Hand drawn message on every napkin!

I recently tried a Korean restaurant here in Sapporo. They gave you paper napkins with hand drawn illustrations and a "thank you". The food was good.

Flying to Germany

On Sunday morning, we had to get up ridiculously early to fly to Germany for a conference. This time we did not have much travel money, so me and a colleague had to buy really cheap tickets. We ended up flying with Korean airlines (though our professor still flew with his more expensive and favorite airline).

Korean bibimbap

Korean Airlines was fine. The last time I flew with them they sent my bags to Tokyo but me to Sapporo. This time I did not have any luggage so there were no problems like that. The food was nice. The girl at the check-in counter at New Chitose Airport (the Sapporo airport) was super nice. The only downsides were that the staff in the plane kept talking to me in Korean (which I do not understand) all the time, that there was an "in-flight shopping good show space" and a bar counter instead of toilets in the back of the plane where I sat, that all the good snacks were always gone by the time they reached my part of the plane, and that the guy sitting next to me spread out into my seat too and was generally quite annoying (not the airlines fault, though). Everything else was good.

Not a toilet

Stairs to the upper floor, which had 90 business class seats.

We flew Sapporo-Seoul-Frankfurt, with only a 45 minutes stop in Seoul. We were a little worried that we would have to run to catch our flight, but even though there was an extra security check just for transferring too (and they decided to frisk me thoroughly too, for some reason) we had plenty of time. On the way back I had five and a half hours in the Seoul airport and was severely bored (but unlike Frankfurt airport they have free WiFi, so at least I had something to do). On my way home, I got even more thoroughly frisked in Frankfurt.

This spicy chicken dish was good

Our plane was huge compared to the other planes in the airport.

Between Seoul and Frankfurt we flew with an Airbus 380-800, which is a huge airplane. It was the first time I flew in such an airplane. I still like the Boeing 787 better, though.

Not so Turkish food on a birthday

Last week it was one of my friend's birthday. I asked her what she wanted to eat for her birthday and she said she wanted to eat Turkish food. There is a nice Turkish restaurant right outside our university, and the Turkish guy who owns and runs the place is very nice to talk to too. So I recommended this place and we decided to meet outside the restaurant.

It turns out that this restaurant is closed on Wednesdays, which was not so great for us since it was on a Wednesday we met up outside that restaurant...

In the end we ended up eating Korean food instead, a few kilometers to the south of the Turkish place. We also had cake at a place nearby. The Korean food was very nice. Neither of us had been to this restaurant before, though we have had Korean food together several times.

The cake place was also kind of funny. They have a "Two pieces of cake and one drink" set that you can order. Probably this is for people who really like cake (there is also a set with one cake and one drink), but it is perfect for the two of us since I do not drink coffee or anything like that, so we want one drink and two pieces of cake. We ordered a set like that. When the waitress came with the things to our table, she brought only one fork, though. We asked for one more fork and she looked very surprised. I wonder what she thought we would use the extra fork for, and what she imagined I was doing in the place at all :-)

Korean food

 Another Korean restaurant has opened at Sapporo Station since last time I passed by there. The food was cheap and quite good.