Ice bar

The last day was spent shopping some more in Shillim and the COEX mall. In the evening we finally had Korean beef BBQ for dinner, an absolute must for any Korea visit. In the evening we ended up in the sub zero ice bar in Hongdae. Another one of those places I have always wanted to see, but would never have expected in Seoul: a bar entirely made of ice. Walls, decoration, glasses, everything - and minus five degrees inside. Sadly, we were so late that we soon turned out to be the last and only customers. At least this gave us plenty of room for pictures :)

Seoul and more

We spent the next day visiting the demilitarized zone, trying on traditional clothing in Insadong, a quick stop at the SNU and clubbing in the NB club in Gangnam. Another led us to explore the Deoksugung palace, stroll along the Cheonggyecheon stream, look for traditional souveniers in Insadong, have stuffed chicken for dinner, drink Dongdongju in our little traditional bar in Nok-Du and spend the night in the Cocoon club in Hongdae. Yet another day we were lucky enough to visit Samcheongdong with Jerang and her sister Lydia. Thanks to our knowledgable tour guides we got to have a great lunch and a very traditional Korean desert: sweet & warm bean soup. Way better than it sounds. Sadly, we had to part eventually to get the last tour through Biwon (the secret garden). On the way back home we got the chance to witness a Buddhist prayer service in the Jogyesa temple.

Rafting

Something I always wanted to do, but never got around to it, I finally did here in Korea as a group trip: rafting. It was as awesome as one could have wanted. Two days of heavy rain had paid off by raising the water level significantly making the trip quite a bit more exciting than it might have been otherwise. Either way the surrounding nature was absolutely gorgeous. Other than rafting trips the place also offered freshly harvested chilis. Upon returning to Seoul, we toured Namdaemun, Myeong-dong and ended up in building 63 for another drink with a glorius view of the city at night.

Katrin's visit

The next day, the next highlight: Katrin came by to visit Seoul for a week. Sadly, her arrival was accompanied by the heaviest rainfall I had seen in Korea so far - including my last visit and any conferences. It rained when I got up, poured on the way to the airport and did not stop for two days straight. The little creek running past Nok-Du had turned into a raging river on the evening of the first day. So we were forced to tour Seoul indoors. This meant COEX mall and Samsung tower on the first day and Lotte World on the second. Finally, in the afternoon of the second day the skies cleared a bit and we were able to enjoy an amazing view of Seoul from the Gyrodrop tower, before plummeting toward the bottom at a speed that took your breath away. In the evening we walked around Dongdaemun and ended up in Doota for some very late night and early morning shopping.

Colleagues

Highlights continued from day to day as on Monday Christoph & Ann had an 18 hour stop in Seoul on their way back from Australia. We met up in the evening for a Korean BBQ dinner, a quick stroll through the city and finally a drink in the bar of the Samsung tower. Only negative part of the evening was that at the end of the day I had to find out that the bathroom in their youth hostel room made mine here look pretty pathetic...

River cruise & concert

On Sunday I managed to convice everyone to go on a Han river cruise, or rather a 70 minute boat trip. Weather was wonderful, but the view was not a impressive as I had hoped, since it's hard to see past the first row of buildings. The view of Yeouido was already worth the trip, however. And, of course, the boat ride got us closer to the olympic park, where Jeannette & I had tickets for the Lady Gaga concert!!! It was amazing. First, the olympic park was quite nice and the olympic hall turned out to be nicely cooled and rather crowded. Then came a pretty decent Korean singer for 30-45 minutes and finally Lady Gaga. The crowd was in a fantastic mood: jumping, dancing, screaming, singing along and Lady Gaga, well - what can you say? The music is way better than I expected and even her outfits were more crazy than I would have imagined. All in all an awesome show. I hope I'll manage to visit another music event before I leave. Btw: if you are wondering, what happend to my camera, that I can take such awesome pics of Lady Gaga on stage, the answer is: nothing. They were taken by Jeannette :)

More Germans

First off: I have not died nor lost connection to the internet, times were simply a bit busy in the past weeks and I'll try to catch up on the blogging. First thing that happened was that finally some other Germans arrived here, more precisely five DAAD students. Jeannette works in the same group as me and also came to visit the office on her first day. Thereafter, we met the others for some mandu. The next day we toured around Seoul, found cool bathroom signs in the Deoksugung palace, saw the changing of the guard including traditional musicians playing on huge mussel shells. Then we toured the Seoul plaza, the little river and the Insadong area to finally return to Nok-Du for some dak-calbi :)