point we noticed that it was possible again to climb up the mountain. Dorothea went quickly up the stairs

And I took Marlen on my arm, and went up, 

and up... 

...and uuup!

Finally I arrived, exhausted, like it should be on a holy path...

there was a huge wonderful giant Buddha carved in the stone, looking toward the ocean

We discovered later that many people for the new year climb to the top and wait the sunrise. Apparently they give TV show filming them from an helicopter, but I did not find any evidence of that.

On the top we started to understand Korea: wonderful and well hidden secrets are everywhere, it is just a matter of searching them. 

It was time to go back. We took the ferry again, 

and in the few hours left we were just in time to discover that on Ganghwa there were in fact some of the largest Korean Dolmen (which make 40% of the Dolmen in the entire world)!

A long day! Dorothea was very happy between the Dolmen...

but it was time to go back home... 

... three hours traffic!!! 

back in the modern civilization (??!) 

First May in Seoul

Hi!

Many people asked us to create a blog, and this is my first try. 

Let's see if I can make this blog working! 

Few days after we arrived in Seoul, at the end of April, Till came from his tour around Eastern Asia to visit us! We really did not know what to do, where to go, and we were jet-lagged. So, we just started to hang around. It turned out that, we did not think about it, it was the first May, which is actually not so different from 1 May in Europe. So, open air concerts (there was one in this square of the photo here down, but we just missed it!) and, of course, demonstrations around the city. But honestly what impressed us were not so much the demonstrations as the amount of police around the streets of the centre of Seoul! So here follow some photos of the day, 

and some more relaxed photos of our evening, downtown.   

This was the square where the concert was. For the "unexperienced" of Seoul you can notice the contrast between the terrific "Soviet style" building and the temple just on its side... That happens everywhere around the city. 

same square. The tower on the back is one of the symbols of the city, and is of course called "Seoul Tower". It is really a nice place to go, on top of a little mount called Namsan, right in the middle of the city, there is the best view and also the museum of teddy bears! 

Dorothea had a cold that day... and she wanted to experiments some local wears... although we found out later that here they use masks mostly in Spring because of the dust brought by the winds from Asia.

Here they will build a new giant architectural futuristic Plaza, after a project of the Archistar Zaha Hadid  

yes, the channels are not the nicest places in the city, but they are a nice break between the palaces...

and here the police! ... notice the never ending line of policemen... I just could not make a photo with all of them!

another view from the other side of the street

and that is the corner from the top... but it is hard to see the police, it is on the bottom left... we were very high

Dorothea could make a nice photo with the light in the background... please, don't look at my nose!

Finally by night Marlen had some fun jumping over some more modest piece of local architecture 

and a nice korean robot, seemingly similar to the one of the Wizard of Oz, gave us the good night!