All aboard!
Student. Traveler. Future Train Driver.
My name’s Lachie and I’m a student from Melbourne, and I’m exceptionally excited to take your ticket to board the Seoul Train.
Throughout my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel, with family and with friends, to places both similar and dissimilar to my own home. And undoubtedly, the experiences and memories from these travels are things that will remain with me indelibly. The food, the energy, the vibrance, the hidden beauty of places near and far, always brings me back to the station, waiting for my next departure.
Something I’ve always found so interesting during my travels is the idea of normality. On our travels, we’re given a ticket to glimpse into the lives of locals – the streets they walk, the cafes they frequent, the monuments they drive by daily. As Pico Iyer stated, “one of the subtler beauties of travel is that is enables you to bring new eyes to the people you encounter”. That glimpse into normality, into the day-to-day lives of locals, in the seemingly infinite repetition of the pre-COVID commute, which to me at least, presents travel through a slightly different lens. And to me, there is a certain peculiar beauty in viewing normality when you are travelling to get away from it.
South Korea provides an exceptionally interesting version of ‘normal’. A nation ravaged by war, before boarding an express train into modernity, accelerating its economic and social growth, becoming one of the wealthiest and most futuristic nations in the world. It’s fascinating to conceptualise what ‘normal’ looks like in a place with one foot in the future, and the other still leaving the past.
This blog will peer through this lens, examining travel in South Korea with a keen focus on what emerges when we look closer at ‘normal’ – and of course, I’ll attempt to sprinkle in public transportation where I can. As the carriage doors close, I’m excited to find what hidden treasures, unseen beauty, and unadulterated normality is revealed, as I Ride the Seoul Train.
Riding the Seoul Train 