Tilmann visiting

But there was only one day to bridge before Tilmann arrived, a meeting with whom I found surprisingly difficult to arrange. In his group of eight it was simply impossible to find a consensus, so we ended up meeting a deux for a coffee on my campus. Later in the afternoon we went to the spectacular Maokong Gondola which took us across Taipei’s surrounding jungle-covered hills. It was amazing to see Taipei 101 peeking over the hill-tops and seeing the city disappear in the ubiquitous smog (or was it just fog? Tilmann and I had a fierce debate over this). At the terminus we walked around and had some food, only to be invited for dinner that night by Sebastian a class-mate from my language class. On the way back down we had the most amazing view over nightly Taipei, stretching all the way across the valley. Dinner was nice and after joining my language-class-mates at their dorm for a nice roof-top-view and a round of ping pong, we went to Shida where we had beer on the streets together with hundreds of other Taipeians. It was a great feeling to soak in the atmosphere both figuratively and literally because warm air carried the scent of all varieties of foods through the air.

The next day we met around noon to explore the end of the red line: Danshui, the nearest you get to the ocean by public transport from Taipei. The weather couldn’t be better, so we walked along the river mouth for many kilometers following the river’s example of reaching the sea. On the way there we passed lots of different motives for our cameras, with which we were constantly armed. There was an amazing street artist from Georgia who put up a breath-taking fire show. Further down we took side-roads which brought us to a little pier leading to the famous ‘lovers’ bridge’ (WHAT you haven’t heard of it??). There we had some mediocre food and went for a stroll around the pier to take pictures. On the way back we took the hard choice and walked all the way back to the MRT station. For our good-bye night we went to have some apparently tamed cocktails in Ximen where we watched people walking by and had a really good conversation about goals in life, game theory, identities and whatnot. We disagreed and that made it all the more interesting. Good times! Definitely! You don’t have this kind of conversations every day. See you next time in HK!

The palm drive with the mist-covered library in the end

The Maokong Gondola and Taipei’s surrounding mountains

Taipei at night from the fancy exchange student dorms (NOT where I stay)

Danshui riverfront. Where Taipei’s Danshui river meets the Pacific Ocean

The old Dutch fort in Danshui with obligatory ‘clogs’

The pier peeking into the ocean with the Love Bridge covering the yacht harbor entrance

When Tilmann left, I admittedly fell into a big hole, having to catch up with a ton of work from the week before and struggling big time to make it on time to all my language classes. In a way, my sleep schedule was totally messed up and I had a really hard time falling asleep so I would not be tired the whole next day. On Friday I was so tired that I didn’t wake up until sunset… The weekend also didn’t make it easy for me with low-hanging clouds and freezing temperatures (i.e. outside and inside). That called for a change – big time! So on the days following the weekend I went to play squash, I tried a new vegan restaurant around the corner with my language class mates and planned the trip for spring break (which turned out to be more complicated than I thought). I sent out tons of Couchsurfing requests (find me on Couchsurfing.org) to people in Tainan and Kaohsiung, one of whom, Selena, accepted my request.