WHILE THEY CARRY (SOMETHING LIKE) SAKE...

BEHIND THE WHEEL. "Around the world in 80 Days"

The action of Avtoradio, supported by Novaya Gazeta, continues. Our columnist Yuri GEYKO dictates his reportage abroad. We are in Seoul! In high-rise, rich Seoul, which is missing only Yuri Luzhkov: to highlight the Korean capital, ...

The action of Avtoradio, supported by Novaya Gazeta, continues. Our columnist Yuri GEYKO dictates his reportage abroad.

We are in Seoul! In the high-rise, wealthy Seoul, which is missing only Yuri Luzhkov: to highlight the Korean capital, like Moscow, it would not have been worth it! And so Seoul stands, surrounding the window of my room with skyscrapers of 90 floors, and only luminous windows, headlights and street lights are visible - evening and night Moscow in comparison with it - a lady of high society sparkling with diamonds and toilets next to almost a nun. Some kind of Seoul is blind, invisible in the dark - you need to look at it during the day, only during the day.

But before that, journalist Yevgeny Kalugin and I had spent seventeen hours on a ferry from the dusty and shabby Russian village of Zarubino to the sparkling Korean city of Sokcho. We slept almost on mats - thank God, only with a three-point wave, but the most piercing second was the one when the deck of the Korean ferry trembled from powerful engines and a narrow strip of sea water lay between us and Russia.

Three surprises awaited us on Korean soil: first, at the Korean border, we had to fill out a medical questionnaire, which asked about our urge to vomit or poison. And the concealment of the diagnosis was punished - I quote the Russian text of the questionnaire: "one year of hard labor or a fine of 5,000 dollars." Second: we knew that we should be met, but when we saw a huge poster: "KIA-Spectra" - around the globe, Welcome by Yuri Geiko and Evgeny Kalugin! - we were stunned. All that was missing was extras with Avtoradio flags, bread and salt, and a traffic police escort car.

Instead, we were accompanied by a Kia-Sorrento jeep. Then the third surprise crept up - in South Korea they drive like in Russia: the maximum speed on a paid highway is 100 kilometers per hour. They go - from 120 to 140. There were also those flying under 200. But the ride is pulsating - from a TV camera to a TV camera, which, by the way, they don’t warn about here, as in France, but which hang with a reliable frequency every 5-7 kilometers.

Highway to Seoul, number 50, across the country, built 5 years ago, is an ordinary, two-lane one-way, with all the necessary options: bumpers on both sides, clear bright markings, signs. The quality is approximately American, that is, better than Moscow-Domodedovo, but worse than in Germany. Asphalt, in pieces of 10 kilometers, is multi-colored: either light gray, almost white, or completely coal, or ordinary. Landscape - Georgia: wooded hills are no longer, as in Primorye, but mountains, but without snow on the peaks, no more than six hundred meters high, the air is warm-heavy, spicy and humid, overboard about 26 plus we go with air conditioning.

The road curves slowly. There are many tunnels, 500-800 meters each. In which, by the way, half of the drivers do not turn on either the sidelights or the dipped headlights, they easily cross the axial ones, although the fines here for the usual violations - driving on a red light without aggravating consequences, improper parking, not wearing seat belts - 50 dollars each.

Exceeding the speed limit by 10 kilometers is also 50 dollars, by 20 - 200, and by 100 - a thousand. Riding with any per mille - prison and deprivation of rights, we saw a dozen police cars 300 kilometers to Seoul - everyone is standing on the asphalt roadside, shimmering with lights, and the police are inside. What they do there is unknown. Discipline by their very presence, or what? ..

But when the road is being repaired or someone is just doing something on its sides (I have never seen this in any country in the world), living people stand three hundred meters before the work and wave red flags all day, warning those passing by.

Having traveled 300 kilometers in Korea and 20 kilometers in its capital, we saw only a dozen Japanese left-hand drive cars - almost all Lexuses. And half less than European ones: probably, Koreans are terrible patriots. There are many native Spectrs, but with a different radiator grille and a more expensive interior, even something wood-like trimmed.

Now the Spektra is no longer made here, but our escort Hong also drives a Spectra and said that in Korea it cost 14-15 thousand dollars in a complete set, with which we congratulate you: in Russia - the same.

When you read these lines, we will already meet with the president of KIA-Motors, where they promised to give us a taste of the new KIA model that will go to Izhevsk after the Spectra - the Seaid. Then we fly to San Francisco: Alexei Lysenkov, TV star, Sergei Kozheurov from Novaya Gazeta, the media sponsor of our circumnavigation, and myself.

I am writing these lines and dictating them into the computer after the first tasting of real Korean cuisine in my life - guys, this is something! No sooner had we landed in our chairs than our table, with a brazier in the middle, began to be covered with lightning speed with saucers - dozens of saucers for each - with unimaginable salads and sauces. All this is free if you order meat. The meat itself, beaten and rolled into thin layers, is roasted in front of us on coals - it is not roasted by us - by waiters and waitresses.

They circle around us, around everyone in the restaurant, in a conveyor belt: one will spread the meat to fry, the second will turn it over, the third will check whether it is fried, the fourth will cut it into pieces with scissors, the fifth will check again, the sixth will turn over again, and only the seventh will spread it on our plates. Then you should dip a piece of meat in the sauce, put it on a terry lettuce leaf, add another lettuce there, dip a piece of garlic in a special sauce, put it in the same lettuce leaf, wrap it all up tightly and put it in your mouth. In general, the master of the word is powerless here, since there are no associations. There were Koreans around us. They all drank 20-proof sake-type vodka, washed it down with beer, ate the same fried meat and felt great.

I'm finishing. It's late at night, I can't sleep again. The next report and issue of Autoliqbez will be written and transmitted from San Francisco.

Good luck on the roads of the country and life! And a reserve of a braking distance. We are unlikely to need centimeters under the crankcase to Moscow!