The Country Mice

Handed the camera over to the Princess yesterday whilst hurtling through the countryside en route to Gumi from Seoul and what follows are her impressions through the lens of her mother’s camera. Always interesting to see what captures the imagination of a ten-year-old.

Whenever I’ve had the great opportunity to travel I always think of the great green green outdoors as the true essence of where I’m visiting. The old, the unpainted, the outdated, the general homeyness and ordinariness of the world — that’s what I like to see. Others I know take their inspiration from the energy of the urban landscape, the newness, the noise, the happenings. That’s good too. But I prefer the slower pace.

When we arrived in Gumi yesterday we stuffed our not-so-stuffed (“More room for souvenirs,” I bribed, in the hope of teaching them to ‘pack light’) suitcases into some train station lockers and traipsed around the streets surrounding the station.

Pics are needed for sure but it was a pleasure to see little piles of little dried fish, big piles of big dried octopi, neat stacks of equally sized silvery cuttlefish and icy mounds of chilled piscine something or other.

We saw tofu, nori, skewered tripe (I think), pork hocks, peaches, burdock, lotus root — amidst the brooms, kitchen supplies, socks and underwear.

The market was rather quiet — all eyes were on the foreigners — but no cries of “You buy? You buy? I give you good price.” Quite unlike my memories of other Asian countries visited. Mostly all we received were shy smiles and gentle nods of encouragement as we sniffed, poked and wondered.

The Princess had her blondish head patted, her cheeks caressed and finally, a bag of purple sweet potatoes pressed into her hands. What a lousy time to not know the words for thank you.

Later as we wandered about looking for supper we came upon several outdoor stalls, older women sitting on the steps, encouraging us to come in. We wandered in to one smiling woman’s space while we incomprehensively attempted to ask what there was to eat. She cleverly handed us the menu. We uncleverly could not read Korean. She pointed at the words, spelling them out letter by letter. We were idiots. It was clear.

Finally stumbled upon another place, greeting by smiling men, equally at a loss to communicate with our useless selves, but already serving a table of swarthy Portuguese men who loudly joked about something and laughed over their piles of food. If they’d had success why wouldn’t we?

So I pointed to their food-laden table, then pointed to our bare one. “Ah!” said the man. Comprehension dawned on us all. A few minutes later he returned with a chopped onion pancake covered with slices of mystery something or other and two types of kimchi. Then he brought two bottles of Coca-Cola, two bottles of Hite beer, two raisin-studded buns and a package of vanilla wafer cookies. We ate, it was delicious. We paid — 25,000 Won for the whole deal — that’s $25 — that’s $5 per person. For the 81-year-old who decided to buy dinner, it was the deal of the millennium.

Then I looked at the swarthy folks’ table — they had a simmering vat of mixed meat, cellophane noodles, rice and vegetables. So much for my great communication skills. But the onion pancake was pbly the best idea in the end as the three veg-heads would have been less than thrilled with the cast iron pot of body parts…

My two mice have been great little troopers and the 81-year-old has been a model for his generation — I’m immodestly proud of them all!

Thanks for reading — glad to have someone who understands me!

xo L