Mind the gap

Last month while in Hong Kong, I had this repeat experience of forgetting I was in a foreign country while riding the subway. I'd walk down into the tunnel, look for the map that is invariably color coded and easily labeled, figure out where I am and what line my stop is. Follow the signs, which again are color coded and easily labeled, into the proper car...As I ride, the sign inside the subway car lights up at every stop so I can follow along - it is so very easy! So the shock always comes when I got off the car and follow the river of people exiting out, up, into the sunlight. Bam! People bustling everywhere, in your face, asian faces, hawkers, beggars. Bam! All of a sudden the sun is in your eyes and you take in a breath but the air is so humid and thick with fog that for a half a second your brain panics and thinks you are drowning, until your blood cells gather enough oxygen for your brain to realize that actually, you're ok, you are breathing just fine.

Because of this, I ended up gaining this vague appreciation for subways. I had this idea that anywhere I was, no matter how foreign, no matter how alone, the subway would be familiar. Just look for the color coded map.

This feeling remained for a while...my first weekend in South Korea (about two weeks after Hong Kong) was spent in Seoul and we successfully transited to destinations via subway. But then, my last day in South Korea, the day I had to catch a plane, dun dun dun, it allll changed (I am imagining ominous B-movie music here, as my laziness overcame my desire to come up with a more eloquent way of setting up this story)...

As you can see in the photo, the Seoul subway system is pretty intense. Initially though, I didn't think much of it, I thought it was all a matter of simplification - just find my station, find my destination, figure out the shortest route. Usually this strategy works. Signs in Korea are romanized, so I don't have to decipher the Korean alphabet. This strategy does NOT work, however, when there is a line under construction, some stations have maps that include this not-yet-existing line and some do not. And the explanation that there is construction is in tiny Korean print that is a) hard to notice amongst the web of color in your face and b) in Korean and therefore indecipherable. You see where this story is going. In short, I ended up transferring lines 5 times. At one station the confusion of "does this route exist or not??" led me to almost (only almost, hooray) get back on the train in the direction from which I had come (I walked from one side of the platform to the other and back, twice). This all was a result of me attempting to save a couple bucks by taking the subway instead of the airport shuttle. Next time I will just take the shuttle. Even when that direct line is built, I think its the easier option. And a couple bucks won't make me homeless.