27 June 2012 – When written language becomes art
Arrived in Taiwan, all the characters looked quite nice, like paintings or abstract arts in a museum, but for me not like a language I could understand anyhow. So I did not even think about translating anything. Mandarin is so different to any other language I’ve been confronted with so far. To be honest, I was kind of scared about travelling to Taichung by my own. The Taiwanese’s English is not that good but my Mandarin much worse. However, I got a ticket for the High Speed Train from Taoyuan to Taichung, seated in carriage 10-12. Actually it was more a guess than actual knowledge of what´’s written on the ticket.
In Taichung, my cousin and her husband picked me up at the train station and we went to their nice apartment near the city centre of Taichung. Nice view from 22nd floor, right?
On the one hand it was quite nice to see some family members after 5 month of travelling, on the other hand I realised that the last month of my little trip around the world had begun.
28-30 June 2012 – Relaxed Days
I literally did nothing these days, just slept as long as I could/would and recovered from hectically days in Hong Kong.
1 July 2012 – Sun Moon Lake and the Aboriginal Village
Today we made a little day-trip to the Sun Moon Lake and Aboriginal Village. Very nice lake, a beautiful temple and some Taiwanese culture/history.
Sun Moon Lake
Wen Wu Temple
Aboriginal Village
02 July 2012 – Scooter City Tour
On Monday we (Claudia and Volker, some friends of my cousin Susanne and her husband Benny, who are in Taiwan for holidays as well and I) rent some scooters for the week and cruised around the city the whole day! What a fun on busy streets of Taichung.
Do you find the child?
Foot Massage
On the way through the city we went to a foot massage, I never had one before and it was very good. But when we tried to take some pictures the masseur showed me the most painful points of my feet. Luckily it was not only me who suffered, since Volker’s masseur found his painful points as well.
Next stop… a few more days in Taichung and the Taroko Gorge next weekend…
