Back in Germany

Since yesterday, I am back in Germany.

After 15 hours time sitting in airplanes and additional 5 hours at different airports, I arrived back in Germany.

Due to an American Football Game between the Paderborn Dolphins and a team from Troisdorf, I had not much time to spend with writing for the blog. But a summary of the last three months experiences will follow within this week.

Have a nice day (in Germany) and a good night (in Taiwan).

Soon, I will be back in Germany...

...and I will find the time to update all the posts and write the latest.
Untill that day I will have no internet and do it like the monkeys:

Camping with a typhoon - great fun!!

My last weekend which I was allowed to spend in Taiwan, I planed to spend with some travelling and visit some place more far away from Taipei than all my day hikes. Fortunately Johanna, Simon and Shuwei wanted to travel as well, so we planed to have a trip to a place in the mountains, called Alishan. Alishan is famous for the beautiful sunrise and the amazing nature, that’s what made us decide to go there.

Our party started on Friday evening around eight o´clock – little later as we planed but nevertheless the same joyful mood, as expected. Nevertheless Taiwan offers a lots of possibilities to travel, like the high speed train and a huge number of buss organisations, for this weekend the most convenient way to travel was definitely the beautiful white VW-Golf from Shuwei. With lost of good music and mood in our luggage, we started down the highway heading south.

As it was around 2.30 when we arrived in the Alishan-Area we decided to find a place to put up the tent as soon as possible. We found a adequate place to put up hour tent. As a true gentleman honors debts, especially gambling debts Shuwei had to build the tent alone. Nevertheless three of us spend the time without doing anything to help him the tent was put up very soon, so that we could lay down not half an hour after we found the place. But as most of us still know it from the time as child, when you lay down into one room with three friends you start chatting. Chatting includes telling stories, interesting, emotional, profound or funny things and telling jokes. This made me laugh so much, that I could hardly stop. And everybody who knows my laugh knows that it is impossible to sleep beside me. When ever I think about this night I feel sorry for the others, that I did not allow them to sleep before half past three – but this thought is always with a smile. This smile even becomes more acute when it comes to my mind that I tried to wake the others up after I woke up. I did not knew, that it was just around half past five. As Johanna told me, she forced herself to keep her eyes closed, to pretend being asleep. But my simple tricks worked out with Shuwei. For the sun arouse around four it was daylight outside and the two of us got up to have a small walk.

This was one of the best experiences I have had until this weekend in Taiwan: To wake up and see the tropical flowers directly after opening the eyes.

The great nature which the Taiwanese nature offers was one of the things we planed to enjoy on the following Saturday. We drove into the Alishan Nature Park to do some hiking. The day started with lots of sun and ended with heavy rain but the scenes we saw during this day were beautiful. Again, this is the point to switch to pictures to give you a better impression.

(Pictures will follow)

On this Saturday one of the funniest thing at this weekend happened: Shuwei lost his flip flop while sitting on a bridge and the shoe fell down on rails. To let all of you join as good as possible Johanna and I took a small video report on the happenings around the Flip-Flop-Action. Just have a look:

Due to really heavy rain, we were not able to put up the tent this night and slept in a hostel near the highest 7-eleven, located in Taiwan.

After a breakfast at Starbucks we headed east to stop at a hot spring place. This hot spring, we decided to go for this day was located on the roof of a hotel. There were two separate rooms – one for male and one for female visitors. Johanna and I tried to get into the water for nearly half an hour but it did not work out, since it was too hot with its 45°C. So we decided to finish the visit by having the usual shower. As they offered a kind of bathtubs for the shower we adapted our plan to the conditions and headed ourselves with a bath.

This relaxing stop was followed by a long ride through the mountains on windy roads. At the beginning this was truly exciting but as it took us around three hours to get to the Tarroko gorge and another hour from there to the final destination for this day it became a little boring in between. But don’t worry, we found some other funny things to do, like painting each other on our notebook or eating Pringles – Once you popped you cannot stop. (For all who do not know this is a slogan from a German advertisement for Pringles – Yes, it might be that I am little addicted to advertisement.) Another thing which made the ride a good thing was the stopover at the Sun-Moon-Lake. A nice view but I figured out that it was good, I did not spend a whole weekend on this area, cause for me it seams to be just a lake like some others. But nice!

Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Johanna that evening, because she had to go back to Taipei to work the following day. To give her an adequate farewell we danced the “Fliegerlied” (a German Aprés-Ski-Hit with a fitting dance, just ask Google.com or Youtube.com for some introduction).

Give me night of sleep and than I will finish this post about the amazing and long weekend…soon!!

My last day at the office - or just a special lunch

For my last day at the office we had a special Vietanmese lunch.

(From left: Jerome, Macy, Makiyo, John, Sheera, Matthias and beside me Mr. Wang)

Thank you to all my nice colleagues!!

Was a great time with you at the office and after work. By the way, this time out of the office still goes on until the 27th of June!! ;-)

Great Weekend with...

...Beijing Duck...
...additional dishes...

...and the traditional way, to prepare and eat it.

... The night view of and in front of the Grand Hotel. ...

... And another great place with an even better view. ...

... Some surfing lesson, ...

... and an introduction how to paddle. ...

Just to look like this at the end!!

Sashimi – or the way to enjoy!!

Finally we managed to have our long planed Sushi and Sashimi dinner with fresh things from the market, yesterday.

I am proud to say that I have found a great internet page which could give an understanding about Sashimi and Sushi to these readers who cannot imagine what we had on our plates. For Sashimi follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sashimi
For Sushi look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushi (I imploringly hope that nobody will need this link.)
Of course it is Wikipedia!!

Yesterday we went to a small market in some even smaller streets of Taipei. First we bought some fresh Sashimi including tuna, salmon and another fish nobody seems to know the English name from. While watching the woman preparing the fresh fish I would not have had expected that the preparation of the sushi would be even more interesting and entertaining. But the “Sushi-Hannes” did a real good job. I had always enjoyed watching the ladies in Paderborn preparing the sushi, but the “Sushi-Hannes” had a few more ingredients per role and he did it much quicker. Finally we ended up with a good combination of sushi and sashimi which were a great dinner with the combination of some nice wine, as you can see below.

The Julia-Song

Some month ago a funny crazy person suddenly started to sing the refrain of a song, called “Julia”. But nobody knew the name of the original singer who had published this song. After another person sang this song to me a number of weeks later, again I started to ask Google for help. But even uncle Google could not help me with the name of the singer.

Within time I did not think about it anymore until somebody sang the same part of the song to me, again. Somebody here in Taipei. I took this as a reason to start searching again. Due to the fact that my IP-address must be a Taiwanese one all the results at Google and Youtube had a Taiwanese smack. But, at least, I think I found the Taiwanese Version of the song everybody sang to me.

Look or better say listen:
http://www.imeem.com/junshi-x/music/FKlfQFY4/wang-lee-hom-julia-3/

Surfin Sunday

Concerning travelling this weekend was a lacy weekend for me. I started on Saturday into the weekend by trying to sleep as long as I wake up, the first time since I am in Taiwan without any alarm. That brought me leave the apartment round noon with Fulong as destination. Fulong is the east coast place you can easily reach by train from the train station in Nangang within 90minutes and offers a nice sandy beach. That was exactly the reason why I wanted to go there, just to lay down on the beach, enjoy the sun and try to make highly visible that I am not Taiwanese, by getting a tan.

The nice and relaxing afternoon was followed by a shopping and night market tour with Johanna. This tour ended up at the wholesale night market of Taipei, Wufengpu. For the time we had spend out at the streets, which offered a lot of funny, most pink things to buy, we did not buy a lot. But you cannot say no to all of the bags the offer here, which means, finally we bought something.

The best part of the weekend was the Sunday. I had to get up at 6.30 to meet at an MRT-Station (great points of orientation this stations) with Shuwei,

my surfing teacher for this day. We drove to a beach at the east coast to enjoy the weaves while surfing. The security introduction was followed by tome dry practicing at the beach before we made it out to the water for starting the real funny part. For luck the waves were not as high, so it was a good day to start practicing this sport and it was great fun. Except a lunch break for may be 90minutes we had spend the whole day at the water, chatting and surfing. Great sport, but a pity you cannot do it in Germany. But even if you could do it, you could not compare it, because the sun was shining without any break and the beach we went to for surfing was surrounded by tropical green hills which created a great ambience.

Even the surf shop where I rented my board was such a nice and fitting place for surfing. The funniest thing about this surf club was the owner’s dog. You want to know what can be funny about a dog. See here

He had a kind of skin infections, which made it necessary to shave him.

The Chinese dinner with the group of surfers rounded the whole weekend off. In some way it was like one of these days at the water ski lake in Paderborn, but with salty water and a lot of Mandarin instead of the usual German slang. By the way, Shuwei seems to be the biggest fan of Germany, I have ever met. He knows a lot about Germany and tries to teach himself some German – which, of course, is better than my Mandarin. It is funny to hear somebody speaking about your country with such an enthusiasm and most of the things he likes about Germany seem to be so general to me.

All together it was a great day with lots of experiences about Taiwan and Germany, and at least with some new friends.

Experience some cultural differences in Wulai

Wulai is place near Taipei and really famous for the waterfalls located there. Despite the strange travelling experience I had made two days before, I decided to visit this highly recommended place to do a hiking trail there and watch the waterfalls.

Getting to Wulai from Nangang is easy and due that you can use the MRT it is convenient again. So I had to take the MRT to get to a station called Xindian and finally take bus from there to Wulai. Usually taking a bus is easy, as long as you know the number and color of the bus (here they use different colored numbers to mark the busses, that does not mean that the hole bus is painted in only that one color). You even do not need to know where you have to get out of the bus, as long as you bring something written in Mandarin which makes clear where you want to go, the bus drivers will let you know when you have to get out of the bus. The bus to Wulai is one of these extremely easy buses. You find the description where it starts at the tourist information which is located in front of the MRT Station and the destination is written in English on the bus, for that it is nearly impossible to miss it. Than just exit at the final station and follow the crowed, which will definitely be there at the weekends.

I did not follow the crowd, I took a look at my map and asked a Taiwanese who arrived with the same bus and had some foreigner as accompany, which made me sure they could help me with some English at least. Beside that they described me where to go and which places I should not miss, they asked me if I would like to join them. When I say them, I mean an international male who had two Taiwanese ladies to show him the amazing sides of Wulai. I expect that you start asking yourself why I name him international and not say that he is Scottish, for he was born in Scotland. In fact he was born in Scotland, moved to the US where he lived near the Grand Canyon for several years, before he moved to California for the time he studied at a University and finally he came to Taiwan in last august. Beside the high number of different countries he had lived in, he had travelled to an even higher number of countries and has his family spread all over the globe. This makes him an international man to me. For all this experiences we had a lot to talk about, and this was what we did during our walk to the hiking trail. While the two of us decided to walk there, the Taiwanese said that the distance is too far and they preferred to go by taxi. This is one of the main cultural differences that I had experienced during the last two month here in Taiwan – the Taiwanese like to stay outside, as long as it is shadow and they do not have to worry about getting tanned and as long as they do not have to walk too much.

When we arrived at the Nature Park we found the two ladies sitting under a pavilion enjoying some green tea. We did a small hike with the distance of nearly two kilometers together and finished the whole trail with two additional kilometers as the group of two people. Beside the fact that the trail consisted only of stairs the Nature Park we were walking through, offered a lot of nice things, flowers and small animals to see. The best part was this natural swing I found next to the trail.

And of course the waterfalls are really something you should not miss, when you stay in Taiwan and plan to do a daytrip by only using public transportation.

After the hiking and a nice dinner with rise, made inside a bamboo, the others went to a hot spring place and I went back home – the weather for hot springs was already too hot for me.

But in the end, this weekend turned out as a good and enjoyable one for me.

(Pictures will follow later the day)

Dragon Boat Festival - or just an interesting experience

The Dragon Boat Festival is one of only a few public holidays here in Taiwan. I had asked a several number of Taiwanese what exactly they celebrate on that day and had received a lot of different answers. I would bet, if I would ask another Taiwanese I would get an answer I have not heard yet. As I think it would make the post to long – my posts are already really long – I will not tell them to you. If you want to know at least something about the Duanwu Festival, how it is called in Mandarin Language, just ask my friend Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duanwu_Festival )But let me tell you what Dragon Boat means to me: For me it meant having a long weekend without work and it gave me the chance to do some travelling in Taiwan.

Because it is one of only a small figure of holidays the Taiwanese have, lots of them planed to travel during this days, which made the booking even more complicated. But if you know somebody who is able to speak Chinese, it is not impossible to find anything. That’s how it worked out for me, I asked Ching I to help me and she arranged real great trip. Following the plan we should have started on Wednesday from Taipei to Taidung by air plane, followed by a one hour at a boat, which should have brought us to the well known Green Island. On Green Island we planned to stay until Friday before going back to Taidung for one night. Next, we planned to travel along the east coast by car and spend the last night in Hulaien. Sunday the travelling should have ended by sitting in the train back from Hualien to Taipei.

As you might have recognized, I am using the phrase “should” a lot. As many of us know, most of the times it ends up a complete different way as it was planned to do. That’s exactly what had happened to me at this trip. Another thing you might have found in my wording is that the travelling was not planned for a single person. I had Felix as fellow traveler.

The start on Wednesday worked out, as it was planed. As I think, most of you know how it is to fly with an airplane, which gives no need to describe this any further in detail. But due to the rough weather which was making high waves, the ride on the ferry became a real experience. During the way I took a look at some faces of the passengers of the ferry and I think since that I know why Green Island is called Green – maybe it is because of the many green faced people arriving there. The real reason for the name, was hard to lose sight of when I did the first step onto the island, of course it is because of the large amount of green plants, trees and ferns.

The program for the evening just consisted of dinner. But not any usual dinner, it was a kind of BBQ. On Green Island you can find a lot of restaurants offering a kind of private BBQ like all you can eat. You just sit down on a table on which they put up a grill or sometimes the grill is already embedded into the table. In fridges they offer typical Taiwanese meat, vegetables and specialties for you to put onto the grill. Just take whatever you think you might like to have grilled and put it on the fire. Of course, the bigger groups combine it with some karaoke singing and lots of beer. All together it was a funny dinner.

For Thursday we had rent a scooter to go around the island and see all the great sights and places.

As it took us only till noon to go around the island once, we had some stops and did some walks. Finally I did one of the two hiking trails which led me through a kind of forest, a tropical forest and made me see a lot of small animals, which I had never seen before, like this small boy.

At the beginning the hike was a little bit scary, because I did this hike alone and could always here something moving in the trees or plants. But most of times it where just small salamanders or squirrels trying to hide as soon as possible.

After the hiking we went to the famous hot springs. The hot spring place on Green Island is one of the three existing places, where the water in the hot spring is directly from ocean. Fortunately the weather was not to hot so that the break in the spring was a nice experience.

On Friday morning we took one of the early ferries back to Taitung to start our trip along the east coast which I holding a lot of great sight you should not miss, when you are in Taiwan. Originally the plan was to rent a car for seeing as many sights as possible on the way along the coast. Unfortunately Felix did not arrange the car, as he had promised while we had planned all the booking several weeks ago. Due to that we had no car. But a car is not the only existing vehicle which could have brought us along the sights – scooter would have been another possibility. But what a pity that we could not find the scooter rental, which the colleague of Felix had spoken to on the phone in advance and within this chat had promised to offer scooters to people with an international driver’s license. Too bad that Felix had not even brought the phone number of one of this ominous rent agencies to double check if we had asked at the right place. This sequence of unlucky problems or as I would prefer to say dishonest brazenness brought me back to the tourist information in Taidung to check on other possibilities like a round trip by bus. But as I mentioned before it seemed that every Taiwanese was travelling at this weekend. The only possibility which seemed available was to be renting a bike and get to the places by own source. So I asked for some addresses of rental agencies for bikes and tried to go there by local bus, which was not as hard.

But as it usually is, one unexpected happening does not come up alone; exiting the bus Felix did not like the idea of renting a bike. He preferred to go on searching for another chance to rent a scooter. Due to this seemed to be chance like cero to me I decided to go to the bicycle rent place on my own. As I spoke out my thought about this loud suddenly Felix started arguing that I could not let him alone and split up our “group”. I tried to explain him, that he only had to arrange a car or another possibility to see the sights at the east coast and for he did not do anything on this, I would not be stuck in this town and try to find something for me.

As he came up with shouting at me that I have to give him his money for the hotels back, because he would go back to Taipei, when I let him standing at the street alone my doubts that I was really travelling with somebody who wanted to be at the age of 27. Before he could went on blaming himself I decided to let him some space to breath and think about if an excuse for his arguing at me would not be better than going on shouting in the streets and I made my way up to rent a bike. To rent a bike was a real great idea, as I found out while following the bike way in and around Taidung. If I should describe it without using the pictures I took there, I would say it was like driving through the Landes-Garten-Show-Gelände near Paderborn just with tropical flowers instead of the typical German plants and trees. Due to the fact, not every reader might know the Landes-Garten-Show-Gelände in Paderborn I will add some pictures, as usual.

Another difference compared to the German Bike trails near Paderborn is, that here you can see the sea and some beaches. On one of these beaches I stopped and had a short break. During this break I made up my mind how to spend the next two days. For I always heard the voice of the lady from the tourist information saying that all the buses from the funny named Ding-Dong-Bus-Company are fully booked for the weekend I had to think about an alternative to get around the east coast. As I had experienced that day it was as impossible to rent a car as getting on a bus and not easy to get a scooter for rent with “only” an international driver’s license. Now I was thinking if I should stay and try to waste my time the following two days by getting stuck in Hulaien without anything to do in the town itself or if I change the plan in total. Finally I acted spontaneously, returned my bike and took a taxi to the railway station to get a ticket back to Taipei.

So this “weekend”-trip ended for me before the weekend had started, with the return to Taipei. With this, it offered me another choice for at least two day-trips. As this has nothing to do with the Dragon Boat Festival I will keep this experience as reason for another post, which will follow within the next days.