The Flowers, They are a 'Bloomin

Spring has taken it’s pretty little time making it to the Korean peninsula this year, and from what my grandmother tells me, it’s pretty much the same in Ohio right now as well. On Tuesday last week, I headed to Yeouido to see if the flowers had opened yet, and though the festival had started there, the flowers were not all a bloomin’ to welcome spring. Some of the trees had taken the initiative and opened up, but not the whole street as I’d seen in the past. I stayed all of ten minutes and then headed home. Wednesday came with a burst of sun and higher temperatures than we’d been experiencing and on my way to work I noticed the trees outside the subway window blooming in appreciation. Since it was my birthday, I convinced Jae-oo, who doesn’t generally enjoy going outside of his Hongdae bubble, and beyond that doesn’t enjoy going out of it only to walk through crowds of hundreds, to go with me to Yeouido to see some flowers.

We weren’t the only ones with the idea, of course, and we were met with the crowds even though it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and I’d thought at least the working crowd wouldn’t be there yet. The workers weren’t there, but there were certainly plenty of students and elders meandering around.

Along with the crowds, were cartoonists and musicians, some that were planned, and some that clearly were not requested by the festival, but found pillars to stand on and play their stuff. Surprisingly what were seemingly not permitted inside of the festival gates were the food carts. From beginning to end, there wasn’t one food cart between the road blockades that had been set up. There was one station at the very end selling drinks, but the likes of bondaeggi, corn dogs, corn, or any other Korean street food delicacy was no where to be seen until we were outside of the blockades once again.