tales from Korea

It’s nice to be finished up at university, and our planned trip to Praha (Prague – Czech Republic) was a good opportunity for a bit of a break. The trip was really great, but mostly for unexpected reasons – the guesthouse we stayed in turned out to be almost more enjoyable then our main touristy objectives in visiting the city. Unfortunately Praha was raining pretty heavily for most of the time and we ended up feeling pretty miserable, squelching through the rain, cold and damp for most of the day. Besides the terrible weather, though, Praha is a wonderful place that I’d definitely recommend visiting.

The Praha OK guesthouse is situated in a normal, almost suburban style house – keeping with the Korean style of making you feel at home while staying there, they include three meals and clothes washing. On arrival we were greeted by the older co-owner of the guesthouse, who welcomed us, showed us our beds (separate for men and women) and provided us with a hot cup of freshly brewed coffee. He prepared lunch for us right away, and we sat down to a wonderful meal. I was really surprised, even though I knew breakfast, lunch and dinner were included in the stay price, the meals were quite elaborate and delicious; I would have paid good money to get a meal like it in a normal restaurant. After lunch JaYeon and I headed out to explore the city and on arriving back to the guesthouse we were greeted by a few others who had also arrived, all very surprised at my apparent good attempts at Korean. We all sat down to dinner and afterwards relaxed around on the couches chatting and discussing various things, but decided to head to bed early as we were very tired from getting up early that morning to catch our flight.

The last day was the best during our stay, on the first night Jun-Min, the younger co-owner and I were discussing various aspects of Korean and Irish culture, we were brought onto the topic of Korean Soju which I have had once before in India. He said to me we have to drink some together, but JaYeon said Soju is very expensive so she doesn’t think we will get around to doing it. During the meal on the last night of our stay, a wonderful table presented us – everyone had their own side dishes of homemade kimchi, paste for Samgapsal and another side dish of which I can’t remember. We also had our plate of sliced carrot strips and cucumber, not to mention the sticky rice and seaweed soup. I really like Samgapsal, but still haven’t got use to the idea (or sensation) of stuffing your mouth in one go with a mound of lettuce, pork belly, spicy sauce and rice. Glasses of wine were poured (and broken), and suddenly a large two-litre bottle of Soju was taken out by Jun-Min! He poured everyone a glass and we started to tuck in. It was a beautiful meal and we had great fun, with Korean and English being spoken and everyone laughing, eating and drinking crazily. I forgot for a while about the etiquette requiring a host to always fill up an empty glass; I must have drank about 10 or more shots… with many “Keonbae’s!!” in-between. It was a great experience – you would expect this with a close group of friends, but here staying in a guesthouse they treated us like we were really their friends, and the other Korean’s stated they felt very comfortable eating and talking with me. My small bit of Korean language but large interest in Korean culture appears to be paving the way to learning and sharing more with them.

The Praha OK guesthouse is located about 15 minutes north west of Praha centre, and costs €15 per night.