Wine & Ginseng Train

 This weekend me and some friends went on the "Wine & Ginseng Train" here in Korea. We were told we would get to try Korean wine, go to an herb market, and even watch a movie on the way back. We had no idea what to expect, but with me being someone who loves to learn about wine I was so excited about the event! We got on the train at 9am and it looked like this:

It was very festive with it's bright and tacky decorations including LIFESIZE ginseng on the side of the train! The inside was full of tables and a bar stocked with Chateau Mani wine, and we soon took our seats and were given our wine glass and some funny stickers. As the train ride began we soon realized that we were in fact not going to learn anything about wine at all that day. There was NO translator and the host of our little train ride spoke about 5 words of English! He spent loads of time talking about each wine we were going to taste in Korean and I watched him with the hope that at any moment I would all of a sudden be able to understand him. But, no luck. Would he all of a sudden begin speaking in English? Struck out again. We tried our wines and I tried to google info about it, and soon just gave up and enjoyed the ride and sipped on some seriously sweet wine. 

We then were given an interesting cheese/snack platter. Was it gorgonzola, gouda, or brie that would pair nicely with these Korean wines? Ummmm, not quite. We got cut up pieces of American cheese, cheese puffs, popcorn, and assorted other random snacks. It didn't exactly pair well with anything but it did make for very funny conversation.

  

We then were told that it was Korean game time! We played rock paper scissors (which they are obsessed with over here) and if you won you got to put a sticker on someone's face! It was hysterical to see all these Korean men walking around with 5 or 6 pink and orange stickers on their face! 

 

 Then our host of the train began to play guitar and sing in Korean. It was classic. We swayed to the words we could not understand and sipped on the wine we knew nothing about. Only in Korea. 

But soon, a song came on that we DID KNOW. 'Gangnam style'. Wine glasses were put down and a dance party in the aisle of the moving train began to ensue. We even got a few hajimas (old ladies) and hajoshi's (old men) up dancing with us. Classic. 

We arrived at the Chateau Mani winery and had lunch:

We then stopped at a little village where we were told we had time to walk around and should try to find the herb market. We found lots of interesting street food on the way to the market! This man is cooking 'wild pork' which he kept flipping over in these grate looking cooking utensils.

 If anyone wanted to be a little more adventurous they offered cooked bugs, wild mushrooms, and cooked flowers.

 Here is some street side tempura in the making.... it may not look like it would be appetizing, but it sure was!

 As promised we found the herb market that was full of precious little old ladies selling herbs. They were probably 80 years old or more! It was incredible to me that they were sitting there selling these herbs all day at their age!

We saw a sweet family selling handmade pottery on the same road! I bought a few souvenirs myself, as they were too gorgeous to pass up!

  As promised, there was a lot of ginseng, which is a highly valued remedy here for good health.

  We got back on the bus after the herb market and headed to our next destination.

We stopped in a field where there were gorgeous cheery blossom tree's as far as the eye could see:

And then we were told to enter this place:

I was a little nervous we were walking into some sketchy underground place since I had no idea what it was after it was introduced on the bus in Korean....but everyone else seemed fine with entering this questionable cave looking place so we followed. It turned out to be a wine cellar where I'm guessing they keep the wine for some super special purpose. Once again, no clue as the speaker went on and on for about 10 minutes in Korean about what this place was and then walked up to us and said 

"Take picture, bus, go." That was it. So we did just that.

On our last stop before we got back on the train to go home we stopped off at a winery for a nice little foot bath.....I'm pretty sure our feet were being soaked in boiling hot wine! Not only was the water a pinkish color but it smelled very sweet too! (and was piping hot!)

On the train ride back home we watched a movie and relaxed. We were lucky enough to look out the window and see this gorgeous site as we rode through numerous little Korean towns.....

....it had been a long

day of wine tasting, moments lost in translation and filling in the blanks by ourselves, but I guess that's to be expected when doing something educational in a foreign country where you don't speak the language! Nevertheless, very cool and a different learning experience here in Seoul!