Kedros Revisited

These past few weekends have been busy but rewarding for me. As Korea comes to an end I have finally put follow though into my effort to see a couple of people in this country. I have 22 days or so left here and there was really no valid reason for not seeing these people. I wish that I had seen them earlier and that I had seen them more frequently, but I am happy that a year in Korea did not pass without me visiting Sun Young and Dawoon.

Top: Dawoon and I outside the hostel in Kedros.
Below: Dawoon and I outside Motel Tomgi in Seoul.

These two were very much a part of my birth into serious travel as they were present at my first trip abroad. They were already seasoned travelers when I met them outside of the bus in Ioannia, Greece but I was about as naïve and clueless as they come. I often say that I don’t know what the hell is going on in Korea, but I really didn’t know what was going on in Greece.

I’ve retold this Greece story enough times to warrant its absence here, but it had a huge impact on how I thought of things around me, of myself, and the grand scheme of the world. Most importantly I left Greece with an openness to new experiences, new people, and new places that wasn’t entirely present before I left home that first time.

Sometimes I compare this experience to Greece. I was in Greece all of 3 weeks and I will have been away from home for over a year by the time I get back from Cheongju. I realize though that the length of time doesn’t make much difference on the impact an experience can have on you.

Left: Sun Young and I on the road in Kedros.
Right: Sun Young and I at a temple in Busan.

Greece was basically a long vacation from hell. We were freezing the entire time, aching from day 2 until the end, and navigating the awkward situation of a bunch of people from around the world sleeping together on a couple of very wide beds and sharing a dirty bathroom.

When we said goodbye it was as sad as it can be with people you had known only a short while, but in intimate circumstances. Well, not that intimate. Some people did make out once, though. I last saw these two in the Athens airport. We stayed up all night with Jardiel from Mexico as the rest of the group likely did the same in Thessaloniki. We drank cheap wine from Styrofoam cups and toasted to the whole wild experience and told the worst stories from our lives that we could come up with or force ourselves to remember.

I was happy for the company I had. The four of us said goodbyes and hugged and passed on to lost luggage, medical school, magazines, and memory.

That I have seen all 3 of my airport companions since then is incredible to me. We planned reunions but even I, the novice, knew that the nature of these sort of friendships is that they usually end at the airport- at least as far as actually seeing each other in person.

I saw Jardiel a year later in Mexico. My work camp failed to pick me up and I spent the scariest night of my life sitting in a dark corner chain smoking with a homeless man and a feral cat that ate cockroaches as a truck full of heavily armed men drove by. Cabbies I had been cautioned against came closer and closer asking me to get in and me with $2000 of camera equipment wrapped around my leg.

After a week I finally found Jardiel and we spent a night eating and talking about the cold, about the dogs, about the work, about the mountains and the people we met Greece.

So, after a lot of planning I went to Busan to see Sun Young and then to Seoul to see Dawoon. This isn’t to be over dramatic but I barely recognized them. We were all grown up, or something like that. We were wearing proper clothing and we weren’t covered in clay or pine needles, or dressed against winter in the mountains. Everyone had legit jobs.

Still, underneath it all we were basically the same. So we all relived a little of Greece in Korea and laughed at Shibal and the pizza, and talked about the nomad Josef, and the cheese and the hikes. It is reassuring to know that as this thing is ending for me that these friendships don’t really end.

Maybe someday I will see the rest of these mad Kedros people.