700 Days of Adventure: What You Can Learn from ‘Hard-Boiled Trip’ and ‘La Dolce Vita’

[YeochekJeochek] Familiar or Foreign — It Doesn’t Matter

…What you notice when you slow down and walk a little deeper

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When life feels heavy, a lot of us imagine packing a bag and taking off. But the two authors featured in YeochekJeochek argue that travel isn’t just escape — it’s a deliberate way to get to know yourself more honestly.

‘Hard‑Boiled Trip’ author Kim Gwi‑seon wandered across Eurasia for 700 days after burning out. ‘La Dolce Vita’ author Kim Seung‑woo stepped away from a 36‑year career and went to Italy to rediscover himself.

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Both writers began at a crack in everyday life and, on unfamiliar roads, turned their attention inward instead of chasing postcard views. They rejected fast, consumptive tourism and chose to walk slowly and with intention. What they found wasn’t fresh trivia but the quiet wisdom that had been waiting inside them all along. YeochekJeochek dives into how these journeys became acts of self‑discovery.

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When people plan trips, they usually fall into two camps: planners and improvisers. In MBTI shorthand, planners are J and improvisers are P. Planners sort most of their itinerary before they leave; improvisers decide on the fly. Neither style is the right one — but watching each in action can be wildly entertaining.

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Then there are the full‑on P types who decide each day where they’ll sleep and how they’ll get to the next place — whether they’re in a familiar town or halfway across the world. That uncertainty makes borders, chance encounters, and daily logistics unpredictable and sometimes brutal. As one traveler summed it up: the roads are rough and the weather is a circus. Still, even after danger and hardship, they press on.

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That’s essentially the journey Kim Gwi‑seon recounts in Hard‑Boiled Trip. She crosses an indifferent, irrational world with just her wits and skin. She turned a dusty, grueling attempt to make sense of life into a book, calling the experience hard‑boiled — cold and unflinching — and folding 700 days of travel into a clear, unvarnished narrative.

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Kim studied life sciences at Korea University and traditional Korean medicine at Kyung Hee University, then spent five years at a multinational pharmaceutical company. One day she found herself crying for no clear reason — classic burnout. Fearing that her life might quietly slip away in repetitive routine, she quit and set out to cross Eurasia. The book calmly catalogs the countless daily decisions she made on the road and how those choices slowly built a foundation of self‑trust.

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The journey is hardly a highlight reel. She lost a wallet with all her cash in the biting cold of Lake Baikal, was attacked by hungry wild dogs in a Turkish field, and even found herself abandoned on the shoulder of a highway. She doesn’t glamorize fear. Instead, she records, without flourish, how she endured — showing that endurance is less a battle with the world than a confrontation with one’s own fear.

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Misunderstandings with a grumpy Siberian train attendant and the unexpected kindness of strangers while hitchhiking strip away prejudice and act like a mirror, reflecting the human truth beneath national labels.

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When someone asks the tired question, “Isn’t it dangerous for a woman to travel alone?” the author fires back: “Unfamiliar places carry risk for everyone — life outside your blanket is always a little risky.” The point isn’t to avoid danger but to set your own standards for handling it. That’s the survival skill and life stance she learned on the road. Sleeping on a bench by Interlaken’s river with a backpack for a pillow and celebrating a lucky hitch in a red sports car — that’s the spirit of her travels.

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Her book doesn’t chase a glamorous Eurasian capital. It turns inward. What she took from the road wasn’t new facts so much as a renewed ability to see and feel the wisdom that had already been inside her.

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After 700 days on the road, one traveler who tried to escape life found firmer footing for living it more accurately. Hard‑Boiled Trip is more than a travel diary — it’s a fierce record of someone building personal standards that keep them whole. If you’re itching to run from a draining routine or you need a reset, this book will hand you a measured, gutsy dose of courage.

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Thirty‑six years — that’s how long one man stayed in one career, long enough to see the world shift around him. During that time he produced well‑known music shows like Open Concert and Concert 7080. Music has been a cornerstone of his life. When he retired, he wanted to dive deeper into what music means, so he went to Italy to live for a month — a month that turned into an intense, curiosity‑driven journey.

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Former KBS music producer Kim Seung‑woo left a 36‑year career that had become second nature and confronted a core question: Who am I, and what does it mean to live true to myself? His answer was to go deeper into essence — which is why he traveled to Florence and Tuscany, long celebrated as havens for artists.

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Florence, Italy / Photo = Unsplash

On Italian streets he walked slowly and with attention, collecting stories that became La Dolce Vita: Florence, Tuscany. The book reads like a traveler’s confession — someone trying to rebuild a life by listening closely to the places that inspired so many artists before him.

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He notes that giants like Goethe, Mendelssohn, Stendhal, and Wagner repeatedly turned to Italy when their creativity ran dry. Standing before Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia, he felt a wave of awe so powerful it felt like time stopping.

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After witnessing that stone‑made awakening, he draws on a singular background — political science, study at a French photography school, and a master’s in visual design — to explore how a single moment can stretch into something timeless.

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Florence, Italy / Photo = Unsplash

From the Medici marks that built the Renaissance’s artistic infrastructure to the memento mori echoing in Santa Maria Novella, his prose moves beyond simple sightseeing notes into thoughtful cultural insight.

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His route winds from flower‑strewn Florence to the rolling green hills of Tuscany. He ambles down vineyard lanes perfumed with Chianti Classico and savors meals in a 14th‑century monastery restaurant in Siena as a fine rain falls — moments designed to awaken the reader’s senses.

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Rather than quick hits and competitive tourism, he embraces slow travel that tastes a city’s time and memory. Lying back in Campo square to soak up the red Gothic city or discovering the aesthetics of time in a Montalcino wine becomes a gentle, restorative way to fill the post‑retirement void with new passion.

Tuscany, Italy / Photo = Unsplash

The book’s title, La Dolce Vita, literally means “the sweet life” in Italian. The sweetness he finds isn’t about grand trophies but small, glowing moments — a sunset over Michelangelo Square or the warmth of a stranger in a narrow alley. The book is a kind, thoughtful guide for anyone who needs a pause or wants to meet their true self on roads where art still breathes.

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Jang Ju‑young, Travel+ Reporter

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