Beautiful Daejeon

Well, this all happened two weeks ago Sunday when I decided to get out of Seosan for a day and visit the fifth largest city of Korea. The destination was Daejeon, located close to the center of the country, and home to booming tech and research industries.

I put the trip together pretty shortly before I left, so it wasn't really thoroughly planned. I had done reading on wikipedia, etc. about the city and read about a large park called Expo Park where an international exposition was held in 1993. Daejeon Museum of Art is also on the Expo Park grounds, so I figured this was good enough to kill a few hours.

I got to Daejeon at about noon, and this was when I encountered a problem. I arrived at the bus terminal in the city and found absolutely no information about how to get to the park in my native language. I walked the area around the bus terminal for a while and didn't see anything, then asked a random guy in the bus station hoping he spoke English. Luckily, he spoke a little bit and pointed me in a somewhat right direction.

His directions were to walk down the street and turn right to find a bus, so I walked down there and didn't see much. Luckily again, I found a tourist hotel and talked to the desk worker. He showed me a bus map, told me which bus numbers would go to the park, and also where the bus stop was.

So this was another misdirection because none of the buses that went to the stop I was at where on the list he gave me. Bummer. This was when I decided to just hail a taxi, and I was on my way.

I made it the park grounds, and it felt deserted. I went to a restaurant that staffed five people, and was one of four people eating there at 1:30 in the afternoon. The grounds were interesting because all of the giant monuments, but the fact that they were nearly deserted was my favorite part.

Wandering around the empty grounds gave me the feeling that this would be a great location for a zombie movie. I would walk around the various landmarks being chased by slow moving flesh hunting villains. Just in time, I would grab one of the umbrellas pictured above and use it as an implement to bludgeon the demons in the head.

I would then find this deserted tram to ride to safety, having to throw the zombies off of the tram who had found a way to get on.

Anyway, zombie movie aside, the park was a nice place. One of my favorite parts was Expo Bridge, which I had to walk over to get to the art museum. This city did some smart planning by putting a running track and park right next to the river, making for a very pleasant walk.

I walked over the bridge and then past this giant roof structure, and found that the planner of the park lined up the roof, the bridge, and Hanbit Tower (part of the grounds). Thanks for the nice picture, guy!

Right behind that ever so great picture was a massive paved area which was most likely a parking lot during the expo. Now it's an area used to rent out bikes and motor powered vehicles to small children. It was fun to watch, so I picked up a corn dog and a beer and chilled out there, drinking beer in public in front of children.

The area near the museum was nice, with this fountain walkway. It was a brisk fall afternoon, so I had to time my walk to miss the spray.

The art museum was OK, there was a giant space-themed exhibit going on which was a little bland. They did have these cool tiled space invaders put in random spots throughout the museum.

This was a giant room devoted to a projection screen and an image of a rock floating up and down above the sea bed. I decided to become a part of this art with my silhouette.

This was one where you walk in front of a camera, and you can see yourself on a screen with images of you being staggered behind you at a few frames per second. I tried to get a picture of it, but it's tough to try to pose while holding the camera and taking a picture of the screen.

It did end up being a nice day, Daejeon had already seen many of its trees change colors.

I decided to talk all the way back to the bus station from the park, which had been a ten or so minute taxi ride. It made for a nice trip, also because I walked on many side streets and found a lot of great restaurant mascots, so expect a mascot post in the near future.

One of the strangest things about this city was that in my five or so hours I spent there, I didn't see a single other non-Korean person. I figured I would see some since the city has about a million and a half people and there should theoretically be a lot. I guess I just didn't visit the areas they hang out in.