cerealjoe | Gali geeks out in Seoul (Reply)

Oh the meetings you can have in a city! Like seeing your first love... thousands of kilometers away from home.

Yep, Albator (Captain Harlock for the non-French-speaking peeps) is definitely my first love. Albator 78, not really 84. I highly believe that there is a whole generation of people out there who have had their love lives forever ruined because they fell in love with Albator as children. There is just no way one could ever be a better man than Albator!

I was just walking along that Insadong tourist street and I saw some nerdy stuff on the second floor of a building. It turned out to be a "museum"... it looked more like a nerd's parents' garage than anything else but I guess it still beats most museums.

I don't know why some dolls had their "private" parts covered because others just went properly naked. Maybe some collector dolls had very offensive ones?

Seeing some of the toys there made me think that maybe some of mine are actually worth more than the 2e I paid for them.

I guess I could call that day "Peanuts day".

There was Strider behind Gandalf but he was so awkwardly put there that I really couldn't get a photo of him.

Mr. Burns probably taught most of the refs at the World Cup...

The many generations of Harlock and the surrounding saga.

I make the zombie look hot! I naturally have extremely dark circles under my eyes but the Seoul heat made them quite a lot worse.

"Là-haut, là-haut.
Très loin dans l'espace.
Entre la Terre et Venus
Le ciel garde encore la trace
Du Prince Actarus..."
Yes, I can sing the whole Goldorak song. It's hard talking to nerds who didn't watch the cartoons in French because the names are all different and for me it all just doesn't sound right. I have watched some of the stuff in Japanese with subtitles but I still always compare to the French voices.

Olive et Tom! Where one match lasted three episodes.

The camera even found some family!

Bionic parts rule indeed.

During the whole trip I was asked mainly two questions: why travel by myself and why come to Korea?

Well, the answer to the first question is that I'm a loner by nature and seeing the same people for a couple of days in a row tires me out. Always having to consult someone else to know what to do always pisses me off like crazy! It feels like so much time is wasted uselessly when it could be wasted in other ways such as sitting down in a cool spot and catching up on some reading. Visiting that museum is a prime example of stuff I probably wouldn't have been able to do if I had been with others... I probably wouldn't have noticed it even because you can't really just stand around and look up at random buildings when you're with others.

Sure it does get lonely but in the end for me it's absolutely worth it and it's not like I'm alone all the time. I'm always faced with opportunities to meet others, just hanging out in the evening or visiting places.

The sub-question of the "why travel by myself" question is "aren't you afraid? isn't it dangerous?" and the answer is no, I'm not afraid of travelling alone to most places, Korea even more so. Korea is one of the safest places on Earth for tourists. I wouldn't go to many reputedly hot areas by myself at night but it's not like I'm in the habit of doing that in Helsinki either. I also feel that being someone who doesn't really fit in with the population makes it safer because people are watching. There is always someone watching, they might not admit to it and they will lower their eyes when you make eye contact but they are watching. Also I believe that the upbringing of people in Korea and the lack of diversity in the population makes it safer than most spots for tourists.