After a couple of stressful weeks, I’m on my way to Australia, where I’ll be spending the next couple of hopefully far less stressful weeks. On the other hand, a journey that begins and ends with two consecutive ten-hour flights probably doesn’t count as completely stress-free. Right now, I’m spending the time between said ten-hour flights in the transit area at Seoul International airport. While this is most certainly not the best place to get an idea of South Korea, the country’s culture has managed to get into the duty free zone.

While there are, not entirely unexpectedly a couple of days before Christmas, quite a lot of Santa-inspired attempts to withdraw Dollars and Euros from bored transit passengers’ pockets – the Korean idea of “Santa” has not yet been assimilated by soft drink marketing. In South Korea – well, in the tiny part of South Korea I have now come to know – Santa is usually young, quite attractive (which implies the complete lack of Santa’s well known facial hair), wearing a green miniskirt and knee-high white leather boots.

I may be mistaken, but my guess is that over here there will be more 13 year old boys who still believe in Santa than at the North Pole.