TechnomadicsVagabonding Europe

After all that preparation and anticipation, the time’s finally arrived to leave this fair land of ours and join the apparent majority of Australia’s young adult population in London (side note: At least four people we know are in London or will be within a couple weeks of us, and more are coming shortly after)!

200906271939A surprisingly frenetic final evening’s work, despite all our earlier preparation, and a couple of hours of atrocious sleep later, we were up and stumbling around blearily ticking off a few final to-do items. My most generous and wonderful parents, who had braved the small hours to see us off, pulled up outside and carried us and our satisfyingly minimal baggage off to the airport. A fairly emotional farewell and it was just Katherine and I, and our shared phobia of missing flights or discovering we’d forgotten some critical thing.

Phobias put to rest, we made it onto the plane with no hassles.

Lots of people on the plane wore face masks, leaving me torn between feeling like maybe there’s something they knew that I didn’t, and feeling like a dirty, filthy potential swine flu carrier. Every sneeze or nose-blow and I was sure I was going to be Quarantined. We were presented with a ‘health questionnaire’ and asked to identify ourselves, our seat number, and put a check mark beside any symptoms we have experienced. I ticked ‘runny nose/sneezing’ and instantly regretted it, envisioning being rugby-tackled out of the disembarking queue and locked up, so I scrawled a hasty explanation (“Hay fever!! This is normal for me!! I promise!“).

Seoul apartment living11 hours of scrunched-up-ness later, with a very no-frills flight – we were deprived of West Wing after the lappy’s batteries ran out – we arrived in Incheon airport, Seoul, South Korea. My imagined dramatic swine-flu-based forced exile from society didn’t come to pass, and we instead took an hour bus ride to our rather swank hotel and headed up to our allotted room in the crowded, over-cheerful ‘glad to be of service‘ elevator.

Peak hour in SeoulFood vouchers in hand, we wandered into the hotel’s restaurant and were baffled to be presented with a plate of limp pasta smeared with tomato sauce. Unsatisfied, we ventured forth into the soupy Seoul air and wandered up and down the street in search of a cultural culinary experience, oscillating between chastely not touching in the fear of offending someone in our cultural ignorance (remembering Thailand), and throwing caution to the winds and just holding hands as usual. With my only international experience being Thailand, it was funny to later realise how different and modern South Korea really is. The whole city gave the impression of having sprung up almost overnight – the oldest building appeared to be only a decade or so old, and everything seemed highly organised (not a birds nest of overhead electrical cables to be seen).

Anyway, 11 hours of sitting in a flying metal tube having caught up with us, plus having a hard time finding anything beside Italian cafés and restaurants (I guess South Koreans are into Italian cuisine in a big way, unless it’s just there for us chicken Westerners), we grabbed a promising looking Italian breadstuff from a friendly local café and retired for the night, in our twin single beds.

The view from our room at Seoul Garden HotelThe next day, we headed down for breakfast. Katherine went the gutsy route and ordered the ‘Korean breakfast’, complete with salted fish and seaweed soup; I chickened out in the guise of providing Katherine with a backup plan in case the Korean stuff fell through, and ordered the ‘American breakfast’ with the eggs. I think Katherine’s was the safer bet, actually – having been regaled by Sarah about the terrifying sugar-laden American cuisine, I was fascinated to be presented with bread that tasted like cake, ‘egg food product’ in a vol-au-vont and yoghurt that tasted exactly like Nerds. Katherine did well, there was some somewhat scary-looking stuff in front of her, but infinitely healthier than mine.

200906281110 So that's what the kids were drawing on tables in school (sculpture at the airport in Seoul) Then we were off again on the bus, and back at the airport. Some last-minute admin, calling the Victorian Ambulance over Skype on the airport wi-fi to cancel my membership, and a little time-killing (I looked up how to say ‘Hello’ in Korean and used it on a few people, and checked my news feeds using my fancy new feed reader software, Fever), then we were back in another flying metal tube heading out over China, Mongolia and Russia.

Another 11 hours, and much buttock-soreness later, we were dropping altitude over a patchwork of fields and sweeping rows of identical little tiled-roofs, and touched down on English tarmac. A surprisingly long trek through the airport to the dreaded Immigration area, followed by a surprisingly short and friendly immigration experience, and we were in London!

Our good friend Tiff, in her infinite generosity and kindness, joined us at the airport (although we missed each other at first, and it took a pay-phone call to find each other!) and herded us onto the train. Being able to just follow Tiff without having to navigate the system ourselves was brilliant, so we could just concentrate on not collapsing under the weight of our luggage, one big hiking pack each on our backs and a smaller (but still heavy!) day pack hanging off our fronts. Turning often required a six-point manoeuvre, and the tube was fairly packed so we were standing for the whole trip. Whew!

We made it eventually to the B&B in the beautiful Primrose Hill area, although by the end I was down to one shaky step every few seconds, or so it felt. We met Carol and Ted, the owners of the beautiful four-storey house, freaking her our slightly when she saw there were three of us (before we explained). So, we dropped our bags in our room upstairs and ordered Dominos delivered. Oh, yeah, that’s the stuff.

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