Yesterday I landed in Seoul, and by taxi I came to Suwon where Ajou University is located and where I will live for 39 days of my life. At the moment, it is warm in here with tendency to be hot. For example, last night around 9:30 pm, I read on the street we had 27°C. The humidity is present, as if I was in in Acapulco, but without listening or smelling the ocean. At the moment I am in the adaptation phase, I will let you know how it goes 😉 Amazing planet we have! (with all its differences!)
This first post aims to summarize the journey from Joensuu to Suwon. I constantly marvel myself of the opportunity to use the mobility possibilities of our era.
Let’s see, I left Joensuu on a dry hot day (see photo, 31°C) by train on Thursday 27.06. at 12:17.
At 16:32 I reach Tikkurila, then I took a bus direction to the airport.
In Finland and Germany passengers mostly do self-check-in. This time I checked-in via internet, otherwise I often do it on those blue machines.
My next destination: München, where I had an EXTREMELY important event on Saturday 29.06. In this flight I had a window seat 16F of a A320, it was ok. The person next to me was following the rules very closely in the flight and despite that the aisle was not occupied (it was a line of 3 seats), she did not move to leave the middle sit free. Oh well, the flight is not long, approximately 2:30 hrs.
On Sunday 30.06 I took my flight to Seoul, which took a bit more than 10.30 hrs to cross 8,508 km distance from München.
I needed to take the next photo because it looks as a LAN party isn’t it?
Reaching my destination…. Never have been this far east!
Voilà, I land in Korea. So glad that I know at least one of those languages.
After landing, I looked for the exit. This automatic train took me to customs and then to the outside world 🙂
The electric stairs on the photo utilise a voice to guide visitors and it call my attention the sticker on the floor, which indicates to be careful if you have high-hills or if the lace of your shoes are undone. I haven’t pay attention to this stickers before, I confess.
So spoiled I am with my western european alphabet!
I need to put together this photo with the one I took in Dubai some years ago, it is amazing to look to a “familiar” screen and have NO idea what it says!
Ajou University reserved a taxi to pick me up at the airport. Unfortunately, my Korean language skills are none, so there was no real conversation with the driver. However, hidden with the haze he pointed me out a large bridge, which later we crossed. It seems Samsung build it….
The taxi driver had a lot of ICT gadgets, inclusive the GPS that looked as video game, isn’t it? I particularly got interested with, I suppose, the possibility to pay via RFID.
My first impression is that there are considerable amount of white cars. No surprising the brands more often seen were Kia, Hundai and he busses Daewoo
It is a contrast when one is arriving from the land of Mercedes Benz, BMWs, Volkswagen and Audi, for example. International brands seem to have its local presence strong. I need to pay attention to which car brands are popular in Finland. I am no so certain about this, somehow I have the feeling is a little bit of everything.
However, what I did notice is traffic is a common universal fact in metropolis.
I notice that some cars have an interesting device on a rear…. Something to research what is that for….
Once in my destination, I could stop noticing that high buildings are a landscape constant across all my path, but more about this later.
I will close this post sharing a photo of our world, which I found at the student caffeteria, and shows me a world from another perspective 🙂
