Verrückt! Mit FAHRRAD durch Südkorea! – Fahrrad Weltreise [#35]

Verrückt! Mit FAHRRAD durch Südkorea! – Fahrrad Weltreise [#35]

South Korea We knew almost nothing about this country on the other side of the world. If there are any headlines in the German media, they are more likely to be about neighboring North Korea. So what makes this country special? Why we imagined South Korea to be completely different and how our first accident happened can be seen in this video. We are in the middle of the capital Seoul and the food we are about to be served takes our breath away. So – we are now at the really big street food market here and I think Korea is a bit notorious for its special dishes. We have no idea what is available here, but we want to ask someone who can recommend three things we absolutely have to try. But if we had known what was about to happen, we probably wouldn’t have done this challenge. Well, who do we ask who speaks English? We have someone. They are taking us somewhere right now. This couple just told us that since we are here, we absolutely have to try a special Korean specialty. The two of them led us to this restaurant in some small alley and told us to wait here for a while… but – moving octopus? Yes, they said it was really delicious. I don’t know if I’ll eat it. I said before the trip that I would try anything to get to know the cuisine except moving food. Okay, we’ve just been seated here in the waiting chairs. We’re number 1 now. That’s kind of… ‘moving octopus,’ she said. I’m really excited right now. We quickly checked whether the octopus is eaten alive, which would have been an absolute no-go for us, as we obviously don’t want to torture animals . We saw that the animals – at least in this restaurant – are killed and then prepared. It’s an important sequence. Apparently, that’s what you order here. It’s not cheap. But we already knew today that it would be a bit expensive. But we didn’t want to miss out. It costs €23. Our daily budget is used up. I thought they might tell us to ‘try kimchi’ (fermented cabbage), but to think they’d just choose the most brutal thing for us… The sight is simply crazy! The tentacles are moving on our plate. You can see these kinds of reflexes in fish or cattle and almost all living creatures, but with the octopus they are extreme. It’s so crazy. It’s moving. It just moves . I think you can see that I’m having a hard time putting it in my mouth, but for us, traveling is part of experiencing the cuisine of other countries, and that’s why I try it. It’s stuck to my mouth! But how does it taste? Wow, you can see that it’s moving, it’s kind of weird… You really have to chop it up so it doesn’t get stuck in your esophagus, right? I’ve more or less swallowed it because I didn’t want to bite into it for that long. Oh, it’s moving under my finger! And now I’m just waiting for the moment to see Franzy’s expression when the suction cups stick in her mouth… It’s so weird when it sticks! Yes. But it’s really, really delicious! Really, the moment when the octopus sticks, to your cheek or your throat or something like that – wow, that feels so weird. It’s basically made like sushi, only it’s a roll. It crawls around. A bit of vegetables go in, rolled up, and then, yes… And in terms of taste, what would you say? Really, really delicious. Yes, I think it’s really good. If you poke those tentacles, they contract, and we’ve had the food on our table for 10 minutes now. You also have to chew on it for quite a while, which is a bit annoying because then you have it in your mouth for such an extremely long time. Sometimes I wish I could swallow it a bit sooner. But even though this dish was pretty delicious, it will remain a one-off for us. People who travel to South Korea probably know about such things. But since we have been Since we’ve only been passing through for months, we can’t keep up with everything and are happy to be surprised. We ask for recommendations for two more dishes and end up at one of these stalls. We’ve both lost our appetites, but what we see looks pretty good. A stall was recommended to us here, and we simply chose the one with the most people sitting. Yes, it must be good, right? Thank you. What do we have here? I think it’s tofu skin and I hope so too. Enough meat for today. At first I thought it was intestines – it’s not tofu skin, it’s some kind of fish. Wow, it tastes like fishy liver dumplings. Tomorrow we’ll continue on our bikes. We’re very excited to see what Korea is like outside of the capital. This morning we took a look at the magnificent old town of Seoul. The first people settled in this area as early as 4000 BC . During the three-year Korean War around 1950, Seoul was conquered and reconquered several times, but about 90% of the city was destroyed. Today , almost 10 million people live in South Korea’s capital. One thing we haven’t explained yet: how did we actually get to Korea? In the last video, we were still in Hong Kong and then took a train through China to Qingdao. At that time, Germans could stay in China for 15 days without a visa, and we would never have been able to cover that distance in two weeks on bicycles. We had to ship the bikes on a freight train, which, despite a hundred pieces of incorrect information, somehow worked out eventually. Then we took the ferry to Seoul. And here we are: Good morning from South Korea! So, we’re on the road again. We slept under the bridge last night. Our tent was right there. We had to get to safety, otherwise we would have drowned. What’s going on here? Wow, Franzy, it’s getting closer again! What’s going on here? One of your bags is already under water! It’s still the rainy season, and for the past two months, we’ve had almost nothing but monsoon-like rain every day. But the weather forecast for the next few days is particularly bad. Well, we were warned in Seoul that torrential rain was going to happen in the next few days. It will definitely continue like this for the next few days. Just look at that! That’s crazy! In Germany, when you open the fridge, a light comes on. And here in Korea, when you go to the toilet, Mozart starts playing. I keep getting emergency notifications from Korea on my phone, saying that the area where I am is most dangerous – all the time. My phone is giving off real emergency signals. And because everyone told us as we continued on that the roads we wanted to take would be closed for the next few days due to the risk of landslides, we stopped at this point and waited for better weather. What awaits us here in the fog looks incredible and makes you want more. The fair-weather cyclists are back on the road! But it didn’t quite work out because it’s raining again. Yes, the last few days have been completely different, it was brutal! Yes, it really did rain all day long. This is exactly how it’s been for us so far in Korea : endless, perfect bike paths – it’s a bit boring. We’re basically riding to a really cool lake, but then we’ll leave the bike path so we can see a bit more of Korea. And then we’ll gradually make our way across the country. And – is it dry? Biscuits with toast. You can tell we’re back in an expensive country. We’re not in China anymore. That means we have to be really careful about prices when choosing where to eat. And we always love it when we find little stalls where they have slightly cheaper things, like here, for example: this is the equivalent of €2. Look, we can show her how she makes it. This is the national dish, kimbab, which you can find everywhere in Korea anytime, and which we ‘ll eat most often because it’s cheap and filling. This is called kimbab, it’s Like a sushi roll, only salty, right? Sushi is with sugar and vinegar. Exactly, and that one is probably with sesame oil, but it actually tastes like sushi. There’s always kimchi with it, which is fermented Chinese cabbage, and pickled yellow radish. And there are metal chopsticks again, so for the first time, metal chopsticks. It reminds me of home again, when people have metal eating utensils. In general, Korea really is much more westernized than the other Asian countries. Totally modern. In many ways, it reminds us of Germany and Europe, of Western Europe. There are churches everywhere too; they’re really Christian here. I would never have thought that. But we haven’t really understood the prices here yet . In the restaurant we’re paying €5.60 for these three rolls, which is really good this time. But you could just as easily pay €30 for a normal meal. It goes so quickly. Yes, it’s so crazy. We still don’t understand what costs so much. We’re definitely on the safe side with Kimbab. In the last restaurant, for example, we ordered this on a whim. Well, we just ordered. We thought they were overcooked tomatoes. Point at it. But that’s ice cream. Look, that really is ice cream! Those are ice-cold noodles . Awesome! But enough eating for now. We want to find out what this country is like. We don’t have a real plan. We want to drive right across until we get to the Pacific coast. Hello? Oh, she’s getting into full fighting stance. Look at how she’s doing that! Yes. She jumped on the camera! Now she’s looking at Hans. Does it actually hurt when a praying mantis attacks? I don’t know. Hello, hello! Flies! Do you see that? Wow, can you see it with the camera? They keep coming in swarms. And follow us for a kilometer. We’re here at the lake now. Up ahead is where we wanted to go. We can see there are lots of houses on the lake. I have no idea what that’s all about. We’re looking for a place to sleep down there now, because it’s already after 7 a.m. Wow, I hope there aren’t so many flies down there! I’m going crazy! It looks really, really cool here. Wow! They’re fishing from the boats. I think he wanted to chase us away at first. He said, no, no, you can’t sleep here. He’d just driven up from his houseboat, but he said it’s okay now. I translated for him and he kept pointing up there and we thought we should go away. But I think he just showed that there’s water up there. That would be good, because it’s always really disgusting when it’s raining. Washing up before you go into the tent is a must. We’re putting up the tent here now, and we’re not supposed to shine our lights on the water. I think because of the fish. It’s really cold! But it’s really pleasant. He just came here – we thought he was going to say we weren’t allowed to shower here, but he brought us a really sweet bucket full of ice water, peaches, and something like that to scare away all the mosquitoes. Because he saw us waving our arms around. Yes, that’s so sweet. Yes, it’s so sweet! The typical German attitude… Yes, we really thought he was going to scare us away or that he wasn’t happy, but I think he just wanted to help us the whole time. Really, do you think so? I think so. He’s always done it like that. It’s not possible. Yes, okay. Somehow he’s definitely changed his mind. But so sweet. Get away from me, you stupid mosquitoes – that’s the final warning. We’re going to put up the tent now and then go to sleep. See you tomorrow. Good morning, how was the night? So-so. It rained all night. Yes, and the great thing is that this tent will keep us dry! Which is the whole point of a tent, but the old tent was really stupid. It was really dripping in there, which wasn’t very nice. We want to give you a little insight into our thoughts about what’s going on now. We’re in Korea, and we’ve almost reached our goal of being in Japan. That’s already Pretty crazy. We always wanted to cycle from Germany to Japan, but now we’ve reached the point where we’ve decided: we’re going to go on. We’re thinking about cycling around the world and are already making plans. I think we want to announce on social media this week that we ‘re trying to cycle around the world – without flying. It’s an extremely difficult challenge, but we’re motivated. I’m excited to see how people react. The decision to continue this lifestyle for a longer period of time wasn’t as easy for us as you might think. We love traveling, but we also notice that it takes more and more of our energy from time to time. In any case, it’s now certain that we’ll keep traveling east until we eventually reach home from the west. Hans just got another message: extreme danger! A moment ago it was flashing red, really aggressively. But we’ve learned that private individuals are apparently sending them out. It’s definitely not the government ‘s doing it. They type it into their phones somewhere, then the people around them get it. I don’t know if it’s some kind of weather station. I don’t know. We always manage to get a little something out of the tent, then it starts to rain. Oh, man! It’s been a routine for 17 months. We pack everything up and move on. Today we’re going to the mountains in the very north of South Korea. And the reason we wanted to go to this lake is this: these many shapes of the small peninsulas look almost unreal. Of course, we don’t know anything else. We’re permanently wet now. It really is. We’re soaking wet every day and have been since China. So for 6 or 7 weeks of rainy season, aah! We’re so fed up. Today is one of those days where everything is coming together and we’re not in the mood for it. And now the rain, and I know it will stop in 3 minutes. But then we’re completely soaked. I know I’m just whining, but sometimes it’s just annoying. It’s annoying! For me it was actually like this: I just took a shower and was about to go to bed and then Hans said: Hey Franzy, your whole back is still wet! I’m so used to being wet that I don’t even notice anymore. Awesome. It really is… oooh! With the change in the weather, the mood improved again. A small road with little traffic through a couple of Korean mountain villages. We found a really perfect little hut for lunch and we could hang everything up here. It’s perfect to dry everything out a bit because it was so wet and – we’re cooking again! Hans, does it feel like something new? It’s been so long that you haven’t cooked Hey, really. Pasta with Bolognese. You can’t imagine how excited we are. We’re so excited. It’s a bit like home, a bit like what we know from home. We have n’t had that for ages. We’re cooking the noodles now. Wonderful! It smells just like home. Madonna, how long hasn’t we had that? I have no idea. Since Turkey, maybe? Crazy. I can say it again and again: For me, Korea is when you’re on the toilet and ‘ The Lion King’ starts. What? That was ‘The Lion King,’ yes. You stand at the urinal and think: this is so epic. And these landscapes are even more epic. We weren’t expecting such rock formations in Korea at all. But the people also inspire us. When we take a break somewhere, they often come up to us and offer us water or coffee. Such kind gestures are n’t a given in wealthy countries. It’s the little things that make us feel welcome and have a big impact on us. Thank you! Wow! In less expensive countries, we’ve often been invited and given gifts, and Korea has very high standards, at least as modern as Germany. And in the restaurant where we sat recently, someone came to our table and said, “Yes, I’m leaving now. Your meal is paid for.” Ciao ciao.” And he’s gone. And we think: wow! Because otherwise, the rule is always—not always, but the rule—the poorer the people, the bigger their hearts. So, just average, superficially speaking. It’s simply beautiful. And we have to say: from everything we’ve traveled to so far, South Korea has the highest level of prosperity we’ve ever seen. There are modern cities all over the world, even in poorer countries. But the rural areas reflect reality. The villages here in South Korea are all modern and the cleanest of our entire trip. The fact that you don’t see any garbage here is also due to the fact that everyone is pitching in to keep the environment clean. We noticed a few times that people were simply picking up the plastic waste they saw lying around. Korea is a bit of everything: there’s a church, then some kitschy pink frames, there’s a mill in front. Wooden houses, traditional houses, and yet, in the back, the high-rises. It’s all there. It’s simply Cool. I’m telling you, we were just a bit salty again. It started to rain right before we got to the sleeping place. Now we’ve found something here, Franzy is already up there. As if! – with benches that are all still dry. We thought we wouldn’t find anything. Wow, the view! Just look at that! I ‘m really glad the day is ending like this. I have to say, there ‘s a platform if anyone else wants to camp. We’re not letting anyone else up there. We’re not Koreans, we don’t have to be friendly. There’s drinking water and a toilet. Really – okay – the only thing is, you can see us from the road, but… Maybe we can even charge our batteries inside tonight using the socket. Oh my God! Shower, electricity, a roof over our heads. Where’s the barbecue? Hans, be happy for once! I have to show you Hans his slippers. This isn’t festive anymore, really. Mine are pretty battered too, but totally okay. What is this? These buckles are really rusty and ripped all over. It’s still good. It lasted a year and a half. Look, the ants are happy too. They’re just taking a bit of cork with them. Look! Seriously, it won’t last much longer. It’s so screwed . Here, holy moly. I have to say, these aren’t Birkenstocks, they’re €20 things. Organic sandals – no idea what they’re called. And what’s organic about them? Mine are pretty worn out too, but I have Birkenstocks. We’ll see if we can find some new ones in Japan. Wonderful. It continues. Another reason we were looking forward to Korea is that we wanted to escape the brutal heat of China. So far, it hasn’t been a big issue here, but the next heat wave is supposed to arrive today . So – the moment has come when we have to unpack our shirts. I hate this moment because it’s actually way too hot for long-sleeved shirts. We’ll dip it in water for a bit, then it’ll be comfortable for maybe 10 minutes. Soaking a shirt in water has a huge effect. Different It’s not possible. It’s really bad otherwise. And the hat. Yes, just put it in and preferably your head too. The main river down there was really dirty, just rainwater. But now here, really clear mountain water is coming down. Wonderful! And we’ll follow it for about five hours, I’d say, and then we’ll be on the mountain. It’s going to get really tough in this heat. Yes, I know, I need to go to the hairdresser again. Can you try it right now, right? Yes. Maybe Franzy will do it, but it’s dangerous. Oh my God! What’s going on? I have a passenger! Oh my God! That’s really disgusting! What a huge animal! Old manager! What a thing! When did it sneak on board? Ew, I don’t want to do that! Yes, I’ll do it, hold on. Dude, that’s a tough guy. And he’s got some serious cobwebs, really. Wow! Better get rid of them! As you can see, neither of us likes spiders that much. Gladly. She did it really fast. There are really hard cobwebs all over her bike. So, folks, final sprint – just 7 km to go. I think only 360 meters of elevation gain. Well, I think another hour. Maybe it’s the altitude, but it feels a bit chilly. It’s a strange feeling. We had to cover ourselves for the first time last night because we were a bit cold. So just with these inner sleeping bags. Before that, we always slept without a blanket because it was so warm. This feels really good now. Wow, the last kilometer! Man, that was quite something. Komoot got a few things wrong . It wasn’t actually that steep, but -wow- 1000 meters of elevation and 70 km. We’re now looking for a nice place to sleep somewhere. There’s a slight downhill slope there . Somewhere by the river where we can wash up. That would be premium. There are campsites everywhere in this country. But wild camping is harder than expected. Today, we searched for another hour until we found this spot. We’re in the middle of the city, but I spotted something. We’ve now cycled a kilometer along the road. There’s an area up ahead. Look, it’s perfectly fine. We can park our bikes and sit there, and we even have a little stream. I’ll show you one more thing. There’s the tent. I spotted something up there where we can shower. But I think it’s too dark for the camera. Let’s take a look. Oh shit! Wow, that’s awesome! You might be confused when you see this. We were too, when we woke up and our tent was surrounded by gym-going grannies. Who hasn’t experienced that? First thing in the morning, a little warm-up with the gymnastics group. These sweethearts watched us for half an hour with their smiles on their faces until we left. Wow, cool! We’ve just been invited by a really nice gentleman. Yes. And now he’s recommended the soups to us. They look really cool, and they’re apparently eaten for breakfast here. And I think he has a hangover soup. We thought that was a translation error, like a hangover soup, to get rid of the alcohol buzz, but he just said it again. How cool is that? The soup is really so delicious! Oh my God! Brutal and pretty hot. It’s still boiling when you get it. Yes, in Korea you really have to say: so far it’s hotter than in India. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. That guy just ate away green chilies like it was nothing. There was basically meat in the soup. Here you dip them in mustard and soy sauce. I have to try that at home. Super cool combination! Oh, he was such a nice guy. He walked past us and then came back. He was like: No, you can’t just eat bread! You have to eat something proper when you ride your bike. And then he took us to a restaurant. He was 50, he looked so much younger. Such a nice experience and now to see how people eat breakfast here. We hadn’t had that before and when you go out to eat alone you often don’t even know what all the things on the table are for. When the translator says “Hangovers” you think to yourself, yeah, come on, but when you’re doing it with locals, you understand how to mix things up and so on. I asked him: ‘Is it okay to film?’ and then he said, ‘I’m too old.’ That’s why we didn’t have him in front of the camera. It’s totally fine. He did n’t look old at all, I have to say, but if he doesn’t want to, that’s completely fine. Yes. But we were allowed to take a photo. We’ll show you that. A really cool guy! Yes, really cool! In South Korea there’s fish and seafood as far as the eye can see. The surrounding Sea of ​​Japan is rich in pretty much all kinds of sea creatures and that’s where we’re going today – out of the mountains to the Pacific coast. Franzy, there it is, the sea! I don’t know, every time we reach the sea by bike, I feel such joy! Wow, it’s much colder than we thought. Oh! So in that case, really cool! Now we drive for four days along the coast to Busan and then we’ll By ship to Japan. Everything one after the other. What is this? This is the steepest part of our entire trip so far. It’s great tarmac, but it’s really hard to pedal. No warning from the sat nav. Just like that. Steep climb, 36° midday heat, no wind. It’s disgusting! Franzy? Okay. [Franzy is crying] Franzy has just been completely torn apart getting up here. Wow, it’s sick! We were just having our lunch break and then out of nowhere we drove up here. Yes, there was a short circuit. Nothing was working anymore. I don’t know if we ‘re whining too much, because we already said it in Hong Kong and Vietnam, but believe us: the heat – disgusting! Wow, this was really the worst part of this trip, I think. Really. This steep section in the sun with a dry shirt, which makes everything even hotter, and simply no shade where you could stop. Well, that was – it just tore me apart. I just cried out loud for 5 to 10 minutes. I couldn’t help it. It was a real crying fit. Really, like when children cry, really loudly. I do n’t think I know the last time I cried like that, but that was really bad. I don’t think we’ve ever been so excited for winter as we have this summer. But of course, moments like these are just as much a part of it as the good ones. But we carry on along this amazing cycle path right by the sea. I want to stress, that wasn’t a pedestrian path where we got lost, it’s a cycle path. So if it carries on like this, totally awesome! We’ll follow the cycle path along the coast for three whole days to Busan, the city where we want to take the ferry to Japan. During that time we didn’t really have the energy to talk to the camera, but here are a few impressions of those days anyway . But then, just before Busan, this happened. We just had a small accident here. It was really stupid and apparently in a really strange way it’s our fault now, as we understand it, the police said. That can’t be true, that can’t be true… but it’s totally illogical, because we were driving down the street and there was a car in front of us and after the car had passed a man just walked across the street without looking, not over a crosswalk but simply across the street without looking again. Hans just managed to get past him and because the man was somehow confused and walked backwards or forwards, I didn’t know which way to go anymore… I then braked brutally and knocked the man over anyway and he hurt himself a bit. Yes, nothing serious but it was an elderly gentleman… The police just said ‘People have right of way on the road’. It doesn’t make any sense. So why should people have right of way on the road? Why do we even wait on the street until we walk across, then we can just walk? Well, she wrote something about zebra crossings, but it wasn’t at the zebra crossing. So there’s the zebra crossing where he could have crossed. He did cross. And it really was car, bike, bike, and you got hit. It was somehow as if he had only listened to the noise of the car, he really wasn’t looking at all. He didn’t even look to the left. Now we hope that we don’t get into trouble before we get on the ferry… Sure , our insurance can pay for it, but that doesn’t make any sense. We knew we’d just call an ambulance and that would cover his well-being, and then the fire brigade and two police patrols would come. What’s going on here? They were here really fast. Really fast. Really well organized. Two minutes after we called, they were here. The man is fine too. He just grazed his hand a little . He’s really fine. Yes. But the fact that the incident is coming out of our pocket is totally stupid. Yes, I’m definitely glad that nothing worse happened. Firstly, for the man, and secondly, because it would have caused even more problems. But strange… We gave the police all our information, and they said we’d hear from them. But ultimately, no one contacted us. Shortly afterward, we reached Busan. We still can’t quite believe it, but our long-desired destination is within reach. We’re really here. We’re in Japan.

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