Another perk to living in a big city is the subway! I loved Le Metro in Paris but Seoul is hands down the best public transportation system I’ve encountered. I can load money onto a card that not only works on the subway and bus, but also my taxi! How cool is that!?!?! My card also automatically calculates transfers from train to train and bus to train. I dreaded the days in Boston when I only needed to hop off the T for less than 30 minutes and forced to pay full price because I couldn’t get a transfer.
The map looks deceivingly complicated, but the Subway is not only color-coded, but also has numbers assigned to each stop in ascending or descending order depending on your location/destination. Furthermore, each stop has a sign that indicates the current stop, the next stop and the previous stop. You can also follow the train in real time on light up diagram once you are on the train. Everything is written and announced in Korean, Japanese, English and sometimes Chinese. Seoul has made it pretty hard to get lost in this city.
The ambience is clean and peaceful, in comparison to my other subway experiences. There are no screeching noises that make you wonder if the subway is going to breakdown, like I encountered in Boston. I am not forced to walk through urine smelling stations or endure the stench body odor during my train ride. I loved both the T and Le Metro for both these reasons, they had character and I look back fondly, but it is really nice to experience a different side.
There are a couple drawbacks, the subway closes at around midnight or one depending on the night. It can't compare to NYCs 24 hour service Metro. Also, it is freezing outside, but boiling in the subway. I am sweating profusely by the time I get inside the train and tearing my clothes off only to be bundling up a few minutes later as soon as I hit the freezing windchill. In reality this is nothing to complain about and overall, I am super impressed. I hope that U.S. cities follow in Seoul’s footsteps.
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