28-29 November was house hunting season! Since our expectations were low (by this time we are immune to relocation side effects, aka cultural differences) we were not surprised by not finding our new home then.
We visited around 10 gloomy and sometimes weirdly arranged apartments in Itaewon-dong (the foreigner's area), Hannam-dong and close to Seoul station. We were more inclined to the city centre at first. But it became rapidly clear that living in Itaewon would make our lives much easier, since the English spoken there must surely represent 95% of total English spoken in the entire country.
Anyway, landscape is not that artistic in the city centre. This is our current view from Fraser Place, our temporary home in Jung-gu:
Most Koreans live in high-rises in the outskirts, but we believe that commuting reduces life expectancy, so we didn't expand our criteria.
Our main impressions:
The most positive outcome of these two days of house hunting was that our relocation agent made us discover this amazing yet expensive restaurant called Sanchon, in Insadong. This was the result, a variety of meat-free delights:
There was one apartment that we didn't manage to visit then due to an issue with the main door code. It turns out this was OUR apartment. It has a happy name: Primavera (= spring in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese) building. It's big, has an oversize fridge and two balconies. I visited it on the following week and was convinced by the time I took off my boots at the entrance hall to comply with the Korean custom.
It will be uma casa portuguesa, com certeza.
[Update 19/12/2013: back to square one. The landlady backed out of the deal. House hunting part II to start very soon.]
We visited around 10 gloomy and sometimes weirdly arranged apartments in Itaewon-dong (the foreigner's area), Hannam-dong and close to Seoul station. We were more inclined to the city centre at first. But it became rapidly clear that living in Itaewon would make our lives much easier, since the English spoken there must surely represent 95% of total English spoken in the entire country.
Anyway, landscape is not that artistic in the city centre. This is our current view from Fraser Place, our temporary home in Jung-gu:
Most Koreans live in high-rises in the outskirts, but we believe that commuting reduces life expectancy, so we didn't expand our criteria.
Our main impressions:
- American with a twist – Koreans love American open kitchens. But apparently they feel their cuisine is rather smelly and need a second separate kitchen, where they can imprison the kimchi stew in the making.
- Size doesn't matter – the number of bedrooms is more important than their surface.
- Not so magic pipes – so whoever designed the sewage system forgot to take into account the need to deal with toilet paper and made the pipes too narrow. The basket production industry must have been happy with this omission.
The most positive outcome of these two days of house hunting was that our relocation agent made us discover this amazing yet expensive restaurant called Sanchon, in Insadong. This was the result, a variety of meat-free delights:
Sanchon: 30-21, Insadong-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
서울특별시 종로구 인사동길 30-21 (관훈동)
There was one apartment that we didn't manage to visit then due to an issue with the main door code. It turns out this was OUR apartment. It has a happy name: Primavera (= spring in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese) building. It's big, has an oversize fridge and two balconies. I visited it on the following week and was convinced by the time I took off my boots at the entrance hall to comply with the Korean custom.
It will be uma casa portuguesa, com certeza.
[Update 19/12/2013: back to square one. The landlady backed out of the deal. House hunting part II to start very soon.]
