Seoul searching

Wherever our travels may take us, the journey itself is a quest for authenticity. That truly Italian cup of espresso you sip as you sit in a sidewalk cafe. That untrodden road leading to a local's only beach. The handcrafted jewelry you bought after a successful barter. In experiencing a place, we want to feel this unique sense of culture, as if we truly know what it is like for those who live it daily. We are prideful of those sacred moments with natives or those seemingly unspotted places in the city that remain untouched by a foreign glance. We hope we are the first to find a place and knight it with a shining glow of authenticity.

But, sometimes there are those trips you take and you aren't really searching for anything. The journey finds you because it knows where you sleep. Hostels are a way to enliven any travel experience mainly because of who you meet. It's a motley crew hailing from every corner of the world. The Spanish girls who arrived at 3 am, the Brits who camp out on the couch, the Israeli squatter who lives in the makeshift closet off the living room, the traveling Brazilian singers and the Swedish professor. Although the accommodations are usually small, modest and shared, what you do pay for isn't reflected in the furnishings, but in the companions. The hostel-goers are the ones who have at least some inkling of adventure in them to veer off the common course of hotels and packaged tours to make their own road less traveled.

Hostels exist all over the world, and were popularized in Europe for their affordability and acclaim among young twenty-something backpackers. But, after staying for a whirlwind visit of Seoul, Asia has proved a heavy contender for the quality of hostel experience.

Note to self: don't travel to Korea in the fall or winter. It is cold. So cold. And with a bite of wind. The majority of sightseeing activities and places of note in the city were outdoors. The markets, Seoul Tower, temples I have had enough of in Japan--all were understood in the pocket sized guidebook I read on the bus on our way to the airport back home. But, the memories of what actually did happen were better than trying to mimic the suggested sightseeing route from the book. It was authentic without trying and unable to duplicate--a completely spontaneous weekend wholly shaped by Bong's House, the hostel we chose simply by judging the book by it's cover. In this situation, it served in our favor.

Bong's House was homey and in a central part of the college town in Seoul. It had remnants of Boston with it's university-lined cobblestone streets and red brick buildings. Choosing a hostel is arguably the most important part of the trip because it is home base in a foreign city. It orients you with your surroundings, and in a way, acts as the center of the city. You will learn how to go everywhere on the basis of finding your way back to your hostel.

When searching hostel sites, a big, virtual security blanket is the ratings. Hostels are designed in a "by the people, for the people" mindset, so those of us traveling have a certain trust in the opinions of fellow travelers for no other reason other than we have nothing else to base our reason. We travelers anchor mixed memories of a certain hostel environment and those of us planning ahead, try and find the reviews that are most unanimously positive.

Kahlil Gibran wrote in his novel, The Prophet, "We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us."

The journey is always the inspiration that leads us to another place. Authenticity cannot be defined by a text and taught in a class where the light bulb blinks once something in finally understood. Authenticity shoots random beams of light through the cracks in the floor--it is that mysterious light that has crept itself around the corner, egging you follow it. In our travels, we find ourselves, which the most authentic belonging we can possess. With each new stop, each random encounter, each fleeting moment is still an impressionable memory that changes us permanently like a scar--we will never forget how it marked us and we carry it even if we've lost our belongings and permanence in life.

Gibran says, "the lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral." Travelers who find the hostel aren't seeking comfort, they're hoping for adventure and an experience they remember regardless of where they were. We often forget that the homes we make may not always be permanent or well-known. They are a shelter from the cold, a home away from home, and an inspiration to move again.