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.

Fish-market, birthday party, packing and getting ready to leave Taipei

My former roomy and friend Alex was among the first to return to Europe. We had a little dinner in his honor.

The usual sunset view on the top of my (new) dorm

In my last week in Taiwan Hugo, a Taiwanese friend from my Kant class, and his girlfriend took two of my friends, Lauren and Kiel, and me to the Keelong Fish market in the middle of the night. We met at three in the morning and drove through the mild night (still 26 degrees, which felt like heaven), listening to Taiwanese music and talking about Taiwanese culture among other things. There was a strange sense of community in the car, as if we were some runaway gangsters, sitting in the same car with the same purpose. We had the roads all to ourselves but when we arrived in the streets of old-town Keelong we were suddenly surrounded by hoards of people. There were, of course, fishers, women who were recording the sales and chefs who would buy their fish as fresh as possible. We were like alien elements in this, taking pictures, looking fascinated at the way people shouted and cut up fish. Hugo told us that a fisherman’s life was drastically different from a farmer’s life. Fishing is always a bit of a gamble. Much more so than farming, where you are certainly also dependent on the weather. In fishing you risk your life in a storm, and you never know how big your catch will be or whether you will catch anything at all. If they make a big catch, many will spend it on prostitutes and booze since only heaven knows how long you will be able to enjoy it. So all around the fish market there were hotels, which could be booked by the hour and many of the fishermen had a bottle of whiskey in their hand as their companion.

Fishermen fashion

Women record the prices

(very nutritious) fish eyes – yum!

Coral reef fish

Hugo and his girlfriend

Another interesting (and appalling) issue was the sale of coral-reef fish. Coral-reefs are an exceptional organism, which only grows extremely slow and is very sensitive to small changes in their environment, like see temperature, salination, etc. Fishing nets can destroy them easily and coral reefs live in perfect symbiosis with their fish population, so such a rich eco-system is easily destroyed when left unprotected. This is why in Taiwan, as in many other legislations, fishing in and around coral reefs is forbidden. Nonetheless, you find many of these fish at the market being sold at high prices.

After a tour around the market we took the car to the coast in Taiwan’s northeast, where we had a perfect view over Turtle Island. We were there around five, so we could watch the first golden sunlight in the sky until the sun finally rose like a backdrop behind the islands. The moment can neither be described by words nor by pictures. It was unforgettable.

We went to sleep in an elementary school yard along the coast before heading back to Taipei where we had a great brunch at the infamous ‘Diner’.

A few days later, on Wednesday, Kiel celebrated his birthday and it was time to say good-bye to Lauren and Bernise. I will miss you guys!

The last week I was busy packing and started organizing my life back home somewhat. I suppose I mentally left Taiwan before I left it physically. I know its about time to go home.

Raves and Rocks

A rather unspectacular week passed although it was definitely full of worries and unpleasant conversations. On Friday, June 10, I went to a rave-party. Hidden in the middle of the woods was a Confucian temple and lots of free space to dance and camp. The most fun part of the story was that it poured heavily right before we got there turning the dance floor into a giant mud puddle. After ruining my shoes I decided to go barefoot and spent the entire party shoeless. I met some great people to have fun with and unexpectedly Lauren showed up with her crowd. Time passed so quickly that before I could realize it the sun rose again and we stood on top of the temple roof seeing the sunrise over the mist-covered mountaintops. This moment was extremely elevating. The organizers announced 40 hours non-stop music but after about 20 hours I felt like getting away from that noise and finally get some sleep. Sure enough I didn’t bring my camera, so you will have to take this pic and imagine the rest.

But of course the weekend does not end here. Lauren, Bernise, Michelle proposed to go to Taidong and I gladly joined them. Kiel also decided to take off some days to join us. After missing the first train we got to Taidong by means of bus and train in the early evening. The train-ride took us along one of the most beautiful spots I have seen in my life. Most of the time huge mountains would just drop into the sea leaving only a small terrace for the train tracks. This gave us a great view on the mist-shrouded mountains to the right and the rough surf on the left. As time went by we came into a valley and the fading sunlight hit the mountains on one side painting them in gold. It was gorgeous! When we finally came to Taidong, we got picked up by a driver from our ‘hotel’, which was a house with a great sea view. It was also only ten minutes to walk to the sea, which we did and climbed over the rocks for several hours before heading back. The first night I got pretty sick, which could still have been the aftershock from Earthfest.

The next day we hired a driver who took us all the way up the coast to the ‘eight-arch-bridge island’, stopping on the way there and explaining us every single detail about the way. It was beautiful. The weather was neither too hot nor too cold (for Taiwan weather that is) and the scenery was quite diverse and included gorges, mountains and coast of course. At the island itself we spend over two hours and we fought a bitter battle against giant beetles who wanted to ‘suck our blood’ (quote Michelle). We had a blast. The highlight was the tip of the mountain where you could pretty much see the whole island. As luck usually plays, my camera ran out of batter just when we got there. But I was still able to capture some moments.

The view from our cabin

All of us

Michelle, Kiel, Bernise, Lauren on the Moon

Palm-tree paradise!

Yes – we climbed all those stairs to the top…

Top of the mountain

Exhausted but happy I returned to Taipei that day. I had my first fully Chinese conversation on the train, which made me extremely proud. This weeked really was able to lift many worries I had and made me live the moment to the fullest. When I fell into my warm cozy bed that night I slept like a baby (after those million stairs to the mountaintop). The next morning I woke up with a terrible cold – that’s the toll for such an awesome weekend!