lunch in Daegu

I carried out my threat and bussed out to Daegu for a celebratory lunch yesterday. It turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The first bit of confusion happened while I was on my way to the Express Bus Terminal in the morning; I had a 9:20 a.m. bus to East Daegu to catch. It had occurred to me that I needed to go to West Daegu because that's where the If Hotel and the Chinese restaurant were. West Daegu to is closer to the Nakdong River and the Four Rivers trail; East Daegu abuts the "buffer" cities of Gyeongju, Yeongcheon, and Gyeongsan, with Pohang and Ulsan hard by the ocean. But when I got to the bus terminal to get my ticket, I saw an option for East Daegu but not for West Daegu. I shrugged and hit East Daegu, and when the ticket was printed, it told me that the bus boarding spot was "7, 8," i.e., two possible berths. I got to the boarding spot and saw a bus in Berth 7; the bored-looking driver waved me aboard, and I scanned my ticket's QR code, as is all the rage these days. This turned out to be the right bus, and away we went. It was a gloomy morning, and as we drove to Daegu, the gloom followed us. Most of the peninsula must have been shrouded under a thick blanket of cloud. About 3.5 hours later, we first arrived at the West Daegu Express Bus Terminal, a small building. I mentally debated whether to get off there, and later on, I realized that that's what I should've done. Instead, following my native laziness, I stayed aboard the bus and ended up at the East Daegu Express Bus Terminal, which is also linked up with a subway station as well as with the bullet-train (KTX) station.

Not wanting to pay through the nose for a cab ride all the way to the other side of the city, I flipped on Naver and found the subway station, taking it west to Jincheon (True Stream?) Station. Naver then recommended a bus ride, but at that point, it was after 1 p.m., and I was in fuck-it mode, so I grabbed the first cab and told the cabbie to drive to the If Hotel since that's across the parking lot from the resto (called, you will remember, Ahn Shi Seong which might translate as Peace[ful] City Fortress).

Here's a from-inside-the-cab pic of Jincheon Station. There's some kind of pottery festival/exhibition going on:

Steps leading underground to Jincheon Station. The Papago translator says 간토기 is an "earthenware machine." Strange. I wonder whether the term is related to 도자기, a generic term for pottery.

I had ridden most of the way west in the subway; Line 1 was predictably crowded at the Saturday lunch hour, emptying out when we had about five or six more stops to go. As we trundled along, my mind drifted back a few years to news of the horrible Daegu subway fire of 2003. Audio from the disaster was hard to listen to; I remember pleading voices still calmly using the grammatical polite forms despite the flames ("문 열어 주세요" as opposed to "Open the fucking door!"). A crazed lunatic, Kim Dae-han, had brought two large containers of accelerant with him in an attempt to kill himself in a crowded place (crazy and selfish); he ended up lighting the accelerant, but he somehow survived his own suicide attempt, and nearly 200 people died because of him. The Wikipedia entry about how the fire managed to kill so many people is itself a horrific read; as with so many disasters, this one was preventable but for a nightmarish series of errors. Kim, who fled the burning subway car along with a crowd of people, ended up dying in prison a year later, in 2004.

Those dark thoughts aside, I popped out of the subway, tromped up to the street level (no escalators), caught the cab, and got out when we reached the If Hotel. As I walked across the parking lot, I snapped a picture of the nearby park, with its maeng-ggongi/맹꽁이 frog sculptures guarding one entrance:

Maeng-ggongi frogs are local to the Daegu area, I think; there are tons of such sculptures honoring them.

And there's my beloved resto, straight ahead.

Ahn Shi Seong, and the characters do literally say "Peace(ful) City Fortress."

I like the sinuous dragon, but "restauran" needs some help.

It was around 2:30 p.m. by the time I sat down to order, and there was an impressive lunchtime crowd even at that late hour. I got the same gganpoonggi/깐풍기 chicken and fried mandu that I'd had last time.

I broke down and got what I had last time.

First closeup of the chicken. (Compare with last year's.)

Nice, crunchy mandu.

They give you a little plate on which to place chicken pieces... but why?

Another chicken-y closeup.

The meal was almost like last time, but maybe because there was such a crowd, the chicken wasn't as crunchy as it had been before. One of the servers recognized me from months ago, when I had sung the restaurant's praises while I was on my way out. This time, I simply thanked the staff and said I'd eaten well. While the food was still damn good, it had fallen somewhat short of the mythological status I had accorded it in my mind. (At the same time, I don't think I'm misremembering that the chicken was somewhat crunchier last year.) I had come in through the back door, and I went out through the front door. The same red-on-yellow advertisements for specials were up (compare with last fall).

I noticed that, next door, there was a Japanese-style restaurant with the impressive name of Sea God (Hae Shin, 해신, 海神), a very Jeju- or east-coast-sounding name:

The vertical sign at the right edge of the parking lot advertises mulhoe (a sashimi dish), dae bangeo (amberjack or yellowtail), and that everything comes from nature.

I decided I wanted to walk over to the Nakdong River and back, but I ran up against the freeway, and according to Naver Map, I would need to go way out of my way to get to the riverside bike path. The effort didn't seem worth it on a full stomach, so I lumber/waddled back to the If Hotel's parking lot, where I knew there was a public toilet. Got there right as the urge to download was becoming cataclysmic, and since the only sit-down toilet was a handicapped one, I rushed on in and did my business with a kingly dignity (actually, I was heaving, gasping, and sweating). Once my affairs had been settled, I emerged victorious and caught a cab to the ramshackle little West Daegu Express Bus Terminal.

It was a little after 4:00 p.m., and I used the machine to buy a ticket for the 5:00 p.m. bus to Seoul. This is where I discovered that the buses from the large terminals all leave ruthlessly on time, but at the smaller terminals, things run a little more loosely. My bus didn't show up until about 5:20 p.m. In the meantime, I had a chance to loiter in the terminal's parking lot, which got me staring at the nearest subway station and taxi stand:

In Daegu, narrow arches indicate rail lines for smaller trains.

"West Daegu Express Bus Terminal."

Manpyeong Station, 4:41 p.m.

The above-photographed station is called Manpyeong, which could mean "satirical cartoon" or "ten thousand [i.e., myriad] peace." Or something else entirely.

At 5:20 p.m., the bus arrived; I boarded it just as a gentle drizzle was starting, and the ride back to Seoul was a blur: I slept most of the way back, waking myself when I snored too loudly. From the Express Bus Terminal, I took a cab back to my place, feeling too lazy for the subway.

In all, it was a worthwhile extravagance despite the gganpoonggi's being less crunchy this time around. But it felt a little too generous, undeserved, and premature. It's the sort of celebration that should've been reserved for sometime in the future, for after I'll have managed to tromp up the apartment staircase three times in a row.

Tomorrow, the real work begins: I'll be back to stair-tromping. I like the "30-day project" format enough that I'll be following a monthly schedule that will see me adding one new thing per month until I have a full schedule. This month, I'll add distance walking (with stair work when it's too cold or rainy); in March, I'll start adding an item per month from a whole list of activities: heavy clubs, kettlebells, dumbbells, animal flow, bodyweight calisthenics, and elastic-band work.

This might almost merit a separate blog.