My Christmas in Austria

Some days before Christmas I arrived at home and had enough time to prepare. The 23rd and 24th December before lunchtime I use traditionally to prepare the Christmas parcels and visit friends.

 

The weather was unusually warm, I came from -10 °C in Seoul to +15 °C in Hinterbrühl. Fresh green and even flowers were to see, quite strange for Christmas time.

 

The Christmas tree was already in Jenny's home and in the late afternoon the children and I decorated the tree. Over the years we collected a lot of different Christmas tree decorations.

At five o'clock on Christmas eve the family gathered and the parcels were placed, candles and sparklers inflamed. Then the sound of the bell opened the Christmas celebration.

After the longsome exchange of the presents the whole family travelled to Vienna for a typical Chinese Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Erina with all kids in here first car!

After the dinner Jenny and I moved for a Christmas night walk to the nice decorated Vienna city center.

Many restaurants and bars were still open - quite amazing for me, so this very nice Christmas evening endet in a well equipped cosy city center bar.

Yong Geum Oak - third oldest Korean restaurant in Seoul

Yong Geum Oak is the third oldest Korean restaurant in Seoul which first opened in 1932. It specializes in chueotang (mudfish soup). First I discovered a chueotang restaurant in the area of  the Gyeongbokgung Palace. Founded by a family member of the original Yong Gum Oak restaurant it is famous too, but I wanted to try the original old one. This is situated in Da Dong, surrounded by many other restaurants and not easy to find. Korean colleagues told me of the special and exquisite taste of the chueotang.

This Korean fish soup is said to make you strong and it is healthy too. It's full of calcium, proteins and vitamins that Koreans believe make the complexion sparkly, smooth and fresh. This is a big bonus for eating something that sounds ugly – mudfish. The restaurant offers two styles of this soup.
Seoul-style chueotang is made with a beef bone broth and flavoured with red chili pepper powder and gochujang (chili pepper paste). Whole mudfish are added along with a variety of ingredients, such as fried bean curd, tofu, and mushrooms.

Namwon-style chueotang is flavoured with doenjang (soybean paste) instead of gochujang, so it tastes savory and rich. The mudfish is first boiled and then ground up before it is added to the soup along with siraegi (dried radish greens). Unlike Seoul-style chueotang, the soup is not made with whole mudfish, so it is more appealing to people who try it for the first time. What gives Namwon its special flavour is the deulkkae powder and jaenpi powder.

Since many decades the Yong Geum Oak is visited by important and famous Korean writers, sportsperson, polititians and artists.

I ate the Namwon-Style soup and can recommend it. The Makgeolli was bad supermarket quality and did not fit to the high standard of the Yong Geum Oak.

cosy guest room

Further readings:

http://wayne0579.blogspot.kr/

http://www.trazy.com/theme/oldest_restaurants

http://english.whatsonkorea.com/main.ph?code=N&scode=N-14&pst=L

Mysterious queue

Coming out of my home subway station I was surprised today (Sunday) by a long queue of young people. Disciplined as queing here in South Korea is usual. Between one and twohundred people standing on the pavement in rows of two. I checked the beginning of the road, which turned out to be a small shop whith posters in the shop window, announcing a flea market. Through the door I could see people checking clothing. As this shop is quite small, I wonder that even the people from the middle of the long queue would even find unsold items.  

Summer vacation - New York

On 23rd of August I arrived in New York from Seoul. I met Jenny and Erina at their hotel room in Manhattan; they arrived some hours earlier from Vienna. The first day in New York we went sightseeing and visited a Chinatown for lunch and shopping.

view from our hotel room

 

Jenny at the cardshop in Rockefeller Center

wellknown view of the 'Top of the Rock'

Erina takes a selfie

selfie with SLR

Abercrombie& Fitch store

Chelsea Market

bus station, from here we left to Philadelphia

through the bus window