Bureaucracy, beans, and colorful kitsch

The now 5th day started off quite uneventfully (Spoiler: And it remained that way): tidying up a bit in the hotel room, packing and sorting a few things. The coffee nerd wanted to send some items from the competition, as well as everything we wouldn't need on our onward journey, back home. Thus, the first stop of the day was clear: the Central Post Office in Seoul.

We surprisingly spent quite a bit of time there – about two hours – as it's not so easy to fill out the customs declaration correctly when not everything is well translated. Furthermore, we first had to figure out how to accurately designate all that coffee stuff, such as “mineral drops for coffee water,” on a customs form. After some consideration, a bit of improvisation, some help from ChatGPT, and several forms later, everything was finally correctly declared and (hopefully) on its way to reach Austria someday.

Afterwards, we made our way to a café that the coffee dude had heard some positive feedback about beforehand. However, on the way, we stopped at a small restaurant to grab a bite – dumplings, freshly cooked at the table in a small pot. Very authentic, very delicious.

Then it was time for the aforementioned coffee. And it did not disappoint. One was very interesting and personally reminded me a lot of white tea (after all, coffee is kind of just tea made from coffee beans or something). The other was extremely fruity, and I believe it could be described as 'full-bodied', whatever that means. In general, both were very aromatic and definitely worth the break.

Subsequently, we found ourselves at the AK& Mall – a mall that basically had everything that makes a Korean nerd's heart race: countless Gacha machines, a manga shop, a One Piece store, a pop-up shop for a current anime series, a clothing store with Pokémon and Harry Potter pajamas, a station for customizing phone cases in all sorts of kitschy designs, and much more. Quite crazy – and quite entertaining.

Overall, it was a very eventless day but, for a change, also quite pleasant. And even though we didn't really have much planned, we ended up being out the whole day anyway.

But thus this day also comes to an end – and tomorrow we can probably look forward to some lovely sunshine and a bit more of an agenda.