Beomgye-dong, or, the View From My Window

Okay, so that's not so much the view from my window as the view from Jay's window, facing a different direction on the 13th floor. But it gives a picture of the neighbourhood I live in, Beomgye. (This is pronounced similar to bum-gay). Anyang as a city is very dense and surrounded by hills or mountains, depending on whether you're from BC or Korea.

The strip at night

The main streets (intersection pictured above) are wide and busy, but the blocks are bigger than Vancouver's blocks, and in between the main streets are the real places of interest.

The inner-blocks of commercial zones are a sort of cross between alleys, streets, parking lanes and pedestrian zones. They are generally stacked four or five stories high with commercial establishments -- convenience stores, cafes, restaurants, bars, hair salons, you name it -- and completely dominated with colourful advertisements, which often feature dancing light-borders, neon signs and tempting music. It is really visual overload.

Although I have seen this repeated in many commercial centres (and I hear there are three or four such neighbourhoods in Anyang, and many more in Seoul), the closest example runs between my apartment building and Beomgye-uk (the Beomgye subway station). We call it simply "the strip" and it manages to pack everything you'd need in consumer life into a pedestrian-only block.

My apartment building

You may recognize it as the site of our impromptu snowball fights a few nights ago, and it is certainly a place I'll frequent over the next year.

My building -- Hansol Central Park 1 -- is named for its proximity to Central Park, which is kitty corner to me across the main street intersection. Central Park is a nice relief from the consumer-centred strip, and in one (large) block contains a soccer field, basketball courts, and a rollerskating track as well as lots of green space. It doesn't look like too much now, but I imagine in the summer it will be the setting for lots of fun.

I've realized living here that I have never really lived in a downtown area before, with so many amenities so close at hand. I think I could get used to it - in fact, I already am!

If you're interested in figuring out more about the geography of my neighbourhood, here's a Google Map for you to play with. It's centred on Beomgye subway station, which is the nearest landmark I could find on Google Maps. To find my apartment, find the green block that is the park, and look kitty-corner across the intersection nearest the station.

View Larger Map