Some more train stories

During my recent trip to SA my son and I took a trip on the Simon's Town line of the Metro rail, surely one of the most scenic railways in the world.

Travelling all along the edge of the sea from Muizenberg all the way to Simon's Town, it is a wonderful way to catch all the glimpses and views that False Bay has to offer. However, we ran into one of the problems that beset this line - breakdowns. It is the line that has the most cable theft in my opinion, because whenever I travel on it, there is some kind of problem.

This time, we had to de-train at Fishhoek, then cram ourselves into a bus for the remainder of the journey, which kind of defeated the whole purpose of the trip.

This made me think nostalgically of the steam trains of my youth. Yes, I know they were pollution factories, covering the lines on either side with soot and ash, belching steam and smoke into the atmosphere, but they only broke down when the stoker did, and a steam whistle has a much nicer sound than the electric siren does.

Also, the engines had personality - they came in classes, had names, and were marvels of brass tubing and paint.

Alas, they are now, sadly, relegated to museums and the occasional historic society run, when horde of photographers snap them coming, going and standing still. How I wish the Simon's Town run would trot them out now and then, as a special tourist treat!

Seasons

For those of you who also read my e-mail journal, much of what I have have to say here you may have read before.

For the rest of you, what I'd like to muse about today is winter, snow and ice, and the fact that really, when you think about it, the world has only two seasons - winter and summer, which both seem to last and last and then suddenly switch places. We think of the switch as spring and autumn, but really, they last a fraction of the time that either the heat or the cold is getting you down.

I used to think, and proclaim, myself a winter person. I prefered cold to heat, but I now realise what I liked was the temperate, mild season we call winter in Africa. The season when a sweater and some jeans and heavy socks would see you through the day, and at night you could burrow under a duvet and some blankets to construct a cosy nest warmed by your body heat, and if you are lucky enough to have one, your partner's.

Now that I've had three Korean winters below my belt, and particularly this last and still present one, I am no longer so sure of my love of winter. Especially when it contains the amount of snow that this one did. It's not that I object to snow - it is very pretty, it serves the purpose of watering the ground for summer - I object to the fact that walking becomes a problem.

When you are young, slipping on the snow is fun and, since you are closer to the ground with elastic bones, not as dangerous as when you are fifty plus and conscious of all the past broken bones, and hence averse to breaking any more.

Also, as the snow is trodden into ice, or melts and freezes into it, it becomes even more of a problem.

Luckily the present apartment does not present me with quite the problem of overcoming the cold that the last one did, but leaving the cosiness of heated floors for the outdoors is always daunting.

So I have to amend my preference - a temperate, mild 22 degrees Celsius all year round, please!

All quiet...

What with a trip to South Africa, moving house and getting visa extended I've been very quiet on the blogging front.

To make matters worse, the internet connection in my office has decided not to connect me to anything, even though it shows the wireless network is running, and my computer space at home is not conducive to long stretches of sitting and typing.

So, just to set minds at rest (not that it seems as if I was missed), yes, I am still here and still musing away...

Trains

In many ways I can call myself a railway child - both grandfathers worked on the railways in some capacity, and I've always enjoyed travelling by train far more than any other form of travel.

In a way, all travel is little capsule of people moving through time and space, but for me trains are even more so than buses, cars or planes. On trains, especially long distance trains, you can travel in your own space, the compartment, where you are able to spread yourself out the way you never can on a plane (even in first class) or a bus.

Of course, on metro trains (the ones who serve a city either as a subway or above ground), that does not exist, but still each car has an own dynamic, not similar to the other cars on the train simply because of the people who inhabit it, however briefly.

From where I currently live, a little village close to the west coast of South Korea, an hours bus ride will bring me to either Suwon or Banwol, from which I can enter the metro system of Seoul. From Banwol I catch a train on line 4 - above ground as far as Geumjong, then subway for the rest of the route, while from Suwon I have an above ground option on line 1, or the Mugungwha KTR train to Seoul station or down to Busan etc.

I have caught the KTX from Seoul to Busan three times now, and experienced how truly relative speed is - 300 km/h does not feel like that when you are sitting in a comfortable seat, watching the landscape roll by. Unless you focus on the ground next to the train, you do not get an impression of speed, simply of movement.

One of the things I've experienced a lot on the subway and metro trains is the reaction of small Korean children to the foreigner - especially to my blue eyes. Some duck their heads and try to crawl to safety in their parents laps and bosoms, others stare with wide-eyed wonder, still others will give me smile and play a game of peek-a-boo and some start talking to their parents about this stranger in their midst.

The worst, and most surreal, was a group of boys, about 11 to 14 in age, who were in the next car to the one I was in. The train was crowded, and I was standing next to the door between carriages, which happened to have quite a large window in it on this line. The boys were up agains the door on the other side, and, when I noticed them, were surreptitiously giving me the finger.

The surreptitiousness was shielding their action from the people in the carriage with them, while trying to get me to see what they were doing. They did not, however, expect my action - I tore open both doors and as they scattered before my wrath, let them have it in my best teachers voice: 'You have brought shame on your houses.'

In future posts I'll take you back in time to the years spent travelling around South Africa by train, and share some more absurd and magical moments with you.

Twenty-ten

If this is your optometric diagnosis, you need a monocle.
Ten is half of twenty - how many times has this happened in our modern dating system? Off hand I can think of years 63, 84, 105 etc. Last century? Half of 19...so did not happen, I guess. 1809 was the last, unless I'm mistaken.
SA and soccer fever - good luck, as I see everyone is climbing on the bandwagon of offering accomodation...
The end of a decade.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Johannesburg Daily Photo(s): Hyundai Sky Park

I just had to post this link. Johannesburg is my birthplace, and Sandton was my shopping area for many years. And guess what - Hyundai is there, upgrading waht used to be a fairly ratty open expanse into this....good? Bad? Until I see more than just photos, I won't judge, but for the saffers in Korea, we'll feel right at home in both countries now...LOL.


Johannesburg Daily Photo(s): Hyundai Sky Park

Baking bread

Turning the hard seeds of grains into edible food is surely one of the oldest, and in many ways, one of the most satisfying things to do in terms of nutrition. And, may I say it, the best meals I've ever had have been something simple along the lines of bread and cheese, bread fresh from an oven with a cup of coffee or tea, or simply bread and water.

And of course, there is such a variety of bread - sourdough, rye, milk, ciabatta, pumpernickel...

One of the things that has happened since coming to Korea is the change I've seen in the bakery, or have I? Have my tastes simply adapted to theirs? Sorry, let me start at the beginning of this story.

Coming from Cape Town, with its huge multi-cultural population, you are able to fill a basket, nay a bushel, with bread. Soft, hard, fried, baked - all shapes and sizes. And, dare I say it, some of the tastiest options available in the wheat to bread range. Cape Seed Loaf, white dinner rolls, ciabatta, naan, rye - both dark and light, vetkoek (deep fried rolls) and the good old traditional standby, the sandwich loaf. In Korea, at least at first, my complaint and that of many of my feloow expats, was the lack of bread! See, in Korea you have the word 'pang' - and this covers bread, cake and any other thing made in a bakery!

Problem was, it tasted like that as well. The bread was fluffy and too sweet for bread, the cake was fluffy and not sweet enough to be cake. Moreover, if you bought a baguette (if you found a place that made them like the ubiquitously named Paris Baguette chain of bakeries), you got given a tub of the same sweetened cream that got spread on the cakes to have with it.

However, as I say, things seem to have changed. These days the bread is more like bread, and the cakes - well, they look really good but are still just whipped air and cream. In Seoul, especially, there are a lot of places these days where you can actually get some sourdough bread, and in Iteawon is a little pizza place that does proper ciabatta.

As you have gathered by now, I love bread! I also like baking. And if you head over to my other blog, South Korean Experiences, you'll see I recently made some apple jelly. Which called for some really good bread. Without me heading into Seoul.

I decided to try my hand, once again, at baking. Now don't get me wrong, I have baked many loaves of bread and they always satisfy me in some way, even if only in taste, but I usually rush the process and so I never end up with perfectly risen bread, something I'd share with someone else. They taste good, they just don't look very good.

I decided that what I was lacking was patience, so this time I tried it. I dissolved the dried yeast in warm water with a little sugar and salt, and set it close to the heater and waited - yes, waited - until I saw bubbles and foam. About an hour or so? Then I mixed this with my flour (I did half and half rye and white), some more sugar and salt and some olive oil. This got kneaded, then set aside for 10 hours - the time it took me to get to work and get back home again. The risen dough got punched down, shaped into the loaf tin, then set aside for another 3 hours, by which time it had doubled in volume (yay!) and it finally went into the oven for an hour.

The warm end crust was eaten fresh out of the oven with some butter and jelly, and this morning the first slice was eaten with coffee...and it was everything I had hoped for. It not only tasted good, but actually looked like bread.

So, in future, my bread recipe will call for a generous helping of patience, as well as all the other stuff I'll be putting into it.