7 April 2019
By special request
Exploring Daejeon station and the underground malls
Due to requests from my mother in the comments, tonights photos feature shops and people and also a sunset.
I decided to head back to the station area, knowing that there were about 20 restaurants in there that would be happy to seat a sad lonely diner. I was about to select somewhere to eat, which I noticed the whole sky was pink.
I made a detour out the back of the station, a mistake, as there was nothing there. By the time I took a couple of photos of what little I could find there and headed back to the more picturesque side, the sunset was gone. The beauty of smog is fleeting, lasts about 6 and half minutes, then its just annoying and sickening.
My dinner then took a really really long time to arrive, I pointed at a picture, not really fussed too much about what it was, and the grandma taking my order obliged. I sat down and waited, 10 minutes passed, and a half crazy looking almost a midget dude came over to me ranting and raving. I had no idea who he was, but he starts yelling PORK? PORK?
Say what?
I was really confused at this random stranger, I was getting ready to stab him with a metal chopstick. I looked over from where I had ordered and saw grandma waving and looking worried. The guy who was just yelling pork over and over now pointed at a menu and yelled pork, and I realised he must work in the restaurant. He must also think I am Jewish or a muslim and cant eat pork? I said, OK pork! And he said, beef beef? pointing elsewhere on the menu. I looked mad at him now and slowly said, Pork o.k.
On the far side of the station, there was a nice drain, with flowers, blossoms, and a whole heap of parked cars? I worked out this is for insurance purposes. If you want a new car, park it here, and hope for a flash flood.
As mentioned above, the sunset was great, but it was on the far side of where I was, here are some buildings, in the glass you can see a reflection of the beautiful smogset.
My dinner, its pork I think. At some point a non Korean has obviously come to this place and gone insane because they were served pork. Either that or the local propaganda jesus station is popularisng the idea that Americans (clearly I am one to all Koreans) will die if they eat pork, due to inferior digestion powers.
This was a surprise, I came out of the station and thought, wow, everyone must be lining up for last minute tickets home or something. But no, its the breadline! For people not familiar with depression era history, its a line of poor people waiting for free food. You cant quite see it here, but theres a guy on the ground who got in a fight and lost. Melbourne has similar to this I guess, a lot more trucks and a less orderly line, but probably more people in total, I suspect in Daejeon this is THE (one and only) free food for poor people line.
After getting my free food, I headed down into the underground shopping malls. There was no great spot to take a km long shot of a corridor, but they are genuinely a km or so long, in multiple directions. So there you go.
If you have seen a bunch of Asian kids lined up out the front of foot locker in Australia, they are Korean. In Korea, they are also Korean, and shoe shops are everywhere. The only hobby more popular than hiking in Korea is shoe collecting. A funny contrast to the breadline shot above.
I headed back under full motion video roof, currently playing advertisements.
The rubbish thing is quite strange. Every pillar under the video roof, which is by all accounts the star attraction of Daejeon, has an area for placing big bags or rubbish. And then every spot has a poor person who won the fight to stake out their spot going through the rubbish. So there you go, the way to get a great recycling outcome (Korea leads the world by some measures) is to leave the rubbish proudly on display in popular areas and then have enough poor people to sift through it constantly. Problem. Solved.
Here is just another street of shops, enjoy.
This dude was advertising for a live fish eating restaurant. you get a small fish tank on your table and a pair of tongs to catch your own fish, which you then eat while its still alive. They are quite small, so its a real skill if you can swallow one live without chewing to get a nice full feeling in your stomach.
Last shot tonight, a real actual game of tetris occurring on the roof. I saw the person playing it at the information booth thing advertising the great wonder of the Daejeon animated roof. Tomorrow - back to Seoul.