Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

The odd thing about traveling for conferences is that I often don’t see very much of the place where the conference is held. Sometimes, if the hotel and conference venue are part of the same physical structure, there will be entire days when I never even go outside. So while I can now say that I’ve “been” to Daegu, my primary views of Korea’s fourth-largest city came through taxi and bus windows as I shuttled between the Marriott and Kyungpook National University (KNU).

Daegu was, as so many people warned me it would be, very hot and humid in late June—but also lush and green due to season’s frequent rains. The city was hillier than I expected, as I learned while walking from spot to spot on KNU’s campus, and the twisting streets were clogged with traffic jams on weekdays. Time and again I failed in my attempts at even limited navigation, inevitably flagging down a taxi heading in the exact wrong direction.

On two evenings I ate out with Korean-speaking colleagues, who expanded my palate beyond bibimbap bowls and gimbap rolls with raucous dinners around dishes of gamjatang (pork bone soup) and spicy broiled/stir-fried blowfish, a Daegu specialty. After our meal one night we ran across the street to a tiny noraebang establishment and sang (“sang” in my case) karaoke for two hours.

What were the restaurants called? What street was the noraebang located on? Those details are lost to the discombobulating whirlwind of my trip to Daegu—four days of snapshots and impressions, little slivers of knowledge gained but no overall picture of the place formed in my mind. Such is the weirdness of conference travel.

Featured Photo: On the campus of Kyungpook National University in Daegu, Korea, June 26, 2023.