This is good-bye

My last impression of Taiwan (and quite to the point, actually!)It has been a quite tumultuous time recently with many fare-wells and lots of reflection on the past semester. I conclude many things.

First of all, let me set the emotional and personal framework in which this semester abroad has taken place. The moment I left for the far east I realized I was not quite ready. There have simply been to many changes in my life already and at the time I was quite happy to be working successfully on getting my life sorted out back home. As everyone, I also need some constants in my life and leaving all of my friends behind and moving to a country which is about as different from Europe as it gets clearly does not provide much stability. I never let go enough of my life back home to truly enjoy Taipei and its culture. Sure there have been lots of moments of joy but whenever they were absent there was this desperate wish to go home. I wanted to be close to my loved-ones and felt like the six moves within the last three years had been enough already. When I took the decision to go to Taiwan my situation was an entirely different one altogether.

So, reflecting on my emotional state, I would say that I simply was not ready to go abroad, wanting to get a grip on my life in Europe to badly. However, this does not mean that this semester abroad was not an extremely valuable experience and that I have not met many interesting people and done many unique things. I have.

For the first time in my life I have lived in a dormitory and judging from that (exceptionally bad) experience, I hope that it will be my last time. I have experienced an entirely different teaching style at university. I have experienced a different climate, which accommodated my inclinations worse than I thought. I have met some very special people whom I will never forget and who have taught me some valuable lessons for life. I have seen great natural landscape and a breathtaking city, be it for the exhaust of scooters, the extreme population density or its rich (underground) cultural scene.

I do not know when I will come back but I know I will come back for my friends, for the great outdoors and the arts scene in Taipei. For now, I am back in Germany with my family reconnecting with them and enjoy being able to speak my mother tongue to virtually anybody I meet. My future is quite uncertain at this point. I do not know where I will be in 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years. I hope that I will bring some clarity into my life within the next week but then, I firstly plan to enjoy my time here and now!

The first day I came back I went to my sister’s farm near my hometown. Worlds apart from the big-city life of Taipei. The sun set at 10pm (vs. 6:30 in Taipei) and many of the people I met there considered any place with more than 30k people a major city. We had lots of fun, enjoying organic bread and beer, typically German you could say. This morning I woke up at 6am, my time-schedule totally reversed, and went on a good-morning hike up to a castle close to my house. I enjoyed that the weather was only 15 Centigrade when I woke up, not the 32 I was used to in Taipei. So far, the reverse-culture shock has not struck me yet and I can confidently say: I’m glad to be back!

This will be the last post for this blog. Thanks for following and supporting it. I made a fortune by the google-ads on the side: 1.65 euros. I hope you will keep in touch and understand a foreigner’s view on Taiwan better now than before.

One last thing. Coming back to Europe my life is changed. Not only through the rich experiences in Taiwan but also because my long-term (three year) relationship has ended. This is the first blog entry that I consciously do not write for her. Life looks frighteningly different now but every crisis can yield a chance and I am optimistic it will this time, too.