Welcoming stories in Korea
Seoul station is busy. I am busy, trying to find the right bus stop across a number of platforms, and my joy after suddenly spotting it wears off quickly, as I notice a set of lines spreading from the platform onto a street. I join one of them, fidgeting in the clouds of bus exhaust fumes and clouds of breath made visible in the temperature approaching freezing. I am approaching the limit of my patience, as I cannot wait to sit in a warm bus, filling my empty stomach with a kimchi snack freezing in my pocket. But the patience gods smile at me, when an older Korean gentleman waiting in the same line looks back at me and greets me, distracting me from my kimchi-driven hunger. I employ a smile-and-nod strategy as my Korean language skills are nothing to write home about, but he is really eager to talk, fumbling with his phone to find a translation app, and now we are talking. As soon as I pronounce and repeat the name of Lithuania, he googles it and then proceeds to read Lithuania's page on Wikipedia. He reads it for three or four solid minutes, with the kind of focus I haven't witnessed in a while. When his translation app doesn't take him far enough, he proudly introduces me to a Korean lady in a nearby line - she just arrived today! she is from Lithuania! - and the lady recommends another translation app, he downloads it on the spot, and off we go. He explains that he is studying English, shows me his English homework, confirms that he is a local. I only ask a thing or two, otherwise stepping back and observing this incredible dance of welcoming hospitality and kind curiosity. When I give up hope to board my bus after waiting for almost an hour, I say goodbye to my dedicated line colleague and set off to walk to a different bus stop. There, I finally snack on my chilly kimbap, having realised that eating on buses is not allowed, ready to give up at least a half of it just to get to my guesthouse before the last bits of warmth leave my body.
The evening at the guesthouse is quiet. I am quiet, listening to my Korean host sharing worries about his son’s career and issues that he sees in the Korean society. We talk about elections and demographic issues - it’s a similar story everywhere, after all - and as the conversation moves from global to personal, he reflects on challenges in parenting, wanting the best for children, and that very wish resulting into pressure, making kids struggle. He pours tea slowly, from high up, all his attention focused on it. He observes that the tea is too bitter. We drink the tea anyway. His wife comes back from a cooking class and starts cooking to show what she has learned, serving beautiful egg and bacon breakfast tacos with Korean spices for dinner, as her husband wonders why the hell all Western food is eaten by hands - why can't they use chopsticks? - while I gently challenge him on that as a reluctant representative of all the Western food, as he quotes burgers and pizza and tacos as examples. We talk for hours. Which feels quite different from the usual where's-your-passport-here’s-your-bill type of check-in.
The morning at the guesthouse is sunny. I am sunny, listening to my host's wife expressing deep gratitude to her ancestors for what she has, even though she didn't have much in her childhood and created most of her fortune herself. As she struggled with her health, a cancer that visited her still at the peak of her youth, she focused on the great gifts that she has been given. She says her parents gave her a lot of love. And you can sense that. She says you can lose things, but your health is what matters. We speak for hours as sun floods the room, with light jazz flooding pauses in between of stories. She says they had built the house so that windows would be showered by sunshine, especially in winter. The position of every door and window thought out carefully and deliberately. I feel at home in their house, in its cosy spaciousness, book-covered walls, a piano at a kitchen table - and a separate fridge just for kimchi, I kid you not. She serves a beef seaweed soup, it's a birthday soup, yesterday was their son's birthday, and that's what's served for birthday breakfast. When I ask about the origins of it, her husband replies that this soup is given to women who have just given birth, so that they can regain their strength. And so, it is served on one's birthday. As she places the bowls of soup on the table, she grabs a pair of chopsticks, takes some meet from her husband's bowl, and adds it into mine, smiling conspiratorially. They eat slowly. I eat as slowly as I can, and yet they laugh that I must have been really hungry.
Seoul welcomes me, my eyes full of wonder, I welcome the stories that it shares with me so generously:
Through its graceful temples with giant golden buddhas sitting comfortably on the heated floor, elephant-shaped flower sculptures decorating the entrances to the shrines, the scent of incense melting into crisp November air, candles flickering in the wind, the monks walking slowly towards the lantern-lit gates;
Through its traditional teahouses with floor seating, as well as intricate instructions on how to make a cup of tea - you can pour the water on the lotus tea leaves for up to seven times - while nibbling on a steamed pumpkin rice cake;
Through its colourful wooden palaces and foreigners running around them in the traditional Korean dresses, through restaurants offering bibimbap bowls and street stands baking steamy bungeoppang - red bean paste-filled pastries shaped like fish - that warm your hands when strolling down a road on a cold winter's night, through the grocery stores using cartoon characters to sell anything from cookies to electricity plugs; through an enthusiastic lady sitting next to me on the metro heading to the airport, insisting on helping me create an itinerary for my next visit to Seoul.
The night at the guesthouse is still, I am still, as a secret is unravelled in front of me. This glowing Korean lady, grace at every step, smiles as we sit at a table. "When my husband dies, I'll go to New York, to study. That's my dream", she says.
And all I can do is to welcome her dream, the dream to be the best host possible and the dream to live in New York, to welcome questions and grins, and a quarter of a persimmon gifted straight into my palm, to welcome curiosity and help, the airport worker abandoning her post just to help me find the way, to welcome stories pouring out of every person met, to welcome their worries and secret wishes, to welcome my own imperfect humanity unravelling in these dark chilly streets, around these enlightening warm human beings.
