I had a really pleasant flight to Korea today. My flight, including connection, was scheduled to take 12 hours and 5 minutes, which is very good. I flew through Helsinki with Finnair. When i got on the plane for Seoul in Helsinki though, I was surprised to see that I had ended up in a business class seat, even though i had just paid for economy. I had reacted on the strange seating placement when checking in the night before, and had decided I wanted a front row seat because of the extra leg-room those often provide. Oh boy did it provide more leg room! I could lie down close to flat and had a comfortable auto adjust seat.
Then when I arrived in Korea, a woman I had earlier helped with getting her bags up to the overhead lockers started talking to me while we were walking to the immigration control. Her name was Hyang-Soon (향순). She told me she had been to Finland with her family, and was carrying smoked salmon home. We chatted for a while about what we both did, and a bit about Korean food, and how hot it was here now. She then invited me to her summer house and gave me her card. I though that was a really nice thing to do, and I will definitely send her an Email with a thank you and a link to this blog.
When I got through immigration and had my luggage through customs (took maybe 15 minutes in total), I headed for the queue at the airport-limousine bus ticket stand, but was quickly met by a nice airport guide in a yellow shirt, who told me the tickets were the same price on the bus, and asked me where I was going. Then he followed me all the way to my bus, which wasn't that far, but still took him 5 minutes back and forth.
When standing waiting for the bus, taking photos of the cool architecture, a man in his 40s suddenly stared asking me something in korean in a rushed voice, and suddenly the bus arrived. The whole ordeal of getting everyone on the bus, and their baggage in the right place took about 2 minutes of rushing, before the bus went off again. I have learned that the Koreans are super efficient, and that there is certainly no time for nonsense. Something I in principle approve to, myself often thinking about how to optimise procedures and tasks when doing them myself. Now I am apparently in a society where that has already been done, and all I have to do is play my part. I think it might take some time adjusting before i can play my part as a well oiled cogwheel, but I think once I got it, moving back to Norway might seem frustrating sometimes.
Til next time, Hans
No comments:
Post a Comment