South Korea

Arriving from Taiwan, I carried with me the sickness gifted to me by that last evening in that Italian restaurant......what's more, I was leaving a country that in November welcomed you with its 20 degrees. We landed in Seoul.....0 degrees!!! What a shock; just enough time to transfer to the domestic terminal and I set off for my destination: Taegu. Flying over the capital of South Korea, the impression is of an endless city, buildings and structures as far as the eye can see, but unfortunately Seoul was not my destination; I was going to Taegu, an anonymous commercial city at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. So there's nothing exceptional to tell about this experience of mine; all I'm left with are a few impressions of this country so far away.

You sense the state of tension with neighbouring North Korea right from the airports; warplanes, missiles and various armaments are on display in broad daylight to show how hostile relations are. I had expected a far more backward reality, and instead I'm left with the image of a Japan in miniature: technology on every corner, space-age mobile phones, lights and sounds. The food.....how sad; I've never found myself so at a loss to understand what was on the table, and the fear of tasting something wrong.....never left me. In fact the cuisine is largely vegetarian, but the vegetables they offer have an appearance and a taste I had never seen.

There are varieties of products we don't know in Europe and, on top of that.....they're in the habit of eating cloves of garlic and chillies as if it were nothing.....I really don't know how they do it; on the plus side there was the discovery of the best apples I've ever eaten; for want of anything else I must have devoured a whole crate of big, green, juicy Korean apples in four days; they told me this is a famous production area and that they export them all over Asia. Once the professional matters were dealt with, half a day was left, in which my Korean supplier took me to a nearby temple which, according to him, was very important. A staircase with thousands of steps opened up before me.....we climbed for almost an hour and visited the Pulguska Temple.

The Japan-Korea 2002 World Cup had ended a few months earlier, but my Korean friends cheerfully reminded me of their victory over Italy, and their national pride swept me away without my being able to put up any resistance!!