In the Netherlands

Hi Gramma,

I got into Amsterdam on Thursday (left Wednesday night), and haven't had much internet access since then.  The last couple days I spent in Amsterdam, and visited the van Gogh museum as well as a photography and a film museum.  It's actually pretty warm here, well, sort of warm, in the 40s and maybe even low 50s.  Apparently the worst of winter has passed, so there's no one skating on the canals.

Glad to hear you didn't get too much snow.  We got a little bit of snow on Tuesday in DC, maybe an inch, but it was almost all melted by the next day.

Today I came to Nunspeet, the small town where we'll be staying while we're here.  I walked around a bit and had a nice dinner, at a Louisiana-style steak and ribs place, no less.  At first I thought it must be a joke, but the food was actually really good, and the portions were huge, which was a nice change, especially since I hadn't eaten much since breakfast.

Aside from a few restaurants, pretty much all stores are closed on Sundays, including grocery stores.  Seems like the only place stores weren't closed was Amsterdam; I actually went to one before I caught the train this morning and picked up some basics: bread, cereal, milk, juice, and dried sausages, so that there'd be something to eat for breakfast tomorrow, and on the off-chance that loads of kimchi hadn't been packed.  Not that I had to worry about that; this evening the Koreans arrived, with a lot of kimchi and ramen packed in with the set and costumes.  It's kind of funny, and smelly, but it was also a good thing, because it meant they were able to put together a half-decent meal for supper.  

Tomorrow we have a load-in day at our first theater, which should be nice, let us ease back into the process instead of having to rush on Tuesday.  Still, there's going to be plenty to do, so I'd better get to bed.  Hope you are well.

Love,

Colin

Basqueland travels

[02:04] friend: I heard you saw Anne and Chris in Paris
[02:04] friend: I want to hear all about your trip in France
[02:04] Me: yeah, stayed with them Sunday night
[02:04] friend: that must have been so nice!
[02:04] Me: it was
[02:05] friend: 정의 was so jealous when I saw him yesterday
[02:05] Me: :-/ I got over there around 8, we had a nice dinner, talked about our tour, Avignon, technical difficulties, the students they've had stay at their place
[02:05] Me: it was really nice
[02:06] Me: should write them a thank-you note...
[02:06] friend: they are the nicest people!
[02:07] Me: yeah
[02:07] Me: the trip was nice too
[02:08] Me: after spending the day in Paris after dropping everyone else off, I took the night train to Biarriz
[02:08] Me: spent the morning wandering around there, then took a bus to Bilbao
[02:08] friend: oh nice! did you go to the Guggenheim?
[02:08] Me: yes
[02:08] Me: it was cool
[02:09] Me: some interesting exhibits...
[02:09] friend: the building is the best bit though
[02:09] friend: I thought
[02:09] Me: yeah, it is pretty cool
[02:10] Me: I liked the room with all the Serra pieces, but hate that they're simplified to "visual art"
[02:10] Me: they create such interesting spaces that it's a shame you can't do any more than look at them
[02:11] Me: and you can get lots of different resonant frequencies out of the spaces, it was fun humming there
[02:12] Me: then on the second floor was an exhibition by a Chinese artist who does most of his work with gunpowder, either using it in controlled explosions to make drawings, or using it to blow stuff up in interesting ways...
[02:12] Me: he designed the fireworks for the opening ceremonies in Beijing...
[02:13] Me: and on the one hand, it's kind of cool, and on the other he's getting paid large amounts of money to blow stuff up...
[02:13] Me: I would gladly do that
[02:13] friend: hehe
[02:13] friend: I can imagine
[02:13] friend: did you stay overnight in Bilbao?
[02:14] Me: well, I couchsurfed with someone who lived in a village about 30 km SW of Bilbao
[02:15] Me: I stayed with her Monday night, we went into Bilbao on Tuesday and walked around the old city, ate lunch by going to 4 or 5 different bars and having pinxos (which are small things of food, usually an extremely tasty assortment of things on top of a small slice of bread)
[02:16] Me: then she went home, I went to the Guggenheim, and then caught a bus down to Vitoria-Gasteiz, where I couchsurfed with someone else
[02:17] Me: she was originally German, but met her husband, who is Spanish, in Mexico, where they did theater together for a while
[02:17] Me: he's a clown
[02:17] friend: wow - they sound really interesting. What's that city like? I've never been there
[02:18] Me: that was a really nice visit
[02:18] Me: we went to the city on Wednesday, and it's a bit more Spanish feeling...
[02:18] Me: drier, looks more like what I imagined Spain to look like...
[02:19] Me: very nice old city, and it has the most green space per person of anywhere in Spain
[02:19] friend: is it on the coast?
[02:19] Me: the new city is planned, and nice, but really it's pretty bland
[02:19] Me: no, it's south, towards the center of Spain
[02:20] Me: not at all central, just more in that direction
[02:20] Me: other side of the mountains that ring Bilbao
[02:20] Me: the old city was pretty cool
[02:20] Me: and we did a tour of the cathedral, which was very interesting
[02:21] Me: it was redesigned and added on to by successive kings, with the result that it was structurally unsound
[02:21] Me: so, around ten years ago they started a serious restoration to make it useable
[02:21] friend: sounds really interesting! are you going to post photos on your blog?
[02:21] friend: do you still write your blog?
[02:21] Me: and have turned the restoration into a tourist thing
[02:21] Me: sort of
[02:22] Me: I will post photos, I do intend to write this up as a blog post
[02:22] friend: great - the old city must have been wonderful, I was disappointed by Bilbao, other than the Guggenheim, os it must have been great to see seomthing more authentic
[02:23] friend: what did you do after that?
[02:23] Me: let's see...
[02:23] Me: that evening I went back to Bilbao, and stayed with person I was with on Monday
[02:23] Me: then Thursday I spent the afternoon in San Sebastian
[02:24] Me: it was a perfect day, and so it was particularly beautiful
[02:24] Me: except for the (well-deserved) over-abundance of college-age tourists
[02:25] friend: Oh I've been to San Sebastian too - I liked it
[02:25] Me: yeah, it was really nice, especially after I found somewhere to leave my bags
[02:25] Me: and delicious pinxos
[02:26] Me: that evening I headed up towards Bayonne, in France
[02:26] Me: arrived around 9:30 or 10
[02:27] Me: I hadn't made any plans there, although I was planning to meet up with a group of couchsurfers from Madrid who were supposed to be going up that night
[02:27] Me: so I spent the first hour or so trying to find somewhere with wifi
[02:28] Me: eventually I gave up and just opened my computer, and amazingly found an open, good signal
[02:28] Me: but the group had pushed back their arrival to the next day
[02:28] Me: I tried to find some other CSers in the area, but they were all coming the next day too
[02:29] Me: (there was a big Basque festival, an annual thing, in Bayonne from the 29th to the 2nd)
[02:29] Me: so that was interesting...
[02:30] Me: did I tell you about that before?
[02:30] friend: a little. I used to spend all my summers in St Jean de Luz, which is quite close to Bayonne and Biarritz, so I remember those Basque festivals very well.
[02:31] Me: oh, cool
[02:31] Me: yeah...
[02:32] Me: by the time I got there it was mostly drunken revelry, with a few concerts scattered around
[02:33] Me: sort of wanted to find a group to hang out with, then join and crash with, but couldn't find people who seemed like I would mesh with very well
[02:33] Me: so I wandered around for 4 hours or so
[02:33] Me: all the hotels were full, of course
[02:34] friend: so what did you do?
[02:34] Me: eventually, around 2am, I saw a place that I'd missed the first time around, a bar/cafe being run by people from a little fair trade shop
[02:35] Me: and thought, these are probably people who would accept me
[02:35] Me: so, after a little dithering, I went up and ordered a glass of wine
[02:36] Me: and then stayed at the bar and eventually started talking to one of the people who was there, a very attractive woman who had studied some English, although we mostly spoke French, but I think she was married and had kids...
[02:36] Me: anyway, we started talking, then she introduced me to some of the other people there, and we all hung out until they had to shut down at 3
[02:37] Me: then I helped them pack up and said good night and as I was walking away one guy came up and asked if I had someplace to stay
[02:37] Me: and I said no, so he invited me over to his place
[02:37] friend: lucky
[02:37] friend: fantastic
[02:37] Me: yeah
[02:38] Me: I knew I'd found the right people once I saw them
[02:38] Me: anyway, we went back to his place, with his roommate and a few other people, and then we woke up a friend and we all stayed up drinking and talking until 5
[02:39] Me: then people left and I went to sleep
[02:40] friend: you're so lucky, that's the perfect travel experience
[02:40] Me: my host had to wake up at 9:30 the next morning to clean up the house, so I did too, but that was ok
[02:40] Me: it really was
[02:40] friend: so how long did you stay in Bayonne for?
[02:40] Me: I spent the next day splitting my time between volunteering at the cafe and going out to see performances and stuff
[02:40] Me: and then I left on the night train for Paris
[02:41] Me: so the next morning I showed up on the doorstep of my friend who I'd stayed with 2 years ago, after Edinburgh
[02:42] Me: she was expecting me, sort of
[02:42] Me: but she hadn't checked her text messages for a few days, and so hadn't realized that I'd be arriving around 9 on Saturday morning
[02:43] Me: it worked out fine though
[02:43] friend: oh I remember you talking about her - the american who marreid a french guy, right?
[02:43] Me: um...
[02:43] Me: no...
[02:43] Me: who would that be?...
[02:43] Me: this was a couchsurfer
[02:44] Me: that sounds familiar, but I can't think who that would be...
[02:44] friend: oh okay - I thought you had a friend who met a french guy at unviersity and then moved to paris and studied theatre there
[02:45] Me: oh, right
[02:45] Me: Natalie
[02:45] Me: she's in DC now
[02:45] friend: ah okay
[02:45] Me: but they'll probably be moving to Maine in the next year or so
[02:45] friend: who was the girl who showed 강연 round Paris?
[02:45] Me: that was Natalie
[02:46] Me: Laure, who I stayed with on Saturday, I met through couchsurfing after it turned out that I could only stay with Natalie for a couple days
[02:47] friend: ah okay
[02:47] friend: did you have a good time in Paris?
[02:47] Me: and then I introduced her to Paula, from C venues, last year, when Paula was doing a class in Paris
[02:47] Me: yeah...
[02:47] Me: mostly just relaxed
[02:47] Me: Saturday afternoon we went to a nearby town which had lots of horses...
[02:47] Me: but mostly just relaxed
[02:48] Me: and caught up on e-mail and stuff
[02:48] Me: and called Anne and Jean-Christophe
[02:49] Me: because originally Laure had thought she could host me until I left, but she was leaving on holiday (to Hungary and Serbia) on the 2nd, and I wasn't leaving until the 3rd
[02:49] Me: so on Sunday I went to the Marais, she went to the airport
[02:50] Me: I spent most of my afternoon looking through the Musee Carnavalet
[02:50] Me: then realized I was running late, grabbed a quick lunch, and got to Notre Dame for the organ concert they have every week at 4:30
[02:51] Me: it was played by one of the professors from Indiana University, so I'd gotten to know her some there back in June
[02:53] friend: oh wow - what a coincidence, did you know she was going to be there?
[02:53] Me: after that I went out with Jeanette (the organist) and her husband (also an organist) and some of their friends
[02:53] Me: yes
[02:54] friend: col - it sounds like you had the perfect trip
[02:54] friend: I'm so jealous
[02:54] Me: and a couple other people she knew all went out for a beer
[02:55] Me: then I went to Anne and Jean-Christophe's
[02:55] Me: yeah
[02:55] Me: it was a pretty awesome trip
[02:55] Me: pushed my immune system a little hard, but it was worth it

New pictures up, with extended commentary

http://picasaweb.google.com/cdieck

You know you're in Italy when...

your food has been deep fried in olive oil.  Man, are my taste buds happy.

If you have a long layover at ICN

One of the airport buses, 6011, goes to Gyeongbokgung and Anguk-dong.  If you get off there you could see one, two, or all possibly all three of the palaces along the north edge of downtown.

Following that you could walk south through Insadong, a touristy but nice (mostly) pedestrian area with lots of shops, galleries, and tea houses.  This will bring you to Jongno, one of the main east-west streets downtown, with lots more shops, especially jewelers, as well as restaurants and bars.

If you continue south you'll find a stream running east-west through the middle of a street, the Chunggyecheon.  It runs for several kilometers in total, and through the center of town has been turned into a sort of pedestrian chill-out zone.  If you walk to the west end of that you'll find yourself just about a block north of City Hall and Seoul Plaza.  Not a whole lot to see there, but it's pretty central, and maybe something would be going on.

Across the big street to the west is Deokseogung, another palace, which is cheaper and a good place to go hang out.  It also has a regular changing of the guard ceremony and inside there is an art museum which has had some very interesting exhibits.  To the east is Euljiro, another east-west street.  There are lots more shops, this time specializing more in various types of hardware and professional supplies.  It's interesting (for me) to walk through but it's not really a tourist destination.

If you continue south, you'll come to Namdaemun/Sungyemun, the south gate to the old city, (currently being repaired) nearby which is Namdaemun Market, which has all sorts of things from clothing to pottery to souvenirs... Food too, but food's everywhere.  For the most part it's relatively cheap, and haggling is possible, unlike in most shops.  Also nearby is Myeong-dong, a more upscale shopping area, with lots of shops, a few department stores, and a (very) small Chinatown as well.

If you have the energy left, you'd then be pretty close to Namsan, the mountain in the center of Seoul.  It's not a difficult hike, and there's also a cable car you can ride up.  From there you can get an excellent view of most of Seoul, visibility permitting.

There's plenty more you could do, although while you could walk down to some of the other areas, they might be a little further away.  You would be pretty close to Seoul Station though, so you might be able to get the train back to the airport from there (scheduled to start running in January 2010).

For further reference check out:

http://asp.congnamul.com/seoul/english/map.jsp

It's a pretty good interactive map of Seoul, and the view starts off centered over City Hall.  Just be aware, it only works in Internet Explorer, not Firefox.  Best of luck!

Japchae recipe

So the basic idea, as expounded in our textbook:

Ingredients (amounts are just what I used, guessing):
Beef (150g)
Onion (2 medium white)
Carrots (2 large)
Mushrooms (on sale, maybe 15-20 small oyster mushrooms, but use whatever)
Bell peppers (2 very small, 1 red, 1 green)
Sweet potato vermicelli, it's kind of translucent when cooked (used about 2/3 of a 500g bag, could probably have used all of it if I'd had big enough pans and dishes)
Water
Soy sauce (to taste?)
(Brown) Sugar (to taste?)
Sesame oil (to taste?)

Added myself:
Minced ginger (1 Tbsp?)
Spinach (a bunch)


First, cut beef into 5mm (square, it should be an inch or more long in the 3rd dimension) slices. (I used 150g of beef for this, the butcher pre-sized it for me when I told him what I was making.)

Next, mix the beef with soy sauce and sugar. (I also added minced ginger and sesame seeds, and used brown sugar; didn't seem to hurt, not sure how much it helped.)

Next, chop onion, bell peppers, carrots, and mushrooms into 5mm (square) slices. (I wasn't too careful with size, doesn't seem to be a huge problem...)

Fry the veggies with a little bit of oil (duh). (I went for softened, but not limp, so started the carrots and onions while chopping the rest, then added them, fried until good.)

Remove the veggies and fry the beef in the same pan.

Meanwhile heat water to boiling, add noodles, cook until soft, and then drain off the water.

When everything is cooked, mix together with soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar. (And a bunch of torn spinach, for my variation. It didn't hurt at all...)

And you're done!

You have made Japchae. Enjoy!

at the inauguration

So the inauguration was pretty fun.  The bus ride and walk to the mall weren't nearly as crowded as I had expected, although there were still plenty of people out.  Once near the mall volunteers with red hats on greeted us, improving the mood of just about everyone who went by, much needed early on a cold day.  On the mall by the Lincoln Memorial things were still not too crowded, so we walked towards the Capitol.  And when we got to the Washington Monument there was pretty much a solid wall of people.  We spent a few minutes deciding whether to stop or press on, and then once we'd decided to try to find a good place there, spent another half hour or so maneuverinng to find it.  Then we just hung out there, took a few pictures, listened to the Marine Band over the PA system, watched various dignitaries get seated and shake hands up at the Capitol on the giant TVs that were still far away...  And eventually Bush came out, to a loud boos from across the mall, which ,though justifiable, seemed inappropriate for the occasion.  Obama came out to huge cheers, there was silence while he took the oath of office, and then there were huger cheers.  During the inaugural address there were a number of cheers, although I wish that some of them had been longer.  It never quite reached that pitch of religious revival that I'd sort of anticipated.  I suppose that's good though, don't want the populace behaving any more like a bunch of religious zealots than they already do...  That was all exciting, although the speech ended a bit abruptly, and without giving us one last chance to applaud and cheer, which was rather surprising and disappointing.  The most disappointing thing though was the amount of trash people left lying on the mall after they left.  We'd brought in some food for ourselves, and took the containers back home with us.  Lots of other people bought stuff from stands along the way, and left the trash on the ground...  Amazingly wasteful, more so in the context of the speech we'd just heard.  Still, overall a good day.  We walked back to Chris's place rather than risk the buses, and spent the rest of the day listening to events on the radio, watching "how I met your mother" and playing Risk.