Country Folk Go To the Big City

hej all and sundry. Life is good. We have just gotten back from a ride, just a quickie following the Nakdong River for a couple of hours, ‘twas nice indeed.
 
We did something quite unusual yesterday and that was going into Busan. We had been saying, before moving to Gimhae, “How nice to be back near Busan, all of that weiguk stuff on tap, books, wines, cheeses and other groovy stuff”. We have been to Busan now twice in 6 months. One time we were forced to go to immigration to pay a fine for overstaying my visa (on a marriage visa, go figure that one out) and yesterday we went by choice, FINALLY! Not that I have been wanting to go of course, prick of a busy joint it is. There is one thing you must say about Busan. It is tonnes better in theory than in practice. In theory it has wines and cheeses and books and shit. In practice it has lots of people and wines and lots of traffic and cheeses and lots of jammed full subway cars and books and a lot of ignorant whack-jobs and shit.
 
Aaah! Now I’m just being a hard case. BUSAN IS A NICE PLACE (if you like that kind of shit) IT REALLY IS. You can walk home alone and pissed at 3 in the morning with a thousand bucks in your pocket and you know you will all get there in one piece (maybe not through Texas Street though) and there is plenty of gear going on for whatever scene you are into. It has a world class beach, world class restaurants, a world class ‘art house’ film festival “PIFF” (headed up by Wim Wenders “Paris Texas, Himmel Ueber Berlin, Buena Vista Social Club etc” a couple of years ago), a world class sports stadium (2002 world cup), and a world class rock festival Headed up by Slipnot in the recent past. It has big temples, mountains, good pubs and lots of universities. It is a groovy place for sure.
 
How do I get so sidetracked? We went to Busan and went mad on the credit card. It was fun. We spent $170 in the bookstore. I haven’t bought books for soooooooooooo long, I was like a kid in a candy store, I just couldn’t stop. We must have been there for 2 hours. We went to big fatty arsed supermarket and bought some Gorgonzola. We had some for lunch today. Parky thinks I am nuts. “It’s frikin’ mouldy you wingnut” is a more polite version of her summary of Gorgonzola. That of course didn’t stop her from consuming the half of it. For people familiar with Parky’s gourmand nature, this will not surprise you. Olives, salmon in dill, all sorts of goodies were purchased. We went to a western restaurant and had prawn fettuccine alfredo and a wasabi with lime seafood salad. On the way home we got the taxi to pull into a little corner store and I found XXXX. What a gas. We live only about 30kms out of Busan, but you would think we had been in southern Libya for a year for the amount of western gear we come home with.
  
Thanks to Matt and Rachel I have gained a couch and made a little comfy-schmumpfy area for me to sit on the balcony, smoke ciggies, drink wine, read my new books and munch down on Gorgonzola and Spanish green olives.
  
That is it for us at the moment. It may sound a little dull, but it isn’t. we are working our little bums off this summer and it was a nice weekend out with a couple of little luxury thrown in. It was groovy and as I have said so many times before, If You Have Ever Lived Here, You Will Know What I Mean.

Watch out two weeks from today, some really groovy stuff is coming up.