Yongdong Persimmon Festival

Adorable clock tower outside Yongdong Station

One day when I was living in Budapest I went to the élelmiszer downstairs to buy some veggies for dinner.  Back in our galley kitchen, I sliced open a tomato and out spilled a little confusion: the tomato was slightly slimy and sweet, with a hint of cinnamon.  It was delicious...but it was no tomato.  It was a persimmon and henceforth my love of persimmons flowered.

Naturally when I bumped into the Yongdong Persimmon Festival on the interwebs, I cleared my schedule.  The day came and I still hadn't found anyone who was willing to make the 3 hour trek with me, so I hopped on a KTX train and into an adventure.

It was surprisingly easy to get to the festival, despite how difficult it was to find any English directions or reviews.  The train dropped me off at Yongdong Station and the festival was a little less than a ten minute walk away.  I followed the red lanterns over a little bridge and around to the sounds of Korean music and smell of street food.

 Yongdong is the Holy Land of Fruit in Korea, a name which further attracted me to the festival for my favorite fruit.  But the festival was not just about eating-- there were demonstrations of different machinery for processing the fruit, performances, local wineries, and more.  It was not as large as I expected, but it seemed like a true neighborhood and cultural event.  I was the only foreigner I could spot.

My alien looks caught the attention of a few local news shows (or other promotional people, let's be real I have no idea).  I was asked four different times to be recorded tasting different vendors' variation on the dried persimmon, sampling sweet tea and persimmon candy, and saying in my terrible Korean "Yongdong persimmons are delicious!"

The fruits of my labor were many: I rode the train home with two boxes of dried persimmons, some whole and some sliced for snacking. And you know I snacked on the way. I figured out that you can ride the train great distances with a ticket but without a seat. This information would later prove handy (as future posts will explain).   And I saw and tasted something I'll probably never experience again.