Day 66

On the Trip

I might as well publish the story here. Apologies in advance for the lack of photos; they will have to wait until I can access a computer which allows me to use USB, because hostel computers don´t.

The trip has been, basically, cancelled. After a week in Madrid and a few days in Barcelona, I´ve realized that this isn´t the time for such a vacation... I´ve been feeling terribly homesick, partly because it´s been over 16 months since I´ve been home, and also because I just left my second and more recent home, Korea. I thought, while leaving, that I´d feel more ¨at home¨ going to western Europe, but it had the opposite effect... I´ve felt disconnected fully on both fronts, and sad for not having either of the homes or sets of routines that I´ve become accustomed to over the years. I had these intrepid ideas in my mind, of traveling to remote places, spending each night with new faces, and generally going rogue through Europe... but now that I´m here I just miss the people I love, because this is where none of them are. The long and short of it: I´m a god-damned softie. So, after visiting some family in England, then taking a plane back to Korea for a week or two, I will fly home to little old Victoria.

My travel partner and friend, Emily, has decided, albeit reluctantly and cautiously, to salvage much of our planned itinerary on her own, relying on the exceptionally friendly world of hosteling and couchsurfing (.org) for company and fun times. Her decision came as a great relief, as at least a small portion of my guilt from ruining everything was alleviated.

For the money I´ve spent, it´s been an unspeakably bad deal, these 8 days in Spain. It has erased easily several months of wise day-to-day spending decisions and careful budgeting in Korea. But it hasn´t been a total waste.

On Spain, Korea, and Travelling

It has been a new and interesting experience to walk through an array of architecture spanning hundreds, even thousands of years in age. One can see history passing by more vividly, and I imagine, if not sense, a certain solidarity among the nationals derived from this long common history. We in Canada don´t have much of that... Living in Korea and taking this short trip in Spain has clarified just how young Canada is as a nation, and how young and dependant the culture is on foreign influence. You can find traditions elsewhere that are cherished by nearly everyone in a nation, whose details and movements are guarded by an invisible wall against influence and change. It is lovely, and I wish more of these traditions existed back home; they assist in giving strangers a sense of brotherhood and solidarity with each other.

Food in Spain kind of sucks. Well, budget food anyway. You order what appears to be a ham sandwich at one of the millions of deli/bar joints, and what you get (for 4 euros!) is a slice of ham between bread. You want some salt and pepper? Too bad. How about a little mustard and mayo? Hell no. For a couple of euros more, you can get a ¨combinatio¨, which (now for the same price as a full sit-down BBQ dinner with fixings in Korea) buys you a small unseasoned pork chop, some limp fries, and a wad of iceberg lettuce that looks like a handful of used kleenex.

The beer, however, is excellent here, and priced reasonably. Also, great tapas. I only wanted to afford the expensive stuff in small portions, you see, just to get a taste.

On the topic of alcohol, I should mention just how conservative Canada is on the substance, taxing and restricting its purchasing and selling and use so heavily. For a reputationally liberal nation about drugs, ours is peculiarly the opposite about this one. I wonder whether the problem is in the drug or the nation, honestly. Would any drug, really, be dangerous to the health of a society, if it were a society that was in good health to begin with? I imagine that among a truly vital population, some drugs could be incorporated recreationally, while more dangerous ones would simply have no market due to lack of interest. In my own case, as always, a couple of beers are typically plenty.

Do you live alone? Or, do you have your own room, or a bathroom that is only used by one person at a time? If you responded ¨yes¨ to any of the preceding, and you plan in the future to stay at hostels, be prepared to learn about all the idiosyncrasies and strange habits you never knew you had. All those habits that you exercise unknowingly, suddenly become exposed when you´re faced with being behaviorally social in environments where you are not accustomed to it, such as in bedrooms and bathrooms. You feel the need to normalize your habits in order to not stand out, as does everyone else. Everything else about hostels, particularly the prices, is great.

On the Airline Companies

In my own experience over the years, I´ve found that if the tickets are purchased in good time, and you do your part to make it all smooth, so will the airlines most of the time. But as soon as you want to make a change or cancellation, your pockets start to empty out, and quickly. I also have found that when purchasing tickets online, the companies pull out all the stops when it comes to surcharges and subtle manipulation. They offer all kinds of extra services, such as seat selection for a fee (why would that cost money in the first place?), meal options for a fee, and soforth. Finally, as you click past the various options trying your damnedest not to add extra charges by accident, they start adding charges for you! First it´s the online booking fee (which is about the same as the phone or in-person booking fee, and therefore a total load), and then it´s the credit card surcharge (should I have mailed them paper cash to avoid that one?), and then it´s airport fees and fuel surcharges and anything else that can be dreamed up.

In short, airline companies are completely full of shit. They try to convince you that you need to be paying extra money for things that are quite plainly their responsibility to pay for as the company providing you with a service. Hell, add ¨employee salary¨and ¨aircraft maintenance¨to the list of additional fees and you´ve pretty much covered the whole operation without touching the ticket price itself! Imagine if your restaurant bill had the meal price, tip, and ten dollars´s worth of ¨additional charges¨ for the carpet cleaning, dish soap, roof tile maintenance, and the chef´s clean whites? You´d want to chew out the manager for being a grubbing little cheapskate, I bet.

On the Future

I'm writing the remainder of this entry from snowy Leeds, UK. It's a still day and I've had the opportunity to finally meet my new aunt-in-law, Amy, who is a wonderful person through and through! I'll be here for 6 or 7 days, before flying back to Korea briefly to connect with Cholong and have some in-person conversations about our future that absolutely must be had in person, and then I'll be on my way back home around the beginning of February.

But then, after all this time away from Victoria, and now a little bit of time away from Seoul, I feel that Seoul is almost as much a home as is Victoria. I miss Mr. Kim's galbi, I miss Thunder Chicken, I miss my kids at Hwarang elementary, I miss the mountain hikes around the outskirts, and I miss the little life of routines and playfulness that Cholong and I took a year to develop and fall into complete comfort with. In a perfect world, we could take with us all the best experiences of our lives, in a little pack around the shoulder to be opened and relived at any moment. We try our best to create this world, through social networking, music, photography, and any other means possible to keep ourselves connected whether through distances of geography or through time. We are helplessly drifting forward, and as we look back on those sweet memories, it gets harder and harder to grasp their colours and flavours the farther away they become, and every time we do grasp at them, their shapes alter slightly as if they were of clay never fully hardened.

If you were to ask me what the most significant thing I've learned is, since September of 2008, I'd have to say: I've gained a true appreciation for the value of settling down, of finding a partner, of the prospect of having a family, and of giving oneself to another in that deep and utterly vulnerable way which allows for joys not available to those who keep all the responsibility for their happiness in their own hands.