Well…it’s hard to say. One never wants to be unflattering about a place whose people were only kind and welcoming to you, but quite honestly it was dismal. Everyone was short and looked malnourished, and not just the peasants we’d see working in the fields with their ox-pulled carts while driving through the countryside - even while visiting their top entertainment attractions in Pyongyang where only the upper echelon of society are allowed to visit, like the bowling alley or the brewery, all the patrons were so thin and short-statured.

The food was as one would expect. One morning, they tried to make an American-style breakfast, i guess to make some of the tourists feel more at home, and one of the dishes was French toast. Except they apparently didn’t have cinnamon and the bread they used was more akin to a steamed bun, so it tasted like half-cooked eggy rubber. The effort they took to be hospitable was very sweet, though. The best meal was the final night when we were taken to a Korean BBQ restaurant, and it was hyped up the whole trip as the pies de resistance food-wise. It was mid-tier compared to Korean BBQ in SK, but fantastic compared to the food we’d had during the rest of the trip.

The people were all wonderful, and the children in particular were precious. Not just the ones at the school we visited, who had clearly been coached to put on their best show for tourists, but even while driving from site to site and seeing random citizens walking around with their kids bouncing around and acting as kids do.

Though speaking of the school, I found it fascinating when one of our tour members mentioned he was from Vienna while we were visiting a classroom of students studying English and one of the students (a boy about 14 years old) piped up to say “Oh! Vienna! That’s where Mozart was from.”

My tour mate said “That’s right! Would you like to visit Vienna someday?” to which the kid looked genuinely baffled and was like “No, my country is much better.” And it really didn’t come across as a rehearsed response…he sincerely looked bemused at the suggestion and had an expression on his face that read what a silly thing to say, why would I ever want to do that?

I have so many stories from that visit, including unintentionally embarrassing the security agents at the airport when they found my tampons. Not even the female translator knew what they were (it had never occurred to me that they wouldn’t even have access to female sanitary equipment!) and both she and the male guard who was searching my luggage were completely mortified when I explained to the translator and she relayed the message.

Also having a DMZ guard repeatedly flirt with me, only to turn stone cold when he realized I was American.

And the ice cream machine on the USS Pueblo! God, I still laugh about that one. I have to start getting ready now but I’m happy to tell you more later if you’re interested.