South Korea Day 7: Hotteokk and How To Eat A Fish Cake.

The train stations nearest us are built to accommodate the crowds that flood into the stadiums for big baseball games. On a cold, rainy weekend the train station was empty.

Very shiny, but empty.

We went to look at Duryu Park which sat right alongside the E-World theme park. I can't tell you what E-world was like, theme parks not being high on my list of desired activities.  It did have a fairytale castle at the entry point, which was guarded by a large rabbit. There was definitely a rabbit theme in Daegu, the details of which totally escaped me.

The blossoms were fading, drifting like snow from the trees with every passing breeze. In their place the gardens burst with buds and tulips were in full bloom throughout the city, including at the foot of the rabbit.

All the trees were brightly dressed in a thousand shades of green.  The active geriatrics were out in force, jogging and walking on all the paths and industriously using all the exercise equipment throughout the park.  I'm in awe of them and aspire to be like them when I grow up.  It's rude to take photos of them though, so you'll just have to imagine the scene for yourself.

When the active geriatrics had done enough activating they gathered at a pagoda where they drank coffee and played board games.  The board games (from what I could see similar to Othello, but more complicated) were played with intense concentration and attracted clusters of loud and invested onlookers.

Ready for the throng.

I walked over the hill in the middle of the park. It was a steep hill. Active geriatrics easily overtook me on the way up. 

On a hilltop gazebo, an ancient wisteria slowly came to life after a winter hibernation.

Just starting to bloom.

Down at Seongdangmot Pond a stone bridge reached across waterlilies to a small islandwon which lay a shrine, tucked amongst a copse of trees.

We walked around the lake.

By the time we finished the circumnavigation it was time to head back to the train, past the monument to the Student Independence Movement.

Cold rain fell and I liberated my Tokyo umbrella. Cold wind blew my Tokyo umbrella inside out. The wind and I battled our way to the subway station. I developed a skilled knack of jerking my umbrella back to rightsidedness every time the wind took the upper hand. I was wet by the time I got to the subway station where I immediately bought a very impractical but much more robust pink polka-dotted umbrella, at which point the rain stopped. 

We ordered fish cakes and hotteokk at a street stall. The vendor gave us lots of information and a bowl of dipping sauce before shaking her head in exasperation and giving us our fish cakes in a bowl to take away.*

The fish cakes weren't anything special but the hotteokk, oh my, that was a different story! My tastebuds died and went to heaven, and I dedicated myself there and then to eating hotteokk every day for the remainder of my time in South Korea.

We stopped briefly at Dongdaegu train station and considered buying our train tickets for tomorrow's ride to Seoul, but it was cold and we were wet and our hotel room had a heated floor waiting for our tired feet. "Ah what the heck, we'll go in early and get the tickets then." 

Look at us, getting all relaxed about catching South Korean intercity trains.

* I figured it out. You eat the fish cakes off the skewer, direct from the vat of boiling water. Then you just pay per skewer when you're finished. That explains the clusters of people in front of fishcake stalls, waving skewers around and gobbling fish cakes. And if you have a picture in your head of a fried fish patty type thing, you are so wrong.

That's a fish cake. It's usually threaded on a skewer in a big vat of watery, boiling soup. She chopped it up in a bowl for us. It's slightly slimy and tastes vaguely of fish, but it's hot which was nice on a cold day.