Day 19: New city, who dis?

Today was our first day in Daejeon and our first good morning in our hotel, aptly named Good Morning Residence. We were served an American Style breakfast, which apparently includes cold chicken nuggets and a freshly microwaved omelet. If this is what classifies as a typical breakfast in the USA, I wish to issue a formal apology to the American people, as no one should be subject to such misery at 8AM. All jokes aside, the sandwiches were genuinely nice and for some a welcome departure from rice.

This Tuesday’s schedule would be mostly empty, including only a visit to the Daejeon National Science Museum, which was actually quite similar to the Daegu Science Museum we went to. It did include an exhibition on old radios, mostly old Philco branded dresser-sized units, with old tube amplifiers. I only spotted one Dutch creation among the collection, a Philips radio from the ’50s with ’local’ shortwave stations, such as Luxembourg and Berlin, labelled on the front. Other exhibitions included VR experiences of a futuristic, vaguely Martian, planet and a robot arm exhibition which threw basketballs. We also took a look at the Nature and Science hall, which housed a surprisingly large amount of fish in pots and many dinosaur statues, which is always nice.

After the National Science Museum, we paid a visit to the huge mall next to the museum, to get the full American Style Korean experience as it were. The mall had many fancy stores and luxurious brands and on top of the roof a park was created. Actually, Daejeon was the most American Style city we visited in South-Korea so far, with its square 8-lane road layout running through the center of the city. After exploring the city, I had the best Japanese noodles of the trip in a slightly more fancy restaurant than usual due to increased pocket money, whilst some of the group went to the movie theater.