Seoul

I arrived in Seoul and have had 2 full days there. The flight from Prague was excellent. I was worried that China Eastern would be dodgy as, but it was one of the better long haul flights I've been on. Plenty of leg room, nice food, always bringing water around and they clear the trays as soon as you've finished eating. They bizarrely make you turn your phone off and close the window shades for the entire journey. They also keep the seat belt sign on the entire way, so you're never quite sure when it's safe to go to the toilet.

I was very jetlagged when I arrived in Seoul so the first half day was wasted. The second day I went to Gyeongbokgung palace, visited the folk museum, saw the statues of Admiral Yi Sun Shin and King Sejong, and wandered around Bukchon Hanok traditional village.

I intended on doing more but around 3pm I could barely keep my eyes open so I went back to the hostel for a nap, but the nap went for 8 hours. I woke up at about midnight and could not get back to sleep.

At about 4am I gave up and decided to go for a walk and ended up in a McDonald's. A drunk old Korean man bought me a coffee and we had a broken conversation. At one point he accidently spat in my face and then looked at me as though I'd spat in his. Despite the spitting he was nice enough.

Later that day, as in, at 9am I went to visit the secret garden that is part of the Changdeokgung palace compound. It was very cold (-14) but the previous day probably felt colder because of the wind. The garden was alright. In summer it would be paradise.

I also went to the markets, but quickly realised I really don't care about markets that much so went to the war memorial. I spent a few hours there. I know pretty much nothing about the Korean War. I didn't realise how close North Korea came to winning. I also didn't know how close they came to losing. I really didn't know that most of the time it was China who was being fought.

After that I went up Seoul tower. I had intended to go at night but the jetlag was smashing me again so I went in the late afternoon. There is a cable car up the mountain then an elevator up the tower. My type of exercise. I got to the top, looked out at the city then repeated that 5 or 6 times because it seemed wrong to go back down so quickly.

I managed to stay awake until 8:30pm. Woke up at 2am but went back to sleep at 4am.

The trip to the DMZ didn't particularly interest me and I didn't really have time, but there is a spot on that tour that is technically North Korea. I thought it would be cool to do it just so I could say I've been to North Korea. Then I realised that I can just say I've been to North Korea anyway. So, I went to North Korea.

I'm now in Busan. I caught the train down and the nice Korean lady next to me gave me biscuits and this weird toffee looking bar that tasted like sticky date pudding. She didn't say a word, just put this stuff in my hand.

Will probably go meet up with Dan later this evening.

National Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror

Hey, it's me again!

Too much to write about so I'll just summarise. I've spent the time since my last post in Uherske Hradiste. I quit work after a couple of months. I really hated it.

Romana and I spent most of our time fighting so we have broken up. Our idea of what a relationship should be is just too different. We are still quite good friends.

I went to the UK for a wedding about a month ago. Brendan and Bx got married in a country manor house in Somerset. It was pretty nice.

After Romana gave me my marching orders I went to Krakow and visited a friend from uni who has been living there for a couple of months. I didn't do much touristy stuff except for a visit to Schindler's factory. There weren't any jobs going. He's historically had quite a racist hiring policy so I probably wouldn't have got one anyway. It's quite a good museum now.


My plan was to go to Ukraine and visit Chernobyl but it looked like it'd require a bit of effort so I didn't bother. Instead I went back to Uherské Hradiste for a week or so then to Prague, where I am now.

While I was back in UH I found out that my residency application was rejected, so I'd have to leave anyway. As it stands I'm due to fly to good Korea in 2 days. I've done very little tourist stuff in Prague. I've taken some photos of statues with seagulls on their heads. Impressive considering Czech is landlocked.

Today I went to visit the National Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror.

Heydrich was a Nazi douchbag who was in charge of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during WW2. UK intelligence and the Czechoslavakian government in exile concocted a plan to assassinate him.

They sent 2 groups of Czechoslavakian paratroopers from the UK and dropped them near Prague. I got a little buzz to learn that pretty much all of them were Moravian and a couple were from Uherské Hradiste.

They were supposed to land in Pilsen, where the best beer comes from, but landed somewhere else. They were helped by the local resistance and made their way into Prague. They didn't really have a plan, they'd just been given 5 options. They were all variations of blowing this guy up or shooting him.

Two of the guys decided to string a wire across the road to stop Heydrich's car. Being an arrogant bastard Heydrich would ride around in a Mercedes convertible to demonstrate his confidence in his control of the protectorate. They apparently waited for hours and for some reason in this time abandoned the wire idea and instead decided it'd just be easier to shoot him.

So his car rolls along and one of the guys steps out with a sten gun and it doesn't fire. The driver panics but instead of speeding off he hits the brakes. The other paratrooper had a modified antitank grenade so he tries to lob it into the car. He misses and hits the bumper on the outside of the car. It's been set to explode on impact so it blows through the car and injures one of the paratroopers. Heydrich is injured but jumps out and a bit of a shoot out occurs. The two paratroopers jump on their bicycles and make an escape, thinking they'd failed.

But the grenade had actually wounded Heydrich. Metal shards from the car had punctured his lung and fractured some ribs. He was taken to hospital and recieved the best medical treatment available. Unlucky for him though, when the grenade ripped through the car it drove the upholstery of the seat into his body. The seat was stuffed with horse hair (I didn't realise horses have that much hair) which caused septacaemia and he died of the infection. It was the only successful assassination of a Nazi figure from Hitler's inner circle during the war.

After the paratroopers legged it, a massive manhunt started. A couple of the paratroopers turned informer and gave away the location of the others - a church just down the road from where I am now. Seven paratroopers holed up in the crypt and got into a battle with 750 ss troops. The ss tried to gas them out, then got the fire brigade to try to flood them out. Eventually the paratroopers committed suicide rather than be captured. They killed 14 and wounded 21. Badasses.

Note the bullet holes around the plaque.

The Nazis murdered the families of everyone that they discovered had harbored them, plus a bunch of political figures, plus the murder and total destruction of Lidice and Lezaky. This in turn resulted in the Munich Agreement being dissolved.

So yeah, sorry about the length of that. I'd heard about Lidice (it's a film here but I haven't seen it) but I had no idea about this assassination.

My next post will be from good Korea!