The Alps on an Old Railway: Seoul’s Swiss Spring Street Festival

Part of the old railway between Sinchon and Hongik University Station has been turned into Gyeongui Line Forest Park. Gyeongui Line Book Street is the section that puts books and reading along the path.

Small bookstores, exhibition rooms and cultural programs sit within the walking route. It’s the sort of place where you set out without a destination and realize you’ve stopped to see something.

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Marking 60 Years of Korean–Swiss Diplomatic Ties

In 2023, Korea and Switzerland marked the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations. The Swiss Spring Street Festival ran for a month along Book Street. It gave a diplomatic anniversary a form that people could come across in the city.

The festival’s characters were based on Korea’s mugunghwa, the rose of Sharon, and Switzerland’s edelweiss. The two flowers walked side by side in the illustrations, turning up together on signs, photo sets and other material along the path.

Diplomatic events often take place behind the doors of a hotel or convention hall. This one happened on a walking route. Some people came to see it. Others found themselves in it on their way somewhere else.

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Finding Switzerland on a Walk

The whole street worked as an outdoor exhibition. The small container galleries and the spaces between them introduced Swiss cities and landscapes.

Photographs and panels showed the Jungfrau, Zermatt, Bern’s Old Town and Lake Lucerne. Several became backdrops for a picture, so visitors could step into the scenery themselves.

I particularly remember the model of Bern’s clock tower. It was smaller than the original, but with the backdrop and lighting it could be hard to tell from a photograph that it was in Seoul. Overseas travel was opening up again. The picture made it easier to imagine going.

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A Train Through the Alps

The stand I noticed first was set up as a Swiss railway carriage. It had a platform-like entrance and a small version of a passenger compartment inside.

Mountain scenery passed across screens in the shape of windows. An Alpine train crossed a field of snow. For a few minutes, it gave you something like the rhythm of traveling by rail.

The stand drew attention to the trip between places. You could see why the ride itself was worth a place in a Swiss itinerary. People seemed to linger there longer than anywhere else.

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Why the Old Railway Was the Right Place

Book Street was built where trains once ran. For a month, a display about train journeys brought that use back into view.

In an indoor hall it might have felt like another tourism stand. On a path you reached each piece on foot, in something closer to the rhythm of a journey.

The park already combines walking, cafés and performance spaces. The exhibition slipped easily into that mix. People out on a walk or on a date could find themselves stopping to take part.

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A Month on the Street

The Swiss Spring Street Festival ran from April 8 to May 8, 2023. The displays had a month to become familiar.

The foot traffic changed over the course of a day. Families came through in daylight. More people seemed to be out walking in the evening. When the lights went on, the photo backdrops looked different again.

Dusk was my favorite time. The last daylight and the exhibition lighting brought out the colors together.

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What It Made People Think About

Travel abroad was becoming possible again. People took photographs and talked about where they might go, and it was easy to imagine the exhibits prompting plans.

You didn’t need to have been to Switzerland. The display gave you a view of how a trip could feel before you looked up its details.

That was one of the things the festival could do. Moving some of the scenery to a path in Seoul gave people a reason to picture the journey.

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The City as an Exhibition Space

There was no single threshold you had to cross to see the festival. It carried on along the walk, mixing the people who came for the exhibition with everyone else using the path.

I remember it as a series of things I came across. That can leave a stronger impression than any one stand.

For a while there was a trace of another country in a familiar Seoul street. I went home with a little of the feeling that comes before you set out somewhere.