Asian backpacker

It’s quite unusual that I spend a whole post talking about 1 place, but I just had too many pictures of the Heyri art village to add another topic to this. And to top things off, some of the galleries weren’t even open!

Anyway, to start things off: Heyri art village is a little “village” a few kilometers outside of central Seoul. It looked like they took a piece of empty land and decided to make it an art village out of nowhere, good idea to me it seems. All the buildings have their own unique design and consist of creative use of materials and architecture.

Most of these buildings have their own galleries. Sadly for us, at the time of visiting, there weren’t any galleries showing works which made the trip seem pretty useless. Nevertheless, my accompanion (Christine) and I stayed optimistic and still went around the village admiring the awesome architecture of buildings and bumped into a few interesting cafes along the way too.

We found a cafe called Music Space Camerata with one of the best sound system and quality around. They even asked for an admission fee to have a drink there! Replete with vintage sofas, wooden table, towering ceiling, 1930s-style speakers, and even a record player. Jot down your favorite song and give it to the DJ. Hence the paper, pen and pencil on every table.

As we were walking around trying to look for the few galleries which had free entrance, we stumbled upon this nice little museum which showed items and settings from South-Korea a few decades ago. We both instantly agreed to actually pay a visit to this museum and we weren’t disappointed.

The museum itself had 3 floors. Starting out in the basement they actually built a miniature village in there with different stalls and houses of how the people used to live back in the days. Not sure if everything was historically correct, but I felt like a kid again when walking through the narrow streets, taking in the history of South-Korean everyday life. Eventhough if you don’t care too much about history, walking through the museum was quite an adventure itself. There was just so much to see and the whole place was packed with fun little things. Everywhere you looked you could find something of interest.

Besides the unique buildings and galleries there was also a huge “I love Dalki” complex to drop off your toddlers for a fun day of play and creative activities. The buildings consisted of about 3 floors with plenty of shops offering handcraft classes for the young ones and even the older ones. I wish we had such a place when I was a kid…. but then again, I’d prolly be out playing instead of making creative artworks and the like. Nevertheless, it was fun tho!

Be sure to walk around the village and discover hidden artworks all around the village. The village itself wasn’t that big, but if all the galleries were open you would surely be spending a full day here. I’ve been told that at night there are several things that are worth seeing too, but sadly I didn’t stick around for that long. Maybe next time!